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THE DOOM
OF THE
MAJORITY oh MANKIND.
BY
SAMUEL J. BARROWS.
BOSTON:
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION.
1891.
^3f
Copyright, 188S,
By American Unitarian Association.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
/
PREFACE,
The great discussions in theology, both in England
and America, during the last few years, have turned
mainly upon two points. The first of these is the
relation of humanity to the Future Life. In England
the discussion on this subject was powerfully stim-
ulated by Canon Farrar's book, " Eternal Hope." In
America the debate, rekindled by this book, received
a new direction and an independent impulse from the
so-called Andover Controversy ; one result of which
was that an Orthodox clergyman, called to a profes-
sorship by the Trustees of that institution, was denied
confirmation by the Board of Visitors, because of his
charitable speculations on this subject. Candidates for
ordination were afterwards excluded from Orthodox
pulpits for the same reason. A conspicuous feature
in this discussion has related to the destiny of those —
involving the great majority of the race — who have
no opportunity in this life to accept or even to become
acquainted with the Orthodox theory of salvation.
With this question before it, the American Board, at
its last annual missionary meeting at Portland, refused
to concede that the heathen might have a probation
after death, and reafiirmed the motive for missionary
work to be the necessity of saving them from an end-
less hell.
IV PREFACE.
The second great subject of theological discussion
has been the scientific criticism of the Bible. The
influence of Dutch and German criticism has pene-
trated to the very centre of Calvinistic strongholds.
These two theological questions are much more
closely related than they seem to be at first. The
Orthodox estimate of the Bible as an infallible book
has had much to do in determining what view shall
be taken of the future destiny of the race. It was a
deep conviction of the close relationship of these two
questions which led Rev. George E. Ellis, D.D., of
Boston, to affirm in a public address, that before
Orthodoxy could revise its creeds, it must revise its
estimate of the Bible. In the prolonged discussion
which this paper awakened, an incidental statement
of Dr. Ellis, that certain Scripture texts " are alleged
as certifying that the vast majority of the human race
are to be victims of endless woe," was challenged by
an Orthodox clergyman, Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D., of
Park Street Church, Boston, who characterized it as
an absolute and abominable misrepresentation of Or-
thodoxy. As editor of the " Christian Register," the
writer replied at length in the columns of that paper,
aiming to fix upon Orthodoxy the responsibility of
teaching this doctrine of the doom of the majority of
mankind.
This debate, and the questions that grew out of it,
have furnished the material for this book. In the first
three chapters the evidence presented in the original
article has been largely augmented, especially with
reference to modern authorities. In the fourth chap-
ter important admissions and criticisms of Evangelical
writers are presented concerning the moral difficulties
PREFACE. V
of this doctrine. Attempted mitigations, and features
which are still unrelieved by these palliations, are
considered in succeeding chapters ; while in a final
chapter attention is invited to what seems to us a
more promising and, indeed, the only adequate
solution.
Two things have become evident in this discussion.
First, that Orthodoxy is not wholly ready to revise
its belief ; and secondly, that its beliefs are constantly
suffering revision without its consent. The tenacity,
painfully apparent, with which Orthodox bodies hold
to ancient standards and traditional interpretations
of Scripture, has not prevented the action of other
solvents. The old creeds cannot be exposed to the
atmosphere of to-day without disintegration. The
progress of science, philosophy, and ethics has ren-
dered progress in theology imperative. It has also
become evident to an increasing minority of Christians
that Orthodoxy must revise its teachings. But no revis-
ion will satisfy the demands of an enlightened liberal
thought and sentiment, which does not reconsider and
restate the relations of God to human destiny, and
reafl&rm, with clarion voice, the great truth that " in
every nation he that feareth God and worketh right-
eousness is accepted with him," and that "as many
as are led by the spirit of God, these are the sons of
God."
No apology is needed for any warmth and earnest-
ness in dealing with a dogma so distressing to the
feelings, so alien to the moral sense, as the Doom
of the Majority of Mankind ; but earnestness and
warmth are not inconsistent, we trust, with kindly
feeling and fairness of statement. In exposing the
VI PREFACE.
errors of Orthodoxy, we are not ungrateful for its
truths.
No better proof of the timeliness of this volume
can be given than that Orthodoxy is earnestly seeking
for a solution of the problems of which it treats. That
solution may not be reached in the present discussion,
but its attainment is only postponed. Fundamental
questions in ethics or religion are not decided finally
until they are decided rightly. They may be evaded
or deferred ; but they will reappear, and knock at the
door of the reason and the conscience till by their
importunity they command a hearing. The disposi-
tion of Evangelical Christians to grapple anew with
these old questions is a grateful sign.
There is a liberal spirit working through all the
sects to-day. No sect has any monopoly of it, and
none can escape its influence. It is not merely pull-
ing down, but it is building " with a sure and ample
base," upon broader and deeper foundations. We
hail with joy every conquest that it makes. Let the
liberal elements in every branch of the Christian
Church join hands for the consummation of this con-
structive work. What are differences in polity, ritual,
and denominational traditions, compared with the
work of purifying Christianity from its corruptions,
developing its best ideals, and making it truly repre-
sentative of universal religion ?
Boston, May, 1883.
CONTENTS.
PAGS
Pbepacb iii
I. The Damnation of the Majority taught
BY Evangelical Christians as a Scrip-
ture Doctrine 5
II. The Damnation of the Majority taught
BY Evangelical Creeds 25
III. This Doctrine still taught by Evangel-
ical Denominations 49
IV. Admissions and Criticisms 67
V. Attempted Mitigations 95
VI. Unmitigated Features 113
VII. The Solution 130
OM
OF THE
MAJORITY OF MANKIND.
" Dark and Awful : " such are the words with which
an eminent professor in an Evangelical Theological Semi-
nary (Rev. W. G. T. Shedd, D.D., of Union Theological
Seminaiy, New York) describes the doctrine that he
teaches to his pupils, and proclaims from~ the pulpit as
the great motive for missionary effort. What is this
"dark and awful" doctrine? It is that ''millions upon
millions " ^ of a " miserable and infatuated race," involv-
ing the vast majority of mankind, are doomed to ever-
lasting woe.
Were this merely the personal opinion of the man who
teaches it, we should hardly think it necessary to consider
it, notwithstanding the respect we entertain for this emi-
nent writer and scholar. If it were the opinion of a few
individuals only, or if it were a doctrine antiquated and
obsolete, we should not arraign it in this paper. But it is
a view which has been and is still extensively held within
the limits of what is known as Evangelical Christianity.
It is a doctrine upon which a whole system of theology
has been built, and upon which it still rests.
1 The GuUt of the Pagan, New York, 1864, p. 23.
4 THE DOOM OF THE
Three hundred years ago John Calvin, in describing
his doctrine, used words similar to those of Dr. Sbedd;
"It is a dreadful decree, I confess." Decretum quidem
horrible, fateor. And yet this dreadful decree has been,
and still is, proclaimed as a part of the glad tidings which
Jesus Christ brought into the world !
At the present day there are many who, while admitting
the premises upon which the doctrine is founded, shrink
from the conclusions to which it inevitably leads. They
would gladly relieve Orthodoxy from the charge of having
believed and taught that "the vast majority of the human
race are to be the victims of endless woe." They cannot
feel more deeply than we do the reproach of such a doc-
trine. We welcome any argument or any confession
which shall remove this stigma from the name of Christi-
anity. But such argument or confession must be true to
the facts. Orthodoxy cannot be relieved from its respon-
sibility for this doctrine by the plea that it has never
authoritatively taught it.
Rev. J. L. Withrow, D.D., pastor of Park Street Church,
Boston, is amazed that men should so "absolutely and
abominably misrepresent the Evangelical belief concerning
the number of the saved and lost." ^ When a prominent
Orthodox minister feels called upon to deny that he per-
sonally believes that the vast majority of the human race
are to be victims of endless woe, we are conscious of in-
creased respect for his opinions and his courage in
declaring them; but when it is flatly denied that it is a
doctrine of the system of Orthodoxy which he represents,
the negation demands consideration.
In the following pages we respectfully present some
competent evidence upon the subject, — not so much that
we may fix the shame and disgrace of the doctrine upon
Evangelical Christians, as that we may have some ground
for urging them to remove it. The best argument we can
1 Christian Register, December 14, 1882; and January 4, 1883.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND.
present against this dismal doctrine is to let those who
hold it state it for themselves. The evidence we offer
covers the following points : —
I. Evangelical Christians have taught this as a Scrip-
ture doctrine.
II. It is taught by Evangelical Creeds.
III. It is still taught by Evangelical Denominations.
We purpose to take these points in the order in which
they are given, and consider them in detail.
I.
The Damnation op the Majority of Mankind has
been taught by evangelical christians as a
Doctrine of the Scriptures.
When it is asked, "Do the Scriptures teach this doc-
trine ? " we answer, With any fair, reasonable, scholarly
interpretation, they do not. But we do assert, without
fear of successful contradiction, that Orthodoxy has in^
fused its interpretation into the /Scriptures, and has
constantly appealed to them in support of this doctrine.
The texts which are adduced in its support are very
numerous, and the men who have presented them have
been as numerous as the texts. They have not been con-
fined to any one age. In his book, " Mercy and Judg-
ment," which followed the storm created by " Eternal
Hope," Canon Farrar has gone into this general question
in much detail. As a result of his examination he says ;
*^ I assert and shall prove that the Christian writings of
every age abound in assertions that the few only will be
savedr Canon Farrar proves his assertion by referring
to the opinions of the Church Fathers. Rev. F. N. Oxen-
ham, in his book, " What is the Truth as to Everlasting
Punishment ? " also in reply to Dr. Pusey, has effectually
appealed to the same sources. Some of these quotations
6 THE DOOM OF THE
show from what a small tincture of Scripture, diluted
with a great deal of individual speculation, the doctrine
was compounded. They are sufficient to confirm Mr.
Oxenham in his conclusion that "the dominant teaching
of all sorts of theologians since the Reformation, both
Catholic and Protestant (with no doubt a remarkable
exception here and there), until the last few years, has
declared unhesitatingly this doctrine as a certain and
terrible truth revealed to us by God." (p. 31.) ^
ST. CHRYSOSTOM.
St. Chrysostom, in his Twenty-fourth Homily on the
Acts, preaching at Antioch, said : —
*' How many, think you, are there in our city who will be
saved ? It is a terrible truth which I am about to utter, but
yet I will utter it. Among so many thousands, a hundred can-
not be found who will be saved, and even about them I doubt.'*
{0pp. ed. Montfaucon, ix. 198 [214], b.)
ST. AUGUSTINE.
**Not all, nor even a majority, are saved" (^Enchiridion, cap.
24, al. 97. 0pp. vi. 231 [395], ed. Bened.)
"They [the saved] are indeed many, if regarded by them-
selves, hut they are few in comparison ivith the far larger number of
those who shall be punished with the devil." (Contra Cresco-
nium,, lib. iv. cap. 63, al. 53. 0pp. ix. 514 [785], ed. Bened.)
GREGORY THE GREAT.
" Many come to (the knowledge of) the faith, but few are led
on to enter the heavenly kingdom.^^ (In Evang. Horn. xix. c. 5.
0pp. i. 1513, ed. Bened.)
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS.
St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on 2 Pet, i. 10, says: —
"For now it is a secret who are elect and who are repro-
bates, since both are now together ; and many, who now are
i/
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 7
living well, are nevertheless reprobates, and many, who now
are evil-livers, are nevertheless elect. But in the Day of Judg-
ment, when God will winnow and purge his floor, it will then
be evident who are elect and who are reprobates ; and that the ^,
elect are few and the reprobates many, since much shall be found f
of chaff and little of wheat." (See Oxenham, p. 150.)
CORNELIUS X LAPIDE.
Writing on the "greatt multitude which no man could
number" (Rev. vii. 9), Cornelius a Lapide, the eminent
commentator, says : —
'* From what has been said, we may estimate that in the end
of the world the total number of all the saints and elect, who
have ever lived anywhere in any age, will make up some hundred
millions. The number of the reprobate will, however, be far
greater, which will come to not only hundreds but even thou-
sands of millions. For often out of a thousand men, — nay, even
out of ten thousand, — scarcely one is saved."
Cornelius says elsewhere that " a crowd of men sink
daily to Tartarus as thick as the falling snowflakes."
(Num. xiv. 30.)
GIULIO CESARE RECUPITO.
Recupito was the author of a curious book, " De Num-
ero Praedestinatorum et Reproborum," Paris, 1664. We
have never had access to it ; but Canon Farrar found a
copy in the Archbishops' Library at Lambeth, and thus
describes it : —
** In the first chapter he argues that the number of the elect
is fixed and definite. In the second he quotes the view of those
who held that the number of the lost did not exceed that of the
saved. He does not stop to argue the question generally. He
at once assumes, as an axiom, that for six thousand years none
but Jews could have been saved, and that now none could be
possibly saved outside the pale of the Church ; so that countless
millions of Mohammedans, Gentiles, and heretics are calmly
disposed of with the oracular remark that ' their damnation is
certain.*
(
8 THE DOOM OF THE
" He next adduces the opinion of the Fathers, and quotes in
his favor St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St.
Gregory. Then he tells us from the Abbot Nilus, a revelation
to St. Simeon Stylites that scarcely one soul was saved out of ten
thousand, and the vision of a bishop, referred to by Trithemius
in his ' Chronicon,' about a.d. 1160, in which a hermit appeared
to him, and said that at the hour of his death three thousand
others had died, and that the only one saved among them was
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and three who went to purgatory.
He further adduces another vision of a preacher who says that
sixty thousand stood with him before God's bar, and all except
three were condemned to hell ; and yet another of a Parisian
master who appeared to his bishop, announcing that he had
been damned, and added that ' so many souls were daily thrust
down to hell that he could scarcely believe there were so many
men in the world.' Indeed, he asked if the world still existed.
For he had seen so many tumbling into the abyss that he thought
that none could remain alive."
Dr. Lewis Du-Moulin was Professor of History at
Oxford. We have before us his little work, found in
Harvard College Library, and bearing the following
title : —
*' Moral Reflections upon the Number of the Elect, Proving
plainly from Scripture Evidence, etc., That not One in a Hun-
dred Thousand (nay probably not One in a Million), from Adam
down to our Times, shall be Saved. By Dr. Lewis Du-Moulin,
Late Histoiy Professor of Oxford. London : Printed for
Richard Janetvay, in Queens-Head Alley, in Pater-Noster-Row,
MDCLXXX."
The doctrine of this book may be inferred from the
title ; but we quote some interesting passages : —
*' Some, who are but few in Number, as C(Elius Secundus
Curio, de amplitudine regni gratiw, have indeavoured to prove,
That the Number of the Saved Ones, is much more great, than
that of the Damned. .Others make almost an equal division of
them, as Zuinglius: feut the most believe, that the Number
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 9
Xof the Damned is incomparably greater, than those that are/
/ Saved ; and that there is not above one Saved of a hundred*^
Thousand, or rather of a Million, from Adam, even to the
Day of Judgment." \^. 1.)
" Jesus Christ sayes, that his Flock is small ; that there are
but few persons that enter into the Kingdom of Heaven ; that
when he shall come again upon the Earth, he shall not find faith
in it ; that all the World shall run after the Beast: That the
Number of the Elect is very little in Comparison of those that
are Called, and Consequently, that the Number of the Called is
infinitely less, than that of those who are not Called, and that
know not what the Christian Religion is. For if you suppose
that before Jesus Christ there was but one Called among a
Hundred Thousand, if not indeed a Million of Men, and that
among a Hundred Called, it was but a peradventure that one
was Chosen ; the Number of the Elect before the Advent of
Jesus Christ will amount to very little ; for it is easy to shew by
History, that, I will not say of a Hundred, but of Five Hun-
dred, or a Thousand Called in Israel, scarce will you find one
Faithful ; insomuch, that though the Called People were so
greatly numerous, the Prophets, particularly Esaiah, complain,
that hardly one believed their Report, or Preaching," (p. 11.)
♦' To conclude, I would refer my self to the judgment of any
sober, considering person, what a vast and almost an infinit
proportion in number one should find, if from Adam^s days
down to ours, there should be a comparison made of the Sum
total of the Elect, with that of those who are not Elected : I
believe that this Proportion would be of one Person Saved, to a
Million that is not : that is to say, That there is a Million of
Reprobates to one that shall be Chosen so as to be Saved." (p. 21.)
But there is another authority. Let us take the man
who, more than any other, has been adduced as the cham-
pion and founder of the Orthodox system, — John Calvin.
His modern influence we believe is certainly declining,
but he is still proudly appealed to as an authority by a
great body of Evangelical Christians. Professor E. D.
Morris, of Lane Seminary (Presbyterian), in his Inaugu-
ral Address recently delivered, says : " Presbyterianism
10 THE DOOM OF THB
throughout the world may be said to be in an eminent
sense doctrinal, — doctrinal because it is Calvinistic."
What is, then, the doctrine of Calvin on this point?
Calvin believed, and did not hesitate to assert, that the
majority of mankind are eternally lost. He did not fear
to face the logical consequences of his belief. Where did
he get his belief from? He professed to get it — and
certainly thought in all honesty that he got it, from the
Bible. He claimed that the Bible taught that God had
elected Q,few to eternal glory, but that the rest, including
the heathen, who constitute the vast majority of man-
kind, were reprobated to eternal damnation.
In his commentary on Matt. vii. 13, Calvin says : —
*' He expressly says that many run along the hroad roady
because men ruin each other by wicked examples. For whence
does it arise that each of them knowingly and wilfully rushes
headlong, but because, while they are ruined in the midst of a
vast crowd, they do not believe that they are ruined. The small
number of believers, on the other hand, renders many persons
careless. It is with difficulty that we are brought to renounce
the world, and to regulate ourselves and our life by the manners
of B.few. We think it strange that we should be forcibly sep-
arated from the vast majority, as if we were not a part of the
human race. But though the doctrine of Christ confines and
hems us in, reduces our life to a narrow road, separates us from
the crowd, and unites us to a few companions, yet this harsh-
ness ought not to prevent us from striving to obtain life."
(Pringle's Translation.)
In his Harmony, Matt. xxiv. 22, he discusses the ques-
tion why God determined that " a few should remain out
of a vast multitude.'*'*
In his comments on Matt. xxiv. 5 he shows that it was
" through the vengeance of God that more were carried
away by a foolish credulity than were brought by a right
faith to obey God."
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 11
In commenting upon the prayer of Jesus, in John xvii.
9, he says : —
*' Whence it appears that the whole \\^orld does not belong to
its Creator ; only that grace snatches a few from the curse and
wrath of God, and from eternal death, who would otherwise
perish ; but leaves the world in the ruin to which it has been
ordained."
In remarking upon the beautiful words of Christ,
Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden^
Calvin's dreadful views are clearly made plain : —
" And yet all [who accept this invitation] are few in number ;
because, out of the innumerable multitude of those who are
perishing, but few perceive that they are perishing."
In writing against Arminianism Calvin confesses this
horrible doctrine to its full extent : —
" I ask again, how has it come to pass that the fall of Adam
has involved so many nations with their infant children in eternal
death, and this without remedy, but because such was the will of
God? Here the tongues that have been so voluble it becomes to
be mute. It is a dreadful decree, I confess." — (Institut. lib. iii.
23, 7.)
OPINIONS OF OTHER COMMENTATORS.
As Jesus was journeying towards Jerusalem, teaching
in cities and villages, Luke tells us (xiii. 23) that a certain
man met him and said unto him, "• Lord, are there few
that be saved ? " It was a curious question, but one very
natural for a Jew to ask ; for it was a common belief
among the Jews that they were the elect of God, and
that the Gentiles were of little importance in his sight.
Eisenmenger^ quotes a rabbin who said that "the soul
of a single Israelite is by itself more precious and dear in
the sight of the blessed God than all the souls of a whole
nation ; " and again : " The world was created for the sake
of the Israelites." " They are the wheat, the other nations
1 Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. i. pp. 569, 571.
12 THE DOOM OF THE
are the chaff." It may have seemed to this Jew a dan-
gerous doctrine to preach that the Gentiles were equally
the children of his fatvor ; as centuries later it seemed to
the makers of the Westminster Catechism a " detestable
and pernicious "doctrine that the heathen could be saved.
But whatever the motive of this question, Jesus did not
deign to answer it. He advised his questioner, however,
to strive to enter the strait gate himself, to work out his
own salvation, instead of cherishing the idea that he
belonged to a favored class.
Although Jesus did not satisfy this man's curiosity by
giving his own views on the subject, it seems a little
strange that there should have been commentators in all
ages who have been bold enough to furnish him with an
opinion. With singular frequency the conclusion has
been reached that few were to be saved and the vast
majority eternally lost. Among Calvinistic commen-
tators this has been the unanimous verdict. That system
of orthodoxy has permitted no other belief. But this
view has not been confined to Calvinists. It has been
held by Arminians as well. As Canon Farrar ^ says :
"It is centuries older than Calvinism; it is immensely
wider than the limits of Calvinistic churches." And
again in the same book : " The damnation of the vast
majority of mankind has been the normal teaching of
theologians in every age since the earliest.'* (p. 140.)
The passage in Luke has furnished less ground, perhaps,
for this conclusion than two that occur in Matthew —
namely. Matt. xx. 16 and xxii. 14, where Jesus says,
" Many are called but few chosen." In one case it follows
the parable of the Laborers, which seems to be directed
against the doctrine of 'Jewish exclusiveness ; in the other
it follows the parable of the Marriage of the King's Son.
In neither parable is there the slightest reference to
the doctrine of everlasting punishment. Jesus was re-
1 Mercy and Judgment, p. 153.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 13
buking the people of his own age and country because
many of them preferred darkness rather than light. He
showed also that, though many were called into his
kingdom, but few became eminent in it. It is a monstrous
assumption to suppose that in these passages he gave a
revelation concerning the proportion of the human race
who should be consigned to hell. Yet this is the view
that has been taken over and over again of these texts
by Evangelical writers. Matt. vii. 13 has been inter-
preted in the same way. A few extracts from prominent
commentators will show how persistently these texts
have been interpreted with reference to the final destiny
of the race.
DIG D ATI.
Diodati, in his Annotations (third edition, 1661) on
Matt. vii. 13, says : —
" For to come to eternall happiness doe not follow the way of
pleasures, and ease of the world and the flesh, nor the great num-
ber and multitude of men: but make choice of the hard and
laborious profession of the Gospel with its crosse : and joyn thy-
self to the small sanctified flock of the Church by faith and
imitation of good men, who are alwaies the smallest number in the
world. ^^
On Matt. xxii. 14 he says : —
'* Because that many who are called do not answer to Gods
call and that even amongst those also who doe in some sort
answer, some are rejected, it appears that the eternall election is
not of allf but of a feiv.^^
On Luke xiii. 23 he says: —
" Christ according to his wonted custome does not answer
directly to that curious and unprofitable question : hit silently
avoweth that indeed there are but few. ^^
ESTIUS.
Estius, commenting on St. Paul's declaration (1 Tim.
ii. 4) that " God will have all men to be saved and to come
14 ~ THE DOOM OF THE
to the knowledge of the truth," concludes one part of his
argument by saying, " Since it is certain that all men are
not saved, and that all men do not believe, but only a few
out of all," &c.
And, again, on 2 Pet. iii. 9, he says : " Since, then,
it is an admitted fact [constet] that all men do not
come to repentance, but that the majority are lost, it is
inquired," &c.
WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES.
In the Annotations made upon the Bible by the West-
minster Assembly of Divines, they say of Matt. xx. 16: —
" Some come short of that which others, inferior to them in
the account of the world, obtain, because they are only out-
wardly called, by the word, but are not from eternity chosen by
God to eternall life. . . . Though there are many who are exter-
nally called, yet there are but few that go to heaven."
On the similar passage in Matt. xxii. 14, they say : —
" Because many that are called do not come into God's Church,
and among those that do come, some are not saved, for want of
an holy conversation, it appears that few are chosen to eternal
life.''
MATTHEVr HENRY.
Matthew Henry, on Matt. vii. 13, says : —
' ' Those that are going to heaven are but few compared to
those that are going to hell; a. remnant, a little flock like the
grape-gleanings of the vintage ; as the eight that were saved in
the ark."
In commenting on the question put to Jesus in Luke
xiii. 23 : " Are there few that be saved ? " Matthew Henry
recognizes the fact that Jesus did not return any direct
answer to the question. He does not, however, seem
content to leave the matter where Jesus left it, but pro-
ceeds to answer the question himself.
" We have reason to wonder that, of the many to whom the
word of salvation is sent, there are so few to whom it is indeed a
MAJORITY OP MANKIND. 15
saving word. ... It concerns us all seriously to improve the
great truth of the fewness of those that are saved. Think how
many take some pains for salvation, and yet perish because they
do not take enough ; and you will say that there are few that will
he saved, and that it highly concerns us to strive. . . . Think of
the distinguishing day that is coming, and the decisions of that
day, and you will say there are few that shall be saved, and that we
are concerned to strive. Think how many that were very con-
fident they should be saved will be rejected in the day of trial,
and their confidence will deceive them ; and you will say, there
are few that shall be saved, and we are all concerned to strive."
WILLIAM BUEKITT.
William Burkitt (vicar of Dedham, Eng., 1712), on
Matt. xxii. 14, says : —
** Amongst the Multitude of those that are called by the
Gospel unto Holiness and Obedience, few, very few compara-
tively, do obey that Call, and shall be Eternally saved."
ADAM CLARKE.
Dr. Adam Clarke, in his commentary on Psalms ix.
17: —
" The wicked shall be turned into helj, and all the nations
that forget God. There are both nations and individuals who,
though they know God, forget Him, that is, are unmindful of
Him ; do not acknowledge Him in their designs, ways, and works.
These are all to be thrust down into hell."
In his commentary on Matt. vii. 14 he says (Italics
his) : —
" There are few who fnd the way to heaven ; fewer yet who
abide any time in it ; fewer still who walk in it ; and fewest of
all who persevere unto the end."
The " wide gate and broad way " he interprets as leading
into " eternal misery."
On Matt. xxii. 14 he remarks : —
♦' Many are called by the preaching of the gospel unto the
outward communion of the Church of Christ ; hut few, compara-
16 THE DOOM OF THE
lively^ are chosen to dwell with God in glory, because they do not
come to the master of the feast for a marriage-garment."
DODDRIDGE.
Doddridge on Matt. vii. 14 : —
" Strait is the Gate and rugged and painful the Way which
leads to eternal Life, and they who find it and with a holy
Ardency and Resolution press into it, so as to arrive at that
blessed End, are comparatively few." _
On Matt. XX. 16 : —
*' Though many are called, and the Messages of Salvation are
sent to vast Multitudes, even to all the Thousands of Israel, yet
there are but few chosen. A small remnant only will embrace the
Gospel so universally offered and so be saved according to the
Election of Grace, while the rest will be justly disowned by God
as a Punishment for so obstinate and so envious a Temper."
On Matt. xxii. 14: —
" Though it be a dreadful truth, yet I must say that even the
greatest part of those to whom the Gospel is offered will either
openly reject or secretly disobey it. . . . Few are chosen in such
a sense as finally to partake of its blessings."
BOOT-HEOYD.
Boothroyd's Family Bible (1824), in a note on Matt,
xxii. 14: —
" Though many are invited [by the Gospel] yet few chosen,
— few that will he finally approved."
HEUBNEB.
Heubner, on Matt. vii. 13 : —
" Oh, how many go on the broad way! Thus the majority of
men hasten to ruin, and will ultimately be condemned."
DE. OWEN.
Dr. John J. Owen, in his commentary (New York,
1857) on Matt. xxii. 14 : — .
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 17
"Many are invited to the blessings and privileges of the
gospel feast, but comparatively few are real participants of the
grace of God. This was true of the Jewish nation, in respect
to whom this parable had primary application. The people in
general were obdurate and unbelieving, while a few only listened
to the inspired prophets. Such, also, is the sad /ac/ in respect to
every nation, even those most highly favored with the light of
pure Christianity. The masses go down in impenitence to the
grave, and comparatively few are found in the way that leadeth to
life.''
BISHOP OF LINCOLN.
Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln (1872),
on Matt. xxii. 14 : —
"Christ commands to baptize all Nations. ... He proffers
the Marriage garment to all, and yet how many refuse it and
prefer their own clothes! Besides, even of those who have the
wedding garment, some are described as bad. Therefore /e?^j are
chosen. The k\t]to\, or Ecclesia visibilis^ is numerous, but how few
are the chosen ! "
OLSHAUSEN.
Olshausen, on Luke xiii. 23, 24, concedes the damnation
of the majority : —
" The Saviour in reply does not say exactly that there were
but few who should partake of salvation, for, looked at simply
in itself, the number of the saved is great ; it is only relatively,
and as compared with the lost, that it is small."
DEAN GOULBURN.
Speaking of the doctrine of the comparative fewness
of the saved, Dean Goulburn, in an excursus added
to the second edition of his sermons on Everlasting
Punishment (1881), says : —
"It is awfully startling, and ought to be very rousing to
the energies of" our will, to think how legibly this doctrine is
written on the surface of Holy Scripture, — what pains, if I
may say so, God has taken to impress it upon us for our
warning." (p. 241.)
18 THE DOOM OF THE
" Now let it be observed that this doctrine of the fewness of
the saved, in comparison of the lost, is one so plainly revealed
that none who accept Holy Scripture as the word of God, can
dispute it." (p. 251.)
We have quoted from a line of commentators extend-
ing from Calvin down to the present day, to show how
constantly this doctrine has been attributed to the Scrip-
tures. There have not been lacking eminent scholars who
have formed a more rational judgment of these passages,
but the view we have given has been the more common
one, and has helped to confirm the popular belief on this
subject.
OTHER AUTHORITIES.
This interpretation of the Scripture is frequently con-
fessed in the works of prominent Evangelical writers.
Elchard Baxter, in his " Saints' Rest," thus describes
the people of God : —
" They are a small part of lost mankind whom God hath from
eternity predestinated to this Rest for the glory of his mercy,
and given to his Son, to be by him in a special manner re-
deemed." (Baxter^s Saints^ Rest, ch. viii. 115.)
Flavel, in his " Method of Grace," says (the italics arp
his): —
" How great a number of persons are in the state of condemnation !
That is a sad complaint of the prophet, — ' Who hath believed
our report ? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed ? '
(Isaiah liii. 1.) Many talk of faith, and many profess it; but
there are few in the world unto whom the arm of the Lord has
been revealed in the work of faith with power. It is put among
the great mysteries that Christ is believed on in the world
(1 Tim. iii. 16). Oh, what a terrible day will be the day of
Christ's coming to judgment, when so many millions of unbeliev-
ers shall bd' brought to his tribunal to be solemnly sentenced."
Rev. Jonathan Townsend, M.A., pastor of a church at
Needham, said : —
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 19
*' And thus quick are we all hastening into Eternity. Some
to heaven, a little Company ; but Multitudes throng the way to
Hell, a great Multitude which no Man can number, " (^Discourse on
God^s Marvellous Sparing Mei'cy^ 1738, Boston, p. 5.)
It is competent to quote President Edwards on this
point : —
" That there are generally but few good men in the world,
even among them that have those most distinguishing and glo-
rious advantages for it, which they are favored with that live
under the Gospel, is evident by that saying of our Lord, from time
to time in his mouth. Many are called , hut few are chosen. And
if there are but few among these, how few, how very few indeed,
must persons of this character be, compared with the whole
world of mankind! The exceeding smallness of the number of
true saints, compared with the whole world, appears by the
representations often made of them as distinguished from the
world." — (^Edwards on Original Sin, section vii. ; Works, vol. ii.
p. 343.)
Another form in which the doctrine is taught is, that
the great body of the heathen world — numerically the
vast majority of the race — are doomed to eternal misery.
In '• The Principles of the Protestant Religion, main-
tained by the Ministers of the Gospel in Boston," 1690, by
James Allen, Joshua Moody, Samuel Willard, and Cot-
ton Mather, the damnation of the heathen is taught as a
Scripture doctrine : —
•' That there are any Elect among Pagans, who never had
the gospel offered them, is not only without Scripture warrant,
but against its Testimony, as hath been agen and agen made
evident." (pp. 92, 93.)
In a work entitled " The Doleful State of the Damned,"
by S. Moody of York, Maine, published in 1710, we find
the tortures of the heathen thus described: —
" The Gentile Nations that perished (by Thousa'^ds and Mil-
lions) for lack of Vision, for so many Ages, whiles God (in a way
of New Covenant Mercy) knew only the Jewish Nation, the
Seed of Abraham; giving His Word to Jacob, His Statutes
20 THE DOOM OF THE
and Judgments to Israel : All these Nations (I say) whom God
suffered to walk in their own wayes, will be inraged with Self-
tormenting Madness, that the Lord should send all His Servants
the Prophets to them, unto Jacob whom He loved, and make His
Word in their Mouth, effectual to the Conversion and Salvation of
so many Thousands of them ; while these Sinners of the Gentiles
could not hear for want of a Preacher, Rom. x. 14. And the
Ungospellized Nations, now since Christ came and brake
down the Partition Wall between Jews and Gentiles (which are
by far the greatest Part of the World), will have the same
bitter Pill to Chew, while they Consider how that some in all
Ages, of one Nation or other, and some of all Nations, in one
Age or other, are Redeemed and Saved; this will make them
Lament and Blaspheme, that the Gospel was not sent to their
Nation, and in their Day on Earth. Now to take the whole
World of Reprobates together, in whatever Age or Nation they
lived, that Perish either for lack of Vision, or for Rebelling
against the Light of Nature and Scripture both ; we may a little
consider, in a more general Way, how it will Vex and Torment
all the Damned, while they View and Survey in their Heaven-
piercing Thoughts, the Place and State of the Glorified; and
consider, L That there was a Possibility of their having been
all happy, as well as they that are so, or instead of them ; there
being nothing in the Nature of God or Man against it ; . . . so
that Thousands of Millions will say, in Hell (and vex them-
selves forever with such fruitless Wishes) Oh ! That the Gospel
of Salvation had been sent to us : Oh ! That we had but heard
the joyful Sound: Oh! That we had Lived in such Times and
Places as were blessed with Sabbaths, Ministers, and Bibles.
And ten thousand Times ten Thousand, Oh! That the Gospel
had been made effectual to us." {The Doleful State of the
Damned, Doctrine H. p. 47.)
Rev. Nathanael Emmons, D.D., was one of the most
eminent of Orthodox theologians. His name needs only
to be mentioned to be recognized and honored as one
of Orthodoxy's representative champions. His writings
have had a wide circulation and influence. The writer
possesses an edition of the Works of Dr. Emmons, with
an interesting Memoir by Prof. Edwards A. Park. It
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. ' 21
is not the work of a Latin Father ; it bears the imprint
of the Congregational Board of Publication, 1860. In
the second volume of that work, Dr. Emmons has a ser-
mon entitled " Sins without Law deserve Punishment,"
in which he gives Scripture evidence to show that the
heathen (constituting the vast majority of mankind) shall
finally perish : —
" The design of this discourse is to show : —
I. That the heathen are without law.
II. That they sin without law. And
III. That they must perish without law." (vol. ii. p. 663.)
" Though the heathen sin without law, yet their sin deserves
eternal destruction." {lb. p. 668.)
" Though God has never forbidden the heathen to do things
worthy of death, yet since they have done things worthy of
death, he has a right to make them suffer eternal death, the
proper wages of sin." {lb. p. 669.)
" God has told us in his word, that the heathen, who sin without
law, shall perish without law. God might, if he had pleased,
have saved the heathen, notwithstanding their desert of eternal
destruction ; but he has let us know in his word that he deter-
mines to cast them off forever. He has already caused many
of them to perish.
*' The men of Sodom and Gomorrah were heathen, and them,
we are told, he has ' set forth for an example, suffering the
vengeance of eternal fire,' David says: ' The wicked shall be
turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.' And he
prays for the destruction of the heathen: 'Thou, therefore, O
Lord God of hosts,, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the
heathen.' And again he prays: ' Pour out thy wrath upon the
heathen that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that
have not called upon thy name.'
" More passages might be quoted, and more things said upon
this head, but it is needless to enlarge. The will of God
respecting the state of the heathen seems to be clearly and fully
revealed in his word.^^ (lb. p. 669.)
Rev. Enoch Pond will be recognized as another eminent
Orthodox authority. In a course of Missionary Discourses,
22 THE DOOM OF THE
given at Ward, Mass., and published in 1824, we find one
on Romans vi. 21 : '^ The end of those things is death,"
in which he says : —
*' We have, therefore, in the text this affecting truth : the end
of heathenism is eternal death. Or, in other words, the great body
of those who lice and die heathen must Jinally perish.^'' (p. 221.)
" Like all unpardoned sinners, they are ' condemned already,'
and are under sentence of eternal punishment. This sentence
cannot be remitted without repentance and reformation. We
find no intimations in the Scriptures that God will forgive any,
even heathens, without repentance ; but everywhere the plainest
intimations to the contrary." (p. 225.)
*' The conclusion, therefore, is irresistible, that the great body
of the heathen are not delivered from the wages of sin, but are
descending, in fearful multitudes, down to the chambers of
eternal death." (p. 228.)
"It is submitted, my brethren, after what has been said,
whether the proposition, announced at the commencement of
this discourse, has not been immovably established, — that the
end of heathenism is eternal death ; or that the great body of those
who live and die heathens must ^ go away into everlasting punish-
ment: " (p. 232.)
Dr. Pond adduces " numerous passages of Scripture in
which the heathen are represented as exposed to perish
forever." The list is too long to republish.
These quotations from acknowledged Orthodox authori-
ties might be easily multiplied ; but we have given enough
to show how Orthodoxy has interpreted the Bible on these
points, and how badly that collection of books has fared
at its hands. What better argument than such beliefs as
these can we present that Orthodoxy needs to revise its
estimate of the Bible? What better evidence to show
that the Scriptures had better be rationally interpreted,
or rationally abandoned ?
Undoubtedly the Scriptures do teach, in the various
texts that have been quoted, that comparatively few attnin
the higher blessedness, — the more abundant life, to which
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 23
Jesus called men, — compared with the great multitude
who take a broader and easier road. Bat the assumption
is unwarranted that these passages refer to everlasting
punishment.
DR. EZRA abbot's VIEW.
In a note on one of the most frequently quoted of
these passages, that of Matt. xxii. 14, " Many are called
but few chosen," Prof. Ezra Abbot, of the Cambridge
Divinity School, after quoting, as an instance of intelli-
gent Orthodox interpretation. Prof. Bernhard Weiss's
exposition of this jjassage,^ says : —
*' I would only add that, in this parable and elsewhere, Jesus
is not considering the question of 'probation after death,' —
whether those who depart from this life without having become
his followers, or even in a state of hostility to his religion, may
or may not, in the ages to come, be brought into a better
spiritual condition ; still less is he teaching any doctrine about
election and reprobation in the Calvinistic sense, and the num-
ber of the finally saved. The present parable describes his
rejection by the great body of the Jews ; and also teaches that
of those (Jews or Gentiles) who might profess to be his followers
many would not be truly such, and therefore could not share the
blessings which belonged to his kingdom. When persecution
should test the faith of his disciples, many would fall away;
nay, ' the love of the many,* of the great majority, ' would
become cold ' (Matt. xxiv. 10, 12). Many would seek to enter
the kingdom, or to partake of the great Messianic banquet, but
would not be able (Luke xiii. 24), from non-fulfilment of the
essential conditions, which were very different from what they
were conceived to be by the great body of the Jews.
" In Matt. vii. 13, 14, Jesus teaches that the path that leads
to life is strait and narrow; i.e., that true religion requires great
self-denial and self-sacrifice, such as the vast majority of men
1 Weiss, Das Matthdusevangelium und seine Lucas-Parallelen erJclart
("The Gospel of Matthew and its Parallels in Luke Explained"),
Halle, 1875, p. 472. Compare his " Biblical Theology," § 30, d, vol. i.
p. 137, English translation.
24 , THE DOOM OF THE
shrink from, so that those who walk in this narrow path are
comparatively few. Everybody knows that this was the state
of the Jewish and the heathen world when Jesus uttered these
words, and that it is to a very large extent the state of the world
now. The questions whether, or how, or when, those who are
in the road to destruction can turn round and change their
course, are not here considered. To assume that Christ's
language teaches that the spiritual state in which a man leaves
this world is irreversible, and that the great majority of men,
or all men, may not ultimately become his followers, is to thrust
into the passage what is not there.
" The prevalent false view of this and many other passages
is due in part to that misinterpretation of the language of Jesus
wliich* applies such terms as life, eternal life, salvation, the
kingdom of heaven, etc., on the one hand, and death, destruc-
tion, hell, damnation (or condemnation), on the other, mainly
to the rewards and punishments of another world, and con-
ceives of these as more or less arbitrary, and not, essentially,
the natural and necessary results of the observance or vio-
lation of spiritual laws. It is not recognized that these
terms in their essential meaning, as used by Jesus, describe not
external conditions, but states of the soul; that ' he who listens
to the word of Jesus and believes in Him that sent him hath
eternal life; and cometh not into condemnation, but hath passed
out of death into life.' The pictorial, dramatic, parabolic
language in which Jesus enforces the fact of retribution, and
illustrates the conditions of admission into his kingdom, is taken
in a gross sense, utterly foreign from the spirit of his religion."
(Christian Register, Boston, Feb. 22, 1883.)
But whatever view may be taken of the Scripture
teachings on this point, humanity is rapidly reaching a
point of development when it will refuse to receive as
authoritative any doctrine which affronts the affections,
outrages the moral sense, and blasphemes the name of the
Most High.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND, 25
II.
The Damnation of the Majority taught by
Evangelical Creeds.
It is claimed by some that the only fair way in an
examination of this kind is not to take individual inter-
pretations of Scripture, or individual utterances on the
point at issue, but to appeal to the Evangelical Creeds.
Thus Rev. Dr. Withrow, of Boston, in the discussion
which has given rise to this book, said : " Evangelical
creeds are the constitutional beliefs of Christendom.
These great standards of Orthodox belief contain the
body of Evangelical Faith, founded on the Word of God.
It would be in order for any one to adduce from the
Westminster Confession of Faith, from the Thirty-nine
Articles, or the Saybrook or the Andover Creed, a dis-
proof of my statement, that 'no evangelical creed in
Christendom teaches that the vast majority of the human
race are to be the victims of endless woe.' . . . Ortho-
doxy does not hold itself responsible for all the views
of its several adherents. Its beliefs are to he judged
by its standards^ {Christian Register, Jan. 4, 1883,
p. 5.)
The position assumed by Dr. Withrow is perfectly logi-
cal. It is consistent and honorable. Denominations that
have standards to which they appeal should be judged by
them. Let us see, then, what the great evangelical
standards teach concerning this doctrine. We will not
pause here to ask the question how far individuals who
still profess these creeds have secretly or openly repu-
diated them. We are told that we must not judge
evangelical bodies by individual opinions. The appeal
has been made to the standards; to the standards let
us go.
V
26 THE DOOM OF THE
We readily grant that the oldest creed known to
Christendom, the Apostles' Creed, does not contain the
doctrine ; but it is unmistakably taught in the mediaeval
creeds of the Church, and most conspicuously in the creeds
of that branch of the Christian Church to which Dr.
Withrow belongs, — Calvinistic Orthodoxy. As our argu-
ment concerns only the Protestant belief on this subject,
we omit reference to the Roman Catholic creeds, and,
beginning with the Protestant Reformation, confine our-
selves to those creeds which are still the authoritative
standards of a large portion of the Evangelical Church.
We do not say that the doctrine of the doom of the
majority is stated in so many words, but we contend that
a creed is responsible, not merely for its definitions, but
for the inevitable conclusions which must be drawn from
them. We shall show, therefore, that the principal creeds
teach :
1. The doctrine of the eternal damnation of the ma-
jority of infants of the race.
2. The doctrine of the eternal damnation of the great
body of the heathen world, constituting the vast majority
of the adult portion of mankind.
1, Infant Damnation in the Creeds,
1. The doctrine of the damnation of the majority of
infants is taught in creeds which make salvation depend-
ent on baptism.
This was the doctrine of Augustine. It is the doctrine
of the Roman Catholic Church to-day. It is also taught in
THE AUGSBURG COI^FESSTON.
That Confession, adopted in 1530, says : —
" Art. IX. Of Baptism they teach that it is necessary to salva-
tion. . . . They condemn the Anabaptists, who allow not the
baptism of children, and affirm that children are saved without
baptism.''^
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 27
Luther, in an Exposition of Psalm xxix., in extending
comfort to Christian mothers, based on the invitation of
Jesus, says : —
*' We say that children are conceived and born in sin, and
'cannot be saved without Christ, to whom we bring them in
baptism . . . for without Christ is there no salvation. There-
fore Turkish and Jewish children are not saved, since they are
not brought to Christ."
Melanchthon, who wrote the Augsburg Confession, also
held the same views : —
' ' The promise of grace pertains to children who are within the
Church. It is certain that out of the Church, — that is, among
those upon whom the name of God is not invoked through
baptism, and who are without the Gospel, — there is no remission
of sins and participation in eternal life." (Melanchthonis Oper.,
part. 1. de baptism, infantum, fol. 237 seq)
He classes them with blasphemous Jews, Mahometans,
and the enemies of Christ.
Again he says : —
"It is not to be asserted that salvation pertains to infants
outside of the Church, as without any evidence the Anabaptists
furiously contend."
And again : —
" This hypothesis is to be held, that infants who are within
the Church, upon whom the name of Christ has been invoked,
are received into grace; not Turks nor Jews."
Zerneke,^ the author of a curious book on the " State
of Infants of Heathen Parents, who die in Infancy," after
quoting these passages from Melanchthon, says : —
1 Dissertatio Tkeologica de Statu Infantium a Gentilihus progenitorum,
cum in Infantia decedunt. Jena, 1733. Third edition, — in the library
of Dr. Ezra Abbot, Cambridge, Mass. We find on the titlepage tlie
names of Dr. Joannes Fecht as presses, and Jacobus Henricus Zerneke
as respondent ; but it appears from p. 96 that Zerneke is the substantial
author, though he was assisted by Fecht, Professor of Theology and
Superintendent at Rostock.
28 THE DOOM OF THE
" From these it is easily apparent in what way the words of
the Apology of the Augsburg Confession are to be understood,
since any one is the best interpreter of his own words."
The Augsburg Confession has always been, and still is,
the authoritative standard of the Lutheran Church. In
the discussion on " The Revision of Creeds" in the North
American Review for February, 1883, Rev. Dr. G. F.
Krotel, speaking for the Lutheran Church in America, says:
"All parts of the Lutheran Church in this country profess
to receive the fundamental creed of Lutheranism, the
Augsburg Confession ex animoy He tells us that " the
Lutheran Church, instead of going away from her stand-
ards, is really coming back to them."
Rev. Dr. C. P. Krauth, the most prominent advocate of
Lutheranism in this country, in his principal work, " The
Conservative Reformation," argues that Baptism " as the
ordinary channel of Regeneration, places infant salvation
on the securest ground." In his " Review of Dr. Hodge's
Systematic Theology," p. 22, Dr. Krauth relieves us some-
what by saying: "As Lutherans we have a clear faith
resting on a specific covenant in the case of a baptized
child, and a well-grounded hope resting on an all-embrac-
ing mercy in the case of an unbaptized child." But this
is the individual view of Dr. Krauth ; it is not the teaching
of the Lutheran Standards ; nor, as we have seen, was it
the view of Luther and Melanchthon, the authors of that
Confession. There is abundant evidence that Lutheran
ministers and laity still cling to the necessity of water-
baptism for infant salvation, and, like Roman Catholics,
would not dare to let their children die without it.^
Dr. Philip Schaff, of Union Theological Seminary in
New York, says : —
1 See a little book, " Behind the Scenes," by F. M, Jams, Cincin-
nati, Ohio, — G. W. Lasher, 1883, — in which confessions are given of
various ministers who have baptized infants to assure parents of their
salvation. (Chaps, ii. and ix.)
MAJORITY OP MANKIND. 29
*' All Orthodox systems which hold to the necessity of water-
baptism for salvation, lead to the horrible conclusion that all
unbaptized infants dying in infancy, as well as all the heathen, —
that is, by far the greatest part of the hmnan race, past and
present, — are lost forever." (^The Harmony of the Reformed
Confessions^ p. 50.)
The Church of England, in her baptismal formula, clearly
teaches the doctrine of baptismal regeneration ; but though
maintaining that baptized infants are saved, she does not
say that unbaptized infants are lost.
2. The doctrine of the damnation of infants taught
in Calvinistic Creeds.
In his review of Dr. Hodge's " Systematic Theology,"
that eminent Lutheran scholar and divine, Dr. C. P.
Krauth, lately deceased, has presented an overwhelming
amount of testimony concerning " Infant Baptism and
Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System." Calvinistic
Creeds and Calvinistic Fathers have been placed on the
witness-stand. We have not space to give a tithe of
the evidence so thoroughly presented ; but, after rending
it, we cannot escape his conclusion, that " Calvin's theory
involves the certain damnation of the majority of the
infants of the race, and does not claim that there is
distinct evidence, even in the most hopeful case, that
any particular child is saved." (p. 58.)
Dr. Philip Schaff, himself a Presbyterian, makes this
candid admission : —
*' The scholastic Calvinists of the seventeenth century
mounted the Alpine heights of eternal decrees with intrepid
courage, and revelled in the reverential contemplation of the
sovereign majesty of God, which seemed to require the damna-
tion of the great mass of sinners, including untold millions of
heathen and infants, for the manifestation of his terrible justice.
Inside the circle of the elect all was bright and delightful in thei
sunshine of infinite mercy, but outside all was darker than
midnight. ' ' ( The Harmony of the Reformed Confessions, p. 47.)
30 THE DOOM OF THE
THE SYNOD OF DORT.
At the Synod of Dort, 1619-1622, this question of
infant damnation came up. The position of Calvinism is
unmistakable, that only elect infants are saved. Against
this view the Arminians protested; and their "Apology"
shows the doctrine against which Episcopius and others
remonstrated : —
" Why shall it be thought absurd or wicked to say that God
not only wills of his good pleasure to destroy, but also to devote
to the inner torments of hell, the larger part of the human race,
many myriads of infants torn from their mothers' breasts? for
these are the horrid inferences which the school of Calvin rears
on those foundations, which consequently the Remonstrants look
upon with their whole soul full of aversion and abhorrence."
{Krauth, p. 63.)
The Arminians say again : —
" We especially desire to know from this venerable Synod,
whether it acknowledges as its own doctrine, and the doctrine of
the Church, particularly what is asserted . . . concerning the
creation of the larger part of mankind for destruction, the repro-
bation of infants, even though born of believing parents.'*
(Acta Synod., 121; Krauth, p. 58.)
The Swiss Theologians at Dort say: —
" That there is an election and reprobation of infants no less than
of adults, we cannot deny in the face of God who loves and
hates unborn children.^' (Acta Synod. Judic. 40. See Krauth,
p. 15.)
From the Zurich Consensus between Calvin and the
Zurich ministers : —
" We zealously teach that God does not promiscuously exer-
cise His power on all who receive the Sacraments, but only on
the elect. He enlightens unto faith none but those whom He
has foreordained unto life. ^' (Niemeyer, Collect. Conf. 195.)
From the above it is evident that, according to Cal-
vinism, non-elect infants cannot be saved by baptism.
MAJORITY OP MANKIND. 31
Molinseus, 1568-1658, " one of the greatest divines of
the French Calvinistic Church," defended the decrees of
the Synod of Dort : —
" If one were to crush an ant with his foot, no one could
charge him with injustice, — though the ant never offended him,
though he did not give life to the ant, though the ant belonged
to another and no restitution could be made. . . . The offspring
of the pious and faithful are born with the infection of original
sin. ... As the eggs of the asp are deservedly crushed, and
serpents just born are deservedly killed, though they have not
yet poisoned any one with their bite, so infants are justly
obnoxious to penalties." (Krauth, p. 66.)
Again, Molinaeus says : —
" We dare not promise salvation to any [infant] remaining
outside Christ's covenant." {Krauth, p. 18.)
The Bremen Theologians at Dort say : —
"Believers' infants alone, who die before they reach the age
in which they can receive instruction, do we suppose to be loved
of God, and saved of His . . . good pleasure." {Acta Synod., 63.)
Marckius (quoted by Krauth) says : —
*' Nor is it to be doubted that among these reprobated are to
be referred the infants of unbelievers. . . . God has revealed
nothing as decreed or to be done for their salvation, and they
are destitute of the ordinai'y means of grace. So that we ought
utterly to reject, not only their salvation, of which Pelagians
dream, but also the Remonstrant [Arminian] theory that their
penalty is one of privation, without sensation. The terminus to
which these are predestined is eternal death, destruction,
damnation.^' {Krauth, p. 35.)
THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION.
The Westminster Confession and Catechisms, says Dr.
Philip Schaff, in his " Harmony of the Reformed Confes-
sions" (p. 11), "present the ablest, the clearest, and the
fullest statement of the Calvinistic system of doctrine. . . .
They have been adopted not only by Presbyterians, but
also, with some modifications, on church polity and the
32 THE DOOM OF THE
doctrine of baptism, and with a reservation of greater
freedom, by the Orthodox CongregationaHsts and the
Kegular, or Calvinistic Baptists in Great Britain and
America."
This Confession of Faith also assumes the damnation of
unelect infants.
" 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.
" 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. " (^Westminster Confession, Chap. X. in., iv.)
The inevitable conclusion from this language is that
while elect infants are saved, unelect infantg are certainly
lost. Modern Calvinists, repudiating the doctrine of in-
fant damnation, would like to put a new meaning into
these words ; they would have us believe that all dying in
infancy are elect. But such is not the language, and such
is not the natural meaning, of the Westminster Confes-
sion. If the writers of it believed that all infants were
saved, why did they limit the word infants by that word
elect'^ In that Confession we are told again that '''■every
sin, both original and actual, . . . doth in its own na-
ture bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound
over to the wrath of God and curse of the law, and so
made subject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, tem-
poral, and eternal.^'* ( Westminster Confession, VI. vi.)
Thus original sin is exposed to the same penalty as
actual sin, and nothing in the Westminster Confession
relieves any infants but elect ones from this fate. There
is not a line in that Confession that teaches that infants
are saved as a class. As Dr. Krauth says, their salvation
depends upon " an absolute personal election."
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 33
This view of the Westminster Confession is confirmed
by a vast array of testimony from the Calvinistic writers
of the time, which we could readily present, if it seemed
necessary ; but perhaps one quotation will be sufficient to
show how the Westminster Confession was understood by
the men that made it. Dr. William Twisse was the Pro-
locutor of the Westminster Assembly of divines. He
was one of the most prominent Calvinists of his day. In
his greatest work, "The Vindication of the Grace, Power,
and Providence of God," he says : —
" Many infants depart from this life in original sin, and con-
sequently are condemned to eternal death on account of original
sin alone: therefore, from the sole transgression of Adam, con-
demnation to eternal death has followed upon many in/ants.'^
( Vindicice, i. 48.)
This view of Twisse was very extensively held among
Calvinists, not only in England, but in this country. We
have a rough poetic monument of its prevalence in this
country in " The Day of Doom," by Rev. Michael Wig-
gles worth, A. M., " teacher of the Church at Maiden, in
New England, 1662." This is " a poetical description of
the great and last Judgment." Among the great number
of those who appear before the judgment-seat are the
reprobate infants, who piteously plead for mercy : —
" Then to the Bar all they drew near
Who died in infancy,
And never had or good or bad
effected pers'nally;
But from the womb unto the tomb
were straightway carried,
(Or at the least ere they transgress'd)
Who thus began to plead:
*' * If for our own transgressi-on
or disobedience,
We here did stand at thy left hand,
just were the Recompense;
3
34 THE DOOM OF THE
But Adam's guilt our souls hath spilt,
his fault is charg'd upon us;
And that alone hath overthrown
and utterly undone us.
* Not we, but he ate of the Tree,
whose fruit was interdicted ;
Yet on us all of his sad Fall
the punishment 's inflicted.
How could we sin that had not been,
or how is his sin our,
Without consent, which to prevent
we never had the pow'r?
' ' O great Creator why was our Nature
depraved and forlorn ?
Why so defil'd, and made so vil'd,
whilst we were yet unborn?
If it be just, and needs we must
transgressors reckon'd be.
Thy Mercy, Lord, to us afford,
which sinners hath set free.
' Behold we see Adam set free,
and sav'd from his trespass,
W^hose sinful Fall hath split [spilt ?] us all,
and brought us to this pass.
Canst thou deny us once to try,
or Grace to us to tender,
When he finds grace before thy facej
who was the chief offender? '
Then answered the Judge most dread :
' God doth such doom forbid, .
That men should die eternally
for what they never did.
But what you call old Adam's Fall,
and only his Trespass,
You call amiss to call it his;
both his and yours it was.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 35
" * He was design 'd of all Mankind
to be a public Head ;
A common Root, whence all should shoot,
and stood in all their stead.
He stood and fell, did ill or well,
not for himself alone,
But for you all, who now his Fall
and trespass would disown.
** * If he had stood, then all his brood
had been established
In God's true love never to move,
nor once awry to tread ;
Then all his Race my Father's Grace
should have enjoy'd for ever,
And wicked Sprites by subtile sleights
could them have harmed never.
*' ' Would you have griev'd to have receiv'd
through Adam so much good ;
As had been your for evermore,
if he at first had stood ?
Would you have said, " We ne'er obey'd
nor did thy laws regard ;
It ill befits with benefits,
us, Lord, to so reward ?"
" * Since then to share in his welfare,
you could have been content.
You may with reason share in his treason,
and in the punishment.
Hence you were born in state forlorn,
with Natures so depraved ;
Death was your due because that you
had thus yourselves behaved.
" * You think " If we had been as he
whom God did so betrust.
We to our cost would ne'er have lost
all for a paltry lust
'TlS)IVEB.-ITY)i
36 THE DOOM OF THE
Had you been made in Adam's stead,
you would like things have wrought,
And so into the self-same woe,
yourselves and yours have brought.
^ ** * I may deny you once to try,
or Grace to you to tender,
Though he finds Grace before my face
who was the chief offender ;
Else should my Grace cease to be Grace,
for it would not be free,
If to release whom I should please
1 have no liberty.
((
' If upon one what 's due to none
I frankly shall bestow ,
And on the rest shall not think best
compassion's skirt to throw,
Whom injure I? will you envy
and grudge at others' weal ?
Or me accuse, who do refuse
yourselves to help and heal ?
" ' Am I alone of what 's my own,
no Master or no Lord ?
And if I am, how can you claim
what I to some afford ?
Will you demand Grace at my hand,
and challenge what is mine ?
Will you teach me whom to set free,
and thus my Grace confine ?
** ' You sinners are, and such a share
as sinners, may expect ;
Such you shall have, for I do save
none but mine own Elect.
Yet to compare your sin with their
who liv'd a longer time,
I do confess yours is much less,
though every sin 's a crime.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 37
*' ' A crime it is, therefore in bliss
you may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
the easiest room in Hell.'' "
Wiggles worth's views were thus in entire harmony with
the Westminster Confession and with those of Twisse, its
prolocutor, Calvin, and others whom we have quoted.
The popularity of his poem was very great. " The lirst
edition," says John Ward Dean,^ " consisting of eighteen
hundred copies, was sold, with some profit to the author,
within a year ; " which, considering the population and
wealth of New England at that time, shows almost as
remarkable a popularity as that of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Professor Tyler, in his "History of American Litera-
ture," says : ^ " This great poem, which, with entire uncon-
sciousness, attributes to the Divine Being a character the
most execrable and loathsome to be met with, perhaps, in
any literature, Christian or Pagan, had for a hundred
years a popularity far exceeding that of any other work,
in prose or verse, produced in America before the Revo-
lution. . . . No narrative of our intellectual history dur-
ing the colonial days can justly fail to record the enormous
influence of this terrible poem during all those times.
Not only was it largely circulated in the form of a book,
but it was hawked about the country in broadsides as a
popular ballad. ... Its pages were assigned in course to
little children to be learned by heart along wdth the cate-
chism ; as late as the present century, there were in New
England many aged persons who were able to repeat the
whole poem ; for more than a hundred years after its first
publication it was, beyond question, the one supreme poem
of Puritan New England."
1 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, for April,
1863.
2 History of American Literature,*vol. ii. p. 34.
38 THE DOOM OF THE
" His work," says Francis Jenks,^ " fairly represents the
prevailing theology of New England at the time it was
written, and which Mather thought might * perhaps find
our children till the Day itself arrives.' " Happily that
day has not arrived, and the children of Mather have
disowned so much of the doctrine as relates to the dam-:
nation of infants.
The Cumberland Presbyterian Church of the United
States, which was organized in 1810, adopted in 1813 a
semi-Arrainian revision of the Westminster Confession.
Instead of saying, "Elect infants dying in infancy are
regenerated and saved," they changed the language to
all infants. The great body of the Presbyterian Church
in America, however, though they have individually given
up the belief in infant damnation, still allow this frightful
doctrine to disfigure their standards. Yet Dr. Withrow
tells us that Orthodoxy must be judged " by its standards."
No modern Presbyterian clergyman that we know of
teaches the doctrine of infant damnation, but every Pres-
byterian minister is obliged to subscribe to a Confession
which teaches it. If our Calvinistic brethren deny the
doctrine of infant damnation, let them blot it out of their
standards. Either their standards are condemned by their
present beliefs or their present belief is condemned by
their standards,
2. The Damnation of Heathen in the Creeds,
Not only is the damnation of unelect infants and unbap-
tized infants taught in the creeds, but the damnation of the
unconverted heathen, the vast majority of the adult por-
tion of mankind, is taught with even more emphasis and
uniformity.
THE SAXON VISITATION ARTICLES.
In the Saxon Articles of Visitation, prepared by the
Lutherans in 1592 against the Calvinists, the Calvinists
1 Christian Examiner, November, 1828.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 39
were charged with holding, among others, the following
errors : —
" That God created the greater part of mankind for eterrval dam-
nation, and wills not that the greater part should be converted
and live." (Art. iv. On Predestination, 2.)
The Calvinists denied that they taught that God created
the greater part of mankind for eternal damnation, but
did not deny that such was their destiny, nor did the
Lutherans, generally.
THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES.
In the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England,
both in the English Edition of 1571 and the American
Revision of 1801, we find salvation thus conditioned : —
" Art. XVIII. They also are to be accursed that presume
to say that every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which
he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to
that Law and the light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set
out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must
be saved."
This article is liberally interpreted by the Church of
England to-day, although it undoubtedly had its origin in
the same narrow view of salvation which is apparent in
the extracts from the creeds that follow. Bishop Burnet,
in his celebrated Exposition of the Articles, 1699, strug-
gles with the difiiculties and mysteries of this article as it
concerns the heathen, and shows a charity of heart and
breadth of mind which might be commended to many in
our own day : —
*' As for them whom God has left in Darkness, they are cer-
tainly out of the Covenant, out of those Promises and Declarations
that are made in it. So that they have no Federal Right to be
saved, neither can we affirm that they shall be saved : But on
the other hand, they are not under those positive denunciations,
because they were never made to them : Therefore since God has
not declared that they shall be damned, no more ought we to
take upon us to damn them.
40 THE DOOM OP THE
" Instead of stretching the Severity of Justice by an Inference,
we may rather venture to stretch the Mercy of God, since that
is the Attribute which of all others is the most Magnificently
spoken of in the Scriptures: So that we ought to think of it in
the largest and most comprehensive manner. But indeed the
most proper way is, for us to stop where the Revelation of God
stops: And not to be wise beyond what is written ; but to leave
the secrets of God as Mysteries, too far above us to Examine, or
to sound their depth." (Exposition of the Thirty- Nine Articles.
4th ed., p. 169.)
THE SCOTCH CONFESSION OF FAITH.
The Scotch Confession of Faith adopted in 1560 is
very explicit in excluding the heathen : —
" We utterly abhorre the blasphemie of them that affirme,
that men quhilk live according to equitie and justice sal be saved,
quhat Religioun that ever they have professed. For as without
Christ Jesus there is nouther life nor salvation ; so sal there nane
' be participant hereof, bot sik as the Father hes given unto his
Sonne Christ Jesus, and they that in time cum unto him,
avowe his doctrine, and beleeve into him, we comprehend the
children with the faithfull parentes." (Art. xvi.)
THE IRISH ARTICLES OF RELIGION (1615).
"Art. XXXI. They are to be condemned that presume to
say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he
professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according
to that law and the light of nature. For holy Scripture doth
set out unto us only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men
must be saved.
*' Art. XXXII. None can come unto Christ unless it be
given unto him, and unless the Father draw him. And all men
are not so drawn by the Father that they may come unto the
Son. Neither is there such a sufficient measure of grace vouch-
safed unto every man, whereby he is enabled to come unto
everlasting life."
THE LAMBETH ARTICLES.
This limitation in the Irish Articles was a reiteration
of the same doctrine seen in the Lambeth Articles, a
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 41
Calvinistic appendix to the Thirty-Nine Articles, com-
posed in 1595: —
"I. God from eternity hath predestinated certain men unto
life ; certain men he hath reprobated."
" III. There is predetermined a certain number of the pre-
destinate which can neither be augmented nor diminished.
" IV. Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall be
necessarily damned for their sins."
" VII. Saving grace is not given, is not granted, is not com-
municated to all men, by which they may be saved if they
will.
*' VIII. No man can come unto Christ unless it shall be given
unto him, and unless the Father shall draw him; and all men
are not drawn by the Father, that they may come to the Son.
"IX. It is not in the will or power of every one to be
saved."
THE CANONS OF DORT.
The Canons of the Synod of Dort were adopted- in
1618 and 1619. They are very strong in their definitions
of election, and in their denial of salvation through the
light of nature. These Canons are still in force in the
Reformed (Dutch) Church in America, and the text from
which we quote is taken from the " Constitution of the
Reformed Church in America," published in New York
(Schaff, Creeds^ <jbc., vol. iii. p. 581) : —
*' First head of Doctrine, art. vii. Election is the un-
changeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of
the world, he hath, out of mere grace, according to the sovereign
good pleasure of his own will, chosen, from the whole human
race, which had fallen through their own fault from their primi-
tive state of rectitude into sin and destruction, a certain number
of persons to redemption in Christ."
" Art. x. ... He was pleased, out of the common mass of
sinners, to adopt some certain persons as a peculiar people to
himself. ..."
Under the third and fourth heads of doctrine it effect-
ually excludes the heathen : —
42 THE DOOM OF THE
'* Art. IV. There remain, however, in man since the fall,
the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some
knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the difference
between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue,
good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external
deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being
sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God and to
true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright, even in
things natural and civil. Nay, farther, this light, such as it is,
man in various ways renders wholly polluted, and holds it [back]
in unrighteousness, by which he becomes inexcusable before
God."
THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION.
But we have been especially challenged to quote the
Westminster Confession in proof of the doctrine of the
doom of the majority, — and strangely enough, by one who
has signed the creed, and who professes to accept it. We
have already quoted that confession to show that, histori-
cally interpreted, it teaches infant damnation. Its belief
in the damnation of the heathen is positive, and unam-
biguous. \
" Others, not elected, although they may be called by the min-
istry of the Word, and may have some common operations of
the Spirit ; yet they never truly come unto Christ, and therefore
cannot he 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 he detested."
(^Confession, X. iv.)
In the Westminster Assembly's "Larger Catechism,"
question 60, the heathen are again condemned : —
" Q. 60. Can they who have never heard the gospel, and so
know not Jesus Christ, nor believe in him, be saved by their
living according to the light of nature ?
"^. They who, having never heard the gospel, know not
Jesus Christ, and believe not in him, cannot be saved, be they
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 43
never so diligent to frame theij- lives according to the light of
nature or the law of that religion which they profess; neither is
there salvation in any other, but in Christ alone, who is the
Saviour only of his body, the Church."
We are further told that —
" All that hear the Gospel and live in the visible Church are
not saved ; but only they who are true members of the Church
invisible. . . . The invisible Church is the whole number of the
elect." (Q. 61, 64.)
The Westminster Confession and Catechism thus teach :
(1) that only elect infants are saved ; (2) that only a part
of the visible Church is saved ; (3) that the heathen who
never heard the gospel are damned. It requires no
arithmetic to deduce from the Westminster Catechism
the doctrine of the " vast majority of the lost." On the
contrary, it requires some new and miraculous system of
arithmetic to deduce from it anything else.
The older and regular Congregational creeds agree
substantially with the Westminster Confession on doctri-
nal points.
THE SAVOY DECLARATION.
The Savoy Declaration was adopted by the Elders and
Messengers of the English Congregational Churches in
1658. It is simply the Westminster Creed corrected to
suit the Congregational polity, and excludes the heathen
from salvation : —
" This promise of Christ, and salvation by him, is revealed
only in and by the Word of God ; neither do the works of crea-
tion or providence, with the light of nature, make discovery of
Christ, or of grace by him, so much as in a general or obscure
way ; much less that men, destitute of the revelation of him by
the promise or gospel, should be enabled thereby to attain
saving faith or repentance." (Chap. XX. ii.)
The Savoy Declaration adds some words to the tenth
chapter of the Westminster Confession, which bolt the
door against the heathen more effectually than ever : —
44 THE DOOM OF THE
" Others not elected, although they maybe called by the min-
istry of the Word, and may have some common operations of
the Spirit, yet not being effectually drawn by the Father, they
neither do nor can come unto 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."
AMERICAN CONGREGATIONAL CREEDS.
The " Elders and Messengers of the churches assembled
in the Synod at Cambridge, in New England," in June,
1648, declare the Westminster Confession, published the
previous year, " to be very holy, orthodox, and judicious in
all matters of faith ; and do therefore freely and fully con-
sent thereunto for the substance thereof." Finding the
Confession doctrinally sufficient, the Cambridge Synod
confined itself to an exposition of the Congregational
polity.
The Synod of New England Congregational Churches,
held at Boston in 1680, accepted and republished the
Savoy revision of the Westminster Confession ; passages
from which, excluding the heathen from salvation, we
have quoted above.
The Saybrook Platform, adopted by the Elders and
Messengers of the churches in the Colony of Connecticut,
assembled at Saybrook, September 9, 1708, recognizes and
endorses the Westminster, Boston, and Savoy confessions
as its doctrinal foundation, and thus reasserts the damna-
tion of the heathen.
THE PLYMOUTH DECLARATION.
In the doctrinal agitation which arose with the Unita-
rian controversy, about thirty-four of the oldest churches
in New England — comprising the greater part of the
churches whose elders and messengers adopted the Boston
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 45
Confession — entirely renounced the Calvinistic system,
and appealed in a larger and more generous way to New
Testament Christianity, as superior to Confessional inter-
pretations. But the Orthodox part of the Congregational
body, as late as 1865, in its Declaration of Faith adopted
at Plymouth, Mass., freely and gratefully accepted the
"dark and awful" doctrines embodied in the Boston
Confession of 1680, which was a republication of the
horrors of the Savoy and Westminster confessions quoted
above : —
*' Standing by the rock where the Pilgrims set foot upon these
shores, upon the spot where they worshipped God, and among
the graves of the early generations, we. Elders and Messengers of
the Congregational Churches of the United States in National
Council assembled, — like them acknowledging no rule of faith
but the Word of God, — do now declare our adherence to the
faith and order of the apostolic and primitive churches held by
our fathers, and substantially as embodied in the confessions
and platforms which our Synods of 1648 and 1680 set forth or
reaffirmed. We declare that the experience of the nearly two
and a half centuries which have elapsed since the memorable
day when our sires founded here a Christian Commonwealth,
with all the development of new forms of error since their
times, has only deepened our confidence in the faith and polity
of those fathers. We bless God for Ihe inheritance of these doc-
trines. We invoke the help of the Divine Redeemer that,
through the presence of the promised Comforter, he will enable
us to transmit them in purity to our children. ^^
Blessing God for the inheritance of a doctrine which
damns the vast majority of the human race to endless
woe ! Praying that the Divine Redeemer would enable
them to transmit these horrors in purity to their children !
There are many things to be profoundly grateful for in
the old Puritan heritage, but these are not a part of them.
We may forgive the men of two hundred years ago for
believing in mediasval superstitions; but what shall we
say of those who, in all the light of our own day, reaflSrm
46 THE DOOM OF THE
them? Their Elders and Messengers of 1865 might have
found a better occasion for gratitude in the joyous con-
sciousness that they were at liberty to correct the errors
of their fathers, and to give to the Evangelical conception
of Christianity a new breadth, by affirming those spiritual
truths of which the Westminster Confession is but a
ghastly parody. It is a pleasure, however, to record the
increased influence which the Liberal minority in the
Orthodox Congregational body has achieved, an influence
strong enough to render the passage of the Burial Hill
Declaration inexpedient to-day, if not impracticable.
CBEED OF THE PARK STREET CHURCH.
Assent to the old creeds, or abridgments of them,
which contain the doctrines we arraign, is still required,
however, in many of the most representative Orthodox
churches. The following are the articles which the pastor
and deacons of Park Street Church, Boston, are required
to sign : —
*' First. We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament are the Word of God, and the only perfect rule of
Christian faith and practice.
'' Second. We profess our decided attachment to that system
of the Christian religion which is distinguishingly denominated
Evangelical ; more particularly to those doctrines, which in a
proper sense, are styled the Doctrines of Grace, viz : ' That there
is one and but one living and true God, subsisting in three per-
sons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and that
these Three are the one God, the same in substance, equal in
power and glory; that God from all eternity, according to the
counsel of His own will, and for His own glory, foreordained
whatsoever comes to pass ; that God in His most holy, wise, and
powerful providence preserves and governs all His creatures
and all their actions ; that, by the Fall, all mankind lost com-
munion with God, are under His wrath and curse, and liable to
all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of
hell forever ; that God out of His mere good pleasure, from all
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 47
eternity elected some to everlasting life, entered into a covenant
of grace, to deliver them from a state of sin and misery, and
introduce them into a state of salvation by a Redeemer ; that
this Redeemer is the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of
God, who became man, and continues to be God and man in
two distinct natures and one person forever; that the effectual
calling of sinners is the work of God's Spirit; that their justifi-
cation is only for the sake of Christ's righteousness by faith.*
And though we deem no man or body of men infallible, yet we
believe that those divines that were eminently distinguished in
the time of the Reformation, possessed the spirit, and maintained
in great purity, the peculiar doctrines of our holy religion ; and
that these doctrines are in general clearly and happily expressed
in the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, and in the
Confession of Faith owned and consented unto by the Elders
and Messengers of the Churches, assembled at Boston (N. E.),
May 12th, a. d. 1680."
The creed of Park Street Church thus asserts that " all
mankind lost communion with God, are under his wrath
and curse, and liable to all the miseries of this life, to
de.'ith itself, and to the pains of hell forever." " Some^"*
we are told, " are elected to everlasting life.'* If we wish
to know how vast a majority of the human race are ex-
cluded from this elected " some," we turn to the Boston
Confession to which we have been referred by the Park
Street Creed itself, and read the implied damnation of
unelect infants, and the expressed damnation of the great
body of the heathen world : —
"III. Elect Infants dying in Infancy are Regenerated and
Saved by Christ, who worketh when and where and how he
pleaseth: So also are all other Elect Persons, who are uncapable
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 not being effectually drawn by the Father,
they neither do nor can come unto Christ, and therefore cannot
be saved; much less can these, not professing the Christian
Religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never
48 THE DOOM OF THE
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." (Chap, x.)
Whatever may be the personal opinions of the pastor
of Park Street Church, the creed which he is required to
subscribe teaches this " dark and awful doctrine," and we
have no doubt that there is still sung in Park Street
Church, to the doleful tune of " Windham," a hymn run-
ning:—
" Broad is the road that leads to death.
And thousands walk together there ;
But wisdom shows a narrow path,
With here and there a traveller."
Sixty years ago Prof. Andrews Norton, when engaged
in a controversy on the teachings of Calvinism, felt obliged
to say of some of his opponents : —
" Instead of endeavoring to maintain, they have denied the
doctrines of their own system. They have had the assurance
to assert that that was not Calvinism which for almost three cen-
turies every theologian has known and acknowledged to be
Calvinism. They have refused, when pressed hardly, and the
occasion has required it, to acknowledge the fundamental doc-
trines of their own creeds and confessions and standard writers.
They have not given them up explicitly and honestly, and said
they could not defend them, but they have, in fact, denied the
Calvinistic faith, at the very moment they have been pretending
to support it, and have been reviling those by whom it was
openly opposed." — Christian Disciple^ 1822, p. 263.
These strictures of Professor Norton are not without
their application to-day.
We have presented evidence from the principal Evan-
gelical Creeds of Christendom, w^hich we submit, honestly
and historically interpreted, clearly teach this doctrine of
the damnation of the majority. We could frame no blacker
indictment of Christianity than is presented in these docu-
ments ; and let it not be forgotten that they are still the
acknowledged standards of Evangelical Protestantism.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 49
III.
The Doctrine of the Doom of the Majority still
taught by evangelical denominations.
Having shown that this doctrine has been alleged by
Orthodoxy to be the teaching of the Scripture, and that
it is taught in its authoritativ^e standards, we purpose
now to show that it is still held, taught, and urged as a
practical motive by Evangelical denominations. Ortho-
doxy has abandoned its former belief in infant damna-
tion, though the piteous cries of damned children still
echo from the pages of its creeds. It no longer deduces
that doctrine from Scripture teaching. But it has never
surrendered the doctrine that the vast majority of man-
kind are doomed to eternal misery. The horror still
appears in its literature, is still preached in its pulpits and
taught in its Sunday-schools.
There are three legitimate ways of finding fairiy what
a denomination teaches, all of which must be employed.
First, we may appeal to its standards. There are some
who say, with Dr. Withrow, that this is the only proper
way. Secondly, we may appeal to prominent and acknowl-
edged representatives. That is, we may appeal, not only
to its standards, but to its standard hearers — to the men
that conduct its theological schools, train its ministers,
fill its representative pulpits, and create its literature.
It is necessary to compare its creeds with its current
teachings. Thirdly, we may examine its practical mis-
sionary motive as well as its theoretical teaching.
We have already appealed to the standards ; and have
found the doctrine we assail distinctly taught in them.
Let us now appeal to its modern and representative
spokesmen, and examine its practical missionary motive.
4
60 THE DOOM OF THE
DR. EMMONS'S TEACHING.
We have referred before to Dr. Emmons. In the course
of his long pastorate, he trained nearly a hundred students
for the ministry. He was interested, too, in the formation
of Andover Seminary. " Perhaps no theological instructor
in the land," says Dr. Park, " has come so near as Emmons
to spreading his pupils through an entire century." And
what did Dr. Emmons teach his pupils, as well as the
people that sat under his ministration ? A few extracts
will show : —
' ' Though there are only a few of his people who are conformed
to his image, and the great mass of mankind are opposed to his
little flock, and conspiring to destroy it, yet all that his Father
has given him shall come to him." (Vol. ii. p. 386.)
"This doctrine [of reprobation] cannot be preached too
plainly. It ought to be represented as God's eternal and
effectual purpose to destroy the non-elect. God could not repro-
bate any from eternity without intending to carry his eternal
purpose into execution." (Vol. ii. p. 401.)
" If the good of the intelligent creation in general may some-
times require God to give up the good of individuals, then it may,
for aught we know, require him to give up the good of individuals
forever. If the general good of mankind once required the
temporal destruction of Pharaoh and his hosts, who knows but
the general good of the whole intelligent creation may also require
their eternal destruction ? Therefore, allowing that God does, in
this sense, aim supremely and solely at the general good of the
intelligent creation, yet he may, nevertheless, make myriads and
myriads of individuals finally and eternally miserable." (Vol.
iii. p. 779.)
" If all are sinners in consequence of Adam's first transgres-
sion, then all have need of embracing the gospel. No other
way of salvation is provided." (Vol. ii. p. 612.)
Dr. Emmons even teaches that Arminians will be in-
cluded among the doomed majority.
"If God is to be justified in his treatment of Pharaoh and
of all the rest of the non-elect, then it is absolutely necessary to
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 51
approve of the doctrine of reprobation in order to he saved. None
can be admitted to heaven who are not prepared to join in the
employments as well as the enjoyments of the heavenly world.
And we know that one part of the business of the blessed is to
celebrate the doctrine of reprobation. They sing the Song of
Moses and the Lamb, which is an anthem of praise for the
destruction of Pharaoh and his reprobate host. How, then, can
any be meet for an inheritance among the saints in light, who
are not reconciled to the doctrine of reprobation, which is, and
which will be forever, celebrated there? " (Vol. ii. p. 402.)
According to this view, Methodists, and Arminians
among all the denominations, stand a poor chance.
Dr. Emmons also shows that character and good works
will not avail in the slightest : —
"We learn from what has been said why none of the works
of sinners will be accepted at the last day. Our Saviour, who
will be the final Judge, has absolutely declared that he will con-
demn all sinners and all their works without distinction in the
great day of account. And though they may plead that they
have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, and
done many deeds of apparent humanity and benevolence, yet he
will reject and punish them for that criminal selfishness which
was the source of all their actions. And this will be a sufficient
reason for their everlasting perdition." (Vol. ii. p. 644.)
Dr. Emmons further shows that God created men espe-
cially to damn them for his good pleasure : —
*' Now, if God be capable of great and noble designs, if he
be capable of great and noble exertions, and capable of taking
a true, real, infinite pleasure and delight in all his works, then
it is easy to conceive that he might make his own pleasure, his
own blessedness or glory, the grand and supreme object in all
his works of creation and providence, and have but an inferior
and subordinate respect to the good of the creature. Accordingly,
the Scripture represents this as his ultimate and supreme end in
the creation of the world. ' The Lord hath made all things for
himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.' " {The Pro-
cess of the General Judgment^ Works, vol. iii., p. 780.)
These are the teachings which the Congregational Pub-
lication Society republishes in 1860.
52 THE DOOM OF THE
DR. ENOCH pond's TEACHING.
Let US take another Orthodox theological school, that
at Bangor, Me., and turn to the teachings of its venerable
and respected president. Rev. Enocli Pond, D.D., who
died in January, 1882. In an article on "The Future
of the Heathen," in the Christian Remew^ Dr. Pond
writes with the terrible earnestness of one who accepts
the logical consequences of this doctrine, and whose spirit
of benevolence is stirred to the depths for the relief of
the damned.
" The conclusion, therefore, remains unshaken, notwithstand-
ing all the objections which may be urged against it, that the
end of heathenism is eternal death, and that the great body of the
adult heathen (for we believe that infants are saved the world
over) will lose their souls forever.
" And now, what a dreadful conclusion is this! Let us pause
and ponder it, and not be in haste to dismiss it from our minds.
Not less than six hundred millions of the present inhabitants of
our globe are heathens. Three fourths of this number are adult
heathens. Each one of these is an immortal creature, destined
to outlive the stars, destined to exist forever.
"Now they have a season of probation; but this is rapidly
and, in respect to successive multitudes of them, constantly
coming to a close. A mighty stream is ever pouring them over
the boundaries of time ; and, when once they have passed these
boundaries, where do they fall ? Alas! we have seen where!
They fall to rise no more. They sink in darkness, misery, and
despair. They go to be treated not hardly or cruelly, but justly ;
go to Him by whom " actions are weighed; " go to be punished
as their sins deserve, forever. Now these are not fictions, but
facts, — facts fully established by the Scriptures, and proved
incontestably in the preceding remarks. And are they not stun-
ning, overwhelming facts, — sufficient, and more than sufficient,
to rouse up every Christian's heart?
" Here is a broad current rushing downward from the heathen
world into that lake which burneth with unquenchable fire, on
which hundreds of millions of immortal beings are descending,
and by which thousands upon thousands are every day destroyed ;
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 53
»
and shall we sit down and contemplate such a scene, shall we be
able to speak and write about it unmoved ? Or shall not each
one rather exclaim, in accents prompted by Christian love: —
* My God, I feel the mournful scene !
My spirits yearn o'er dying men !
And fain my pity would reclaim,
And snatch the firebrands from the flame.' **
(^Christian Review^ vol. xxii. 1857, p. 41.)
There is also an Orthodox theological seminary at New
York, and Dr. W. G. T. Shedd is one of its eminent pro-
fessors. In a sermon delivered before the Presbyterian
Board of Foreign Missions, May 3, 1863, entitled "The
Guilt of the Pagan," and published by the American Board
in 1864, Dr. Shedd says : —
" Unless the guilt of the pagan world can be proved, the mis-
sionary enterprises of the Christian church, from the days of
the Apostles to the present time, have all been a waste of labor."
(p. 1.)
** It follows inevitably from these positions of St. Paul con-
cerning the guilt of the pagan, that nothing hut revealed religion
can save him from an eternity of sin and icoe.'* (p. 21.)
" Our Lord and Saviour knew infallibly how many millions
upon millions of the race for whom he proposed to pour out his
life-blood would reject him. He knew long beforehand how
many millions upon millions of this miserable and infatuated race
would resist and ultimately quench the only Spirit that could
renovate and save them." (p. 23.)
"It is this dark and awful fact," says Dr. Shedd in
closing his sermon, — dark and awful it truly seems, —
"that the Church of Christ is continually to keep in mind."
(p. 22.) The Prudential Committee of the American
Board were so impressed with the force of this argument
that they directed a copy of the sermon to be sent to the
pastors of the various churches which contribute to the
54 THE DOOM OF THE
treasury of the American Board. The secretary, Rev. S.
B. Treat, indorsing his position, says, " The entire heathen
world is guilty, condemned, lost^ (The Italics are his.)
This is still the position of the American Board. It bases
its appeals on this " dark and awful fact." Dr. Edwards
A. Park, at the great missionary meeting in Portland,
in October, 1882, and in a subsequent discourse, took
substantially the same position, and asserted that the mis-
sionary nerve would be cut if a probation after death
were allowed to the heathen.
REV. ALBERT BARNES, D. D.
Rev. Albert Barnes was a leading preacher and writer
in the Presbyterian Church. In the following passage
from one of his sermons the great mjijority of mankind
are excluded from all hope of heaven : —
*' The admission that the Christian religion is true is a con-
demnation of all other systems, and shuts out all who are not
interested in the plan of the gospel from all hope of heaven."
{The Way of Salvation, p. 12.)
As we shall see further on, Dr. Barnes struggled hard
with the terrible mystery of this doctrine.
REV. A. A. HODGE, D. D.
Dr. A. A. Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary,
in his Commentary on the Confession of Faith (1869),
admits without a sign of hesitancy the damnation of
the majority.
" That the diligent profession and honest practice of neither
natural religion, nor of any other religion than pure Christianity
can in the least avail to promote the salvation of the soul, is
evident from the essential principles of the gospel." {Commen-
tary on Conf., p. 241.)
" That in the case of sane adult persons a knowledge of
Christ and a voluntary acceptance of him is essential in order
to a personal interest in his salvation is proved — (1^ Paul
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 55
argues this point explicitly : If men call upon the Lord they
shall be saved; but in order to call upon him they must believe;
and in order to believe they must hear; and that they should
hear the gospel must be preached unto them. ... (2) God has
certainly revealed no purpose to save any except those who,
hearing the gospel, obey; and he requires that his people, as
custodians of the gospel, should be diligent in disseminating
it as the appointed means of saving souls. Whatever lies
beyond this circle of sanctified means is unrevealed, unpro-
mised, uncovenanted. (3) The heathen in mass, with no single
definite and unquestionable exception on record, are evidently
strangers to God, and are going down to death in an unsaved
condition. The presumed possibility of being saved without a
knowledge of Christ remains, after eighteen hundred years, a
possibility illustrated by no example." (/6., p. 242.)
How Dr. HodgSv obtained this information, he does not
tell us. It presumes a familiarity with God's judgments,
which perhaps is granted only to the elect.
PRINCETON REVIEW.
Dr. Hodge's views on this point are confirmed by an
article in the Princeton Review^ the authoritative organ
of the Seminary, published in 1860, and entitled "The
Heathen Inexcusable for their Idolatry."^
*' They who have never known of a Saviour cannot be guilty
of the sin of rejecting him. What then is the ground of their
condemnation? This question is an important one; for, if the
heathen are not under condemnation, what is the use of sending
them the gospel? If the heathen, or the greater portion of
them, are to get to heaven through their ignorance, where is the
necessity for any clearer light, which, reasoning from all past
experience, the greater majority will not receive? The question,
in fact, lies still further back, as to the necessity of any gospel
at all. If we, or any single individual man, could have been
saved without the atonement, then righteousness would have been
by that method, and Christ would not have died. The gospel,
^ In Poole's Index the writer's name is given as J. K. Wight.
56 THE DOOM OF THE
however, looks upon all as in a state of condemnation, and that
none can hope for justification and eternal life except through
the righteousness of Christ alone." {Princeton Review, 1860,
vol. xxxii. p. 427.)
" The heathen are under condemnation, and to them a dark
and hopeless one: they know of no escape. While, therefore,
their sin is far less than of those who know the remedy and re-
ject it, still their condition is one which should excite our deepest
pity and compassion. The wrath of God is abiding on them.
From the second death, and all its terrors, they know of no
escape ; but to us the only remedy for them and us has been made
known. It is not our object to dwell upon the practical conclu-
sion which the apostle draws from the fact that the heathen are
under condemnation ; but the more we recognize the fact, the
more important must we feel to be the inference from it, —
namely, that the only hope for Jew and Gentile is in justification
thi'ough faith in Christ, that his is the only name given under
heaven whereby men can be saved." (lb., p. M8.)
The damnation of the heathen has not only been held
as a theological tenet, but it has been urged as the great
practical motive for missionary effort. This is strikingly
evident in the article of Dr. Enoch Pond, already quoted.
In preparing this treatise we have examined all the
sermons which have been preached before the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions during the
last forty years, and a few delivered before that Board
was formed.
We have been impressed in these sermons with the
earnestness, zeal, piety, faith, hope, and love which they
express, and the ability with which they have been pre-
pared. The range of minor motives, minor when viewed
from the Orthodox standpoint, is considerable. The good
effect of missionary work on the churches themselves,
the improvement of the temporal condition of the hea-
then, the encouragements derived from work already done,
are from time to time presented. There are sermons which
are marked by a pessimistic tone, in which the miseries of
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 57
the heathen now and hereafter are pictured; and there
are sermons thoroughly optimistic in their belief in the
final triumph of Christianity. Indeed, it has ever been a
powerful motive in missionary appeal to paint the millen-
nial glories of an entire world converted to Jesus Christ.
Sometimes, love to Christ is presented as a constraining
motive ; sometimes, the duty of the Church to obey his
command to preach his gospel to all nations. Less fre-
quently than either of these, though often urged with
tenderness and power, are the obligations that spring from
human brotherhood. Some writers find their inspiration
in the great number of the heathen that will be saved if
the gospel is sent ; others in the vast number that will be
lost if it is not sent.
But — whatever be the minor motives which give variety,
ingenuity, and force to these yearly appeals — the under-
lying premise on which they are all built is the assumption
that the heathen form part of a lost and ruined world, and
that nothing but a personal acceptance of the gospel of
Jesus Christ can save them from eternal misery. This is
the key-note of the earliest and latest of these discourses.
It is the corner-stone of the missionary power. A few
extracts from some of these sermons, and other missionary
literature, will show the tenacity with which this doctrine
is held, and how vital it has been deemed to the whole
system.
REV. GORDON HALL.
Rev. Gordon Hall, a missionary, in a sermon preached
in 1812, in Philadelphia, said : —
" While the whole number of souls now upon the globe
amounts to no less than eight hundred millions, there are by
computation five hundred millions who have never heard of
the name of Jesus, who know not that a Savior has bled for
sinners, and are rushing through pagan darkness by millions down
to hopeless death.^^ (p. 4.)
58 THE DOOM OF THE
*'The poor pagans have not a ray of gospel light to guide
them to the world of glory. They are by millions perishing for
lack of those precious privileges which so many in this country
are abusing to their own damnation." (p. 15.)
REV. MYRON WINSLOW.
At a meeting held at the Old South Church, Boston,
June 7, 1819, on the evening previous to the sailing of
several missionaries to Ceylon, Rev. Myron Winslow
said : —
" It cannot be denied that the general representation of the
Bible concerning the heathen world is that they are going down
to perdition. If, still, the thought of such vast multitudes sink-
ing into hell, without any knowledge of the only name given
under heaven by which they can be saved, seems inconsistent
with the goodness of God, we are to remember that they, with
all our fallen race, deserve eternal misery; that the provisions of
the gospel are wholly gratuitous, God being under no obligation
to communicate them to any; and, if not to any, certainly not
to all ; that he has a right to choose whom he will to salvation ;
and, if he leaves whole nations to perish, it is right. ... It is
true, the heathen are to be judged according to the light they
have: they cannot be condemned for rejecting a salvation which
was never offered them; but they may be condemned, they will
be condemned, for putting out the light of nature." (p. 12.)
REV. WILLIAM HERVEY.
Rev. William Hervey, missionary to India, 1829, said : —
"Brethren, have the terms of admission to heaven been
altered since they were laid down by the Saviour ? Have the
requisitions of the gospel been softened since the days of the
apostles ? I know that many professors feel and act as though
this was the case. But heaven and earth shall pass away before
one human sinner shall be admitted to glory on altered terms . ' '
MISS MARY LYON.
Miss Mary Lyon, the founder of South Hadley Seminary,
pleaded warmly, in her "Missionary Offering" (1843), for
the lost heathen : —
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 69
*' The price of their redemption has been paid. The Holy-
Spirit has been given. But one thing more of all the counsels
of heaven is wanting to secure their salvation, to make sure of
their eternal safety. This one thing is the voluntary instrumen-
tality of man. For the want of this, millions and millions during
the last eighteen centuries have gone down to everlasting
death." (p. 30.)
EEV. THOMAS H. SKINNER, D. D.
Rev. Thomas H. Skinner, D.D., of New York, preached
the sermon in 1843, and lays down what he considers
some essential facts on this point : —
" In the Christian scheme, the following facts are essential :
that mankind are in a state of sin, and dying in this state are
utterly lost ; that their recovery can be effected onli/ by their being
Christianized or brought under the power of the gospel ; that the
gospel can do nothing where it has not been propagated or is
unknown." (p. 7.)
In another passage of the same sermon. Dr. Skinner
shows how negligent the Church has been in evangelizing
the world, and to give effect to his reproach adds an in-
teresting calculation : —
" Never, since the primitive era, has she [the Church] given
indication that she felt herself under the sanction of any author-
ity to evangelize the nations of the earth, while by twenty millions
a year, during eighteen centuries, they have been passing to their
eternal destiny, strangers to the influence of God's recovering
grace." (p. 11.)
REV. MARK HOPKINS, D. D.
Rev. Dr. Hopkins, in his sermon in 1845, considered
humanitarian and civilizing influences alone as insufficient
to meet the need of the heathen, and said : —
" The burden which rests upon us is not simply a proclamation
of the gospel amonj; the heathen, but such a proclamation of it
as shall save the soul. If we fail of this, we fail of our object
altogether." (p. 19.)
60 THE DOOM OF THE •
REV. FRANCIS BOWMAN.
In a missionary sermon by Rev. Francis Bowman
(Presbyterian), preached in 1846, we read: —
" There is not in all truth anything so important to be known
by the whole world as the fact that ' Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners.' Impart all other truth, yet, if this be
withheld, the teeming millions of the earth^s population will perish.^*
(p. 7.)
REV. RUFUS ANDERSON, D.D.
Rev. Dr. Rufus Anderson, senior secretary of the Amer-
ican Board, said in 1851: —
*' Nothing is more truly binding upon us than the obligation
to impart the gospel to those whom we can reach, and who will
perish if they do not receive it. That, surely, is the most destruc-
tive immorality which withholds from immortal man the only
gospel of salvation. The most pernicious infidelity is surely
that which cares not for a world perishing in sin." (p. 21.)
REV. GEORGE W. BETHUNE, D.D.
Rev. Dr. George W. Bethune, of the Dutch Reformed
Church, urged, in 1856, the Calvinistic theology as the
very basis for all missionary work as against all more
liberal methods. Dr. Bethune argued that the glory
belonged to Christ : —
"Even if it were possible (a monstrous supposition) to make
men repent by any method of our own device, we should not dare
to use it ; for then we should take the praise from him, and break
our loyalty. . . . The world is to be saved, but through the con-
version of individual sinners. We may preach to the multitude,
but only he who by the grace of God believes the word will be
blessed." (p. 18.)
^^ Myriads of our felloiu-sinners , in our land and other lands,
are still in these horrible depths : the gospel alone can lift them
out." (p. 38.)
REV. W. W. PATTON.
In an article entitled, " The True Theory of Missions to
the Heathen," in the Bibliotheca Sacra, for July, 1858,
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 61
Eev. W. W. Patton testifies to the prevalent evangelical
belief, though he does not hold it : —
" We come now to a second theory of missions, which may
be called the extreme evangelical theory. . . . Can a heathen be
saved who has lived and died without hearing of Jesus Christ,
or of the one living and true God ? The theory which we are
now to consider answers in the negative. It teaches that man
can in no way be pardoned without specific faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ as the Saviour of sinners ; and that all the heathen
who have not been visited by the missionaries of the cross, have
descended, generation after generation, in unbroken ranks, to
perdition, their case having been through life as hopeless as that
of men seized with a fatal malady, the only cure for which is on
the other side of the globe, with no means of obtaining it.
To what extent this theory is actually held, in all its rigidity, we
are unable to say. It is the accepted theory of the Romish
Church, and of a part of the Protestant Church, perhaps of the
majority of the latter. The ordinary language of missionary
letters, addresses, sermons, and reports implies or favors this
extreme view." {Bihliotheca Sacra, vol. xv. p. 552.)
Mr. Patton might have gone further, and said that this
missionary literature not only implies or favors this ex-
treme view, but that it continually asserts it as absolutely
necessary to the missionary motive. But we have later
and additional testimony on this point.
REV. R. W. PATTERSON, D. D.
Rev. Dr. Patterson, of the Second Presbyterian Church,
Chicago, said, in 1859 : —
''Remember! All these thousands and millions who are
living and dying without the gospel are of your own blood !
Remember ! Their souls are as precious as yours ; Jesus died
for them as well as for you. Remember! They are going on
rapidly to the same great Eternity which lies before you ; and
what you do for them must be done quickly. I tell you, my
brethren, we are strong in our cause, when we can press motives
like these upon the hearts of all the multitudes who know how
to feel for the woes of perishing souls." (p. 16.)
62 THE DOOM OF THE
EEV. W. G. T. SHEDD, D. D.
The sermon of Dr. Shedd on the " Guilt of the Pagan,"
published in 1864, has already been referred to. An addi-
tional quotation is in place here : —
" Natural religion consigns the entire pagan world to eternal
perdition. ... It is precisely because the pagan world has not
obeyed the principles of natural religion, and is under a curse
and a bondage therefor, that it is in perishing need of the truths
of revealed religion. Little do those know what they are saying,
when they propose to find a salvation for the pagan in the mere
light of natural reason and conscience." (pp. 20, 21.)
EEV. E. N. KIEK, D.D.
Rev. Dr. Kirk of Boston said, in 1865 : —
" The increase of the world's population marches with gigan-
tic strides. More pagans are horn, more die in one year, than we
have converted in over fifty years.'''' (p. 19.)
This shows how few heathen are saved, compared with
the number that are lost. This calculation of Dr. Kirk
may be compared with that of Dr. Skinner.
EEV. GEOEGE H. POND.
Rev. George H. Pond, a Presbyterian clergyman and a
missionary in Minnesota, in an article in the Presbyterian
Quarterly Review., January, 1861, said: —
" The millions of those who compose the churches believe, or
profess to believe, that the teachings of the Bible are the teach-
ings of God. They profess to believe that the man is lost in sin,
that Jesus toiled and died to save him, and that nothing else can save
himexcepttheprovisionsof the gospel. [Italics are his.] . . . And
yet, notwithstanding all this profession, pagans may be counted
by tens and by hundreds of millions, who have not even heard
the name of Jesus. Hundreds of millions have not a solitary
friend to point them to the Lamb of God, to the blood of the
atonement."
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 63
PRESIDENT JAMES H. EAIRCHILD.
President Fairchild of Oberlin College, in 1877, was
very clear on this point : —
" The great masses of mankind have no such knowledge of
God as affords them any help or hope for this life or that which
is to come. . . . Enough of light is mingled with the darkness
to give the sense of duty and the consciousness of sin, — not
enough to awaken hope or move them to effort for a better life.
They belong to the kingdom of darkness, and the powers of
darkness hold them in bondage. . . . There are none who, by
special strength or courage, lift themselves above this degrada-
tion, and walk in ways of righteousness and in the light of God.
Thus in darkness and sin great masses of our fellow-men live
and die, and thus they have lived and died throughout the history
of the race. . . . Our brother of India, of China, of Africa, is
perishing within our reach and before our eyes. Can we go our
various ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise,
and not incur the final condemnation, ' Inasmuch as ye did it
not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me ' ? " (pp. 9,
17.)
REV. E. P. GOODWIN, D. D.
In no sermon delivered before the American Board has
this doctrine of the perishing condition of the heathen
received more distinct utterance than in the sermon be-
fore that body, delivered by Rev. Dr. E. P. Goodwin
of Chicago, at Portland, Oct. 3, 1882. This sermon has
special significance because delivered at a time when the
question of a second probation for the heathen was actively
discussed in the Orthodox Congregational body. Dr.
Goodwin holds that all lax doctrine is hostile to the mis-
sionary spirit, and plants himself firmly on the old theo-
logical foundation : —
" This missionary gospel, this gospel to be preached among
all the nations, was to be emphatically a gospel of separation, a
gospel of election, a gospel everywhere calling out and setting
apart a peculiar people. ... In other words, the supreme end
which in this age the Holy Spirit proposes to accomplish by this
64 THE DOOM OF THE
witnessing of the gospel to all nations, is to call out thence a
people chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the
world." (p. 7.)
Dr. Goodwin then shows how few in number the elect
are : —
" We stand under the pierced hands and the bleeding side.
We know this cross over our heads means blood shed, death
suffered, for the sin of the world. We compass the nations and
the ages in our thought, and with him that hangs here our hearts
reach out far and wide with ardent desire, with inexpressible
and tearful longings, that all men may know this Christ, may
accept this gospel, may possess eternal life.
" But GorVs desires are not OocVs decrees. This Christ pitying
all, eager to save all, is the Christ rejected, hated, crucified, by
those he seeks to save. The amazing invitation, ' Come unto
me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you
rest,' is uttered in all ears ; but only here and there a Nicode-
mus, a woman at the well, a thief on the cross, makes response.
Across the continents, for eighteen centuries, have sounded the
wonderful words, ' God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life ; ' but, among the swarming millions,
how insignificant the numbers that care to listen y and how few of
these that are eager to possess the gift ! " (p. 8.)
Dr. Goodwin is amazed that so few should accept the
gospel : —
*' Are any now oppressed with the thought that this concep-
tion of the missionary work makes it seem a kind of hopeless
undertaking ? Do they stand facing these unsaved millions,
and, with a feeling almost of dismay, ask why, after eighteen
centuries of the preaching of the cross, so few comparatively have
been reached and saved ? I do not wonder. There are mysteries
here that no human wisdom can solve." (p. 10.)
MISSIONARY REPORTS.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions says : —
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 65
*' To send the gospel to the heathen is a work of great exi-
gency. Within the last thirty years, a whole generation of five
hundred millions have gone down to eternal death."
Again the same Board, in its tract entitled "The
Grand Motive to Missionary Effort," written by one of
the secretaries of the Board and published in 1853,
says : —
"Another and a very powerful motive in this enterprise is
found in the awful doom which awaita those who live and die within
the precincts of pagan idolatry. [Italics theirs.] This great fact,
clearly recognized in the Scriptures, is fitted to rouse the deepest
sympathies of the soul. ISTo believer in Christianity can imagine
that Christ would have directed his followers to send the gospel
to ' every creature,' at such a vast expense of toil and treasure
and suffering and blood, to be continued down through the lapse
of ages, if he had known or supposed that the heathen could and
would be saved just as well without the gospel as with it. No
theory which admits idolaters of any description into the king-
dom of heaven can be reconciled with the facts and teachings of
the Bible. The heathen are involved in the ruins of the apostasy,
are subjects of a deep and awful depravity, totally unfit for
heaven, and are expressly doomed to perdition. No body of
men denying this doctrine ever undertook to evangelize the dark
places of the earth ; and it may well be doubted whether they
ever will. Here, then, we have before us a great truth, a Bible
truth, fitted to fix the eye and pierce the heart.
' The heathen perish ; day by day.
Thousands on thousands pass away.'
*' If the Christians of this land could stand together on some
eminence near the gates of Eternity, and see the sweeping tor-
rent of deathless souls, from the realms of paganism, daily and
hourly passing through, and plunging into the fathomless depths
below, what eye would not run down with tears ? what bosom
would not heave with emotion ? what heart would not be trans-
fixed with agonies ? what tongue would not pray and cry aloud
to God, that this river of death might be stopped? ... A
deathless soul, on the brink of hell, with capacities for heaven,
and full provision made for its salvation ! What a spectacle !
5
66 THE DOOM OF THE
Multiply this one by six hundred millions and then contemplate
the scene." (pp. 7, 8.)
Bishop Colenso, in his " Ten Weeks in Natal," gives
the following extract from an American missionary
report : —
" Every hour, yea, every moment they are dying, and dying,
most of them, -without any knowledge of the Saviour. On
whom now rests the responsibility ? If you fail to do all in
your power to save them, will you stand at the judgment guilt-
less of their blood? Said a heathen child, after having embraced
the Gospel, to the writer, ' How long have they had the Gospel
in New England ? ' When told, she asked, with great earnest-
ness, ' Why did they not come and tell us this before ? ' and
then added, ' My mother died, and my father died, and my
brother died, without the Gospel.' Here she was unable to re-
strain her emotions. But, at length, wiping away her tears, she
asked, ' Where do you think they have gone ? ' I, too, could
not refrain from weeping, and, turning to her, I inquired,
* Where do you think they have gone ? ' She hesitated a few
moments, and then replied, with much emotion, ' I suppose they
have gone down to the dark place — the dark place. Oh ! why
did they not tell us before ? ' It wrung my heart as she repeated
the question, ' Why did they not tell us before? ' "
What shall we say of the gladness of a gospel which
carries such tidings to ignorant heathen ? Remarking on
this passage the North British Review says : —
" Can this be mere ad cnptandum language, intended to draw
contributions to the missionary societies ? If so, it is very
wicked. But if it be really genuine and sincere, how melan-
choly a fanaticism does it display! We shudder at the accounts
of Devil-worship which come to us from so many mission-fields.
We pity the dreary delusion of the Manichees, who enthroned
the Evil Principle in heaven. But if we proclaim that God is
indeed one who could decree this more than Moloch sacrifice of
the vast majority of his oion creatures and children, for no fault or
sin of theirs, w^e revive the error of the Manichees ; for the God
whom we preach as the destroyer of the guiltless can be no
God of justice, far less a God of love." (Vol. xxv. Aug. 1856,
p. 317.)
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 67
IV.
Admissions and Ceiticisms.
In the foregoing pages we have presented an array of
unimpeachable evidence concerning the authoritative, tra-
ditional, and current Evangelical belief in regard to this
" dark and awful doctrine." We have examined the most
prevalent Orthodox interpretations of Scripture ; we have
appealed to the standards of Orthodoxy, and to the men
who made them, — to its theological seminaries, its mis-
sionary bodies, its authoritative literature, the teachings
of its pulpits. And now we ask, What becomes of the
statement that " no Orthodox denomination, no Evangel-
ical creed in Christendom, teaches that the vast majority
of the human race are to be the victims of endless woe"?
In the light — or, more fitly, in the gloom — of this
mass of testimony, we appeal to the candor of our readers
whether it is an " absolute and abominable misrepresenta-
tion " of Orthodoxy to say that it has taught and still
teaches the hideous doctrine of the eternal damnation of
the majority of the race ? If anybody has misrepresented
Orthodoxy in this respect, it is not we who report its utter-
ances, but John Calvin, Richard Baxter, Matthew Henry,
a host of Evangelical commentators, the Synod of Dort,
the makers of the Westminster, the Savoy, and the Boston
confessions, the American Tract Society, the American
and Presbyterian Boards of Foreign Missions, and the
great leaders of Orthodox theological schools. We admit
that the word misrepresentation may be applied to the
awful doctrine which has been described, but it is as a
misrepresentation of Christianity, not of Orthodoxy.
We do not claim that this unnatural doctrine has never
met with protest. On the contrary, through all the years
in which it has been taught, — under the shelter of Biblical,
Papal, and Synodical authority, — there have been men
68 • THE DOOM OF THE
who have lifted up their voices against it, from the time
of Origen down to Murray, Chapin, Bellows, and Farrar.
But they have always been in the minority, and have
either been cast out of organized Orthodoxy, or regarded
with suspicion. When Curio, in 1532, maintained that " the
number of the saved, in which he includes virtuous hea-
then, will far exceed that of the lost, this doctrine was
deemed so dangerous that the Senate of Basel refused to
allow him to publish the work, and the first edition was
printed surreptitiously." ^ We honor the brave souls
in every age who have protested against the moral and
practical implications of this belief, and wish there was
no longer any occasion to continue their remonstrance;
but in spite of the increasing minority of those who have
repudiated it within Orthodox circles, we are forced, after
a wide examination of current testimony, to the conclu-
sion of Canon Farrar, that " it is needless to prove that
this has continued to be the popular opinion." ^
1» Evangelical Admissions.
That an Orthodox minister in Boston should indig-
nantly deny that " any Evangelical creed in Christendom "
teaches the doom of the majority, may be construed as a
virtual admission that the doctrine is not one which Ortho-
doxy would gladly own. There is another line of defence
1 For references concerning those who have taken ground in behalf
of the salvability of the unconverted lieathen, and in fact for the gen-
eral and special literature of every aspect of the doctrine of the future
life, see the Bibliography by Professor Ezra Abbot, D.D., LL.D., of
Harvard University, appended to Rev. W. R. Alger's '* Critical His-
tory of the Doctrine of a Future Life." No one can treat any phase
of this subject historically without consulting this invaluable Bibli-
ography. In addition to the constant aid we have obtained from it,
we must also acknowledge the kind assistance of its author in revising
proofs of these pages.
2 Mercy and Judgment, p. 154.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 69
open to persons of this view, and that is, to show that
modern Orthodoxy has renounced the tenets of Calvin,
the Westminster Assembly, the Synod of Dort, the Savoy
Declaration, the Boston Confession, the Plymouth Declar-
ation, and the teachings of Emmons, Pond, Park, Hodge,
and the numerous authorities we have quoted. Liberal
Orthodoxy has taken a step in this direction, but the great
majority of the Orthodox, Congregational, Presbyterian,
Baptist, and Reformed denominations are not yet ready
to confess that the Creeds and Fathers were mistaken in
this matter. On the contrary, the doctrine is still freely
and boldly confessed. It is even considered dangerous to
Orthodoxy to relax in any degree its rigorous belief in
respect to the destiny of the great body of the heathen
world.
VARIOUS LETTERS.
Since the appearance of our article on this subject in
the Christian Register of Jan. 4, 1883, we have received
various communications from Orthodox believers who
have expressed their surprise that the prevalence of the
doctrine should be at all questioned.
A lady, whose goodness is as sound as her Orthodoxy,
writes concerning the doom of the majority : —
" All I will try to say is this: the doctrine is truly an awful
one ; but we find it in the Bible, and those of us who believe in
that book cannot ignore it. So we seek to leave the matter with
Him who is not only the Judge of all the earth, but a God of
infinite mercy and love. Surely, He will do that which is right. ' '
An Orthodox minister writes : —
"It is wasting powder to prove that Orthodox Christians
believe that ' broad is the way that leads to death, and many
there be that walk therein;' while strait, narrow, few, &c., are
the words of Jesus. Your quotations are perfectly fair, as
proving this to be our historic and present belief. It is un-
doubtedly the opinion of most Orthodox Christians that the
great majority of the human race, who have as yet died in mature
years, are lost," ^
70 THE DOOM OF THE
Various friends, who like the writer were reared within
the Evangelical fold, have confessed that they never
thought of entertaining any other belief on this subject.
THE EXAMINEE.
The Examiner, of New York, is one of the most promi-
nent organs of the Baptist denomination in this country.
In a comparatively recent issue, it freely concedes the
point we have pressed, in regard to the damnation of the
vast majority of the adult portion of the race. It
says : —
" The idea of a probation in this life does imply the possibility
of salvation, but the possibility may never be realized. As a
matter of fact, we believe that, for the vast majority of the heathen,
this possibility never is realized, and we never yet heard of an Ortho-
dox theologian who held any other belief than this.^^ ^
This is a sad confession to make, but it has the virtue
of candor.
THE PRESBYTERIAN.
The doctrine is again frankly acknowledged in an edi-
torial article in the Presbyterian, March 10, 1883. It is
considered to be absolutely essential to the missionary
motive : —
" Foreign Missions were conceived in the idea that the heathen
world was perishing, and that the duty of the Church was, by
every sacrifice possible, to save them. Any such scheme would
have been still-born without this vital centre, this heart of all
endeavor. The Church in New England grew strong in this
conviction, — unselfish, aggressive, and glorious. The pulsations
of the New England — we might say Boston — heart went to the
extremities of this whole country.
'' And now, after building a kingdom of power and gloiy at
home, and laying the foundations of revolution from heathenism
to new life in every nation under heaven, on which the super-
structure of life eternal may go up in divine proportions, it is
1 Examiner, New York, Feb. 15, 1883.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 71
suddenly discovered in Boston that the heart has dropped out ;
and it must, of course, be given up.
" Foreign Mission zeal and endeavor, together, form the test
of a standing or falling Church. Where there is no zeal and no
conscientious sacrifice for Foreign Missions, there will be none
for Home Evangelization. Hence, when this conception of
urgency and sacrifice to achieve its end, because the world with-
out salvation by Christ is dead, is abandoned, the death of
Evangelism will have no geographical bounds. It will be death
at home and abroad. It is a short cut to atheism, when death
will reign supreme ; for Home and Foreign Missions, resting on
the fact given in Revelation, that the world without salvation is
lost, are as supplemental to each other as the lobes of the brain,
and in their workings as active and reactive."
It would be strange indeed, if, in the mass of testimony
we have adduced in illustration of this doctrine, there
should not be confessions of its dismal and terrible nature.
The reason and the emotions must at times revolt against
the hideous consequences of a dogma so painful to the
affections and so contrary to our highest conceptions of
divine goodness. With such an admission this paper began.
Dr. Shedd confesses it to be a "dark and awful doctrine."
John Calvin cnlled it "a dreadful decree;" Chrysostom,
" a terrible trutli ; " Doddridge, " a dreadful truth ; " Dean
Goulbura describes it as " awfully startling ; " Rev. Enoch
Pond termed it " an affecting truth, ... a dreadful conclu-
sion, . . . sufficient to rouse up every Christian's heart."
The same confession is frankly and even tearfully made in
a host of missionary discourses. Sometimes the conscious-
ness of the painful nature of this doctrine is so poignant
that we scarcely know whom to pity more, the "vast ma-
jority" condemned to this woe, or the minority, unfortu-
nate enough to believe in their damnation.
A EEMARKABLE CONCESSION.
The mysterious and appalling features of this dogma
have seldom been stated with more power than by one
72 THE DOOM OF THE
of the most widely known and most popular of Presby-
terian preachers and commentators, Rev. Albert Barnes.^
Struggling with the doubts and difficulties which his
attempt to believe in this doctrine inevitably suggested,
he makes the following remarkable confession : —
" That the immortal mind should be allowed to jeopard its
infinite welfare, and that trifles should be allowed to draw it
away from God and virtue and Heaven ; that any should suffer
forever, — lingering on in hopeless despair and rolling amidst
infinite torments, without the possibility of alleviation and with-
out end; that since God can save men, and will save a part, he
has not purposed to save all; that, on the supposition that the
atonement is ample, and that the blood of Christ can cleanse
from all and every sin, it is not in fact applied to all; that, in a
word, a God who claims to be worthy of the confidence of the
universe, and to be a being of infinite benevolence, should make
such a world as this, full of sinners and sufferers; and that
when an atonement had been made, He did not save all the race,
and put an end to sin and woe forever, — these, and kindred
difl&culties, meet the mind when we think on this great subject;
and they meet us when we endeavor to urge our fellow-sinners
to be reconciled to God, and to put confidence in Him. On this
ground they hesitate. These are real, not imaginary difficulties.
They are probably felt by every mind that has ever reflected on
the subject ; and they are unexplained, unmitigated, unremoved.
I confess, for one, that I feel them, and feel them more sensibly
and powerfully the more I look at them, and the longer I live.
I do not understand these facts ; and I make no advances towards
understanding them. I do not know that I have a ray of light
on this subject, which I had not when the subject first flashed
across my soul.
" I have read, to some extent, what wise and good men have
written; I have looked at their theories and explanations, I have
endeavored to weigh their arguments ; for my whole soul pants
for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and
in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I
see no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me the
1 "Practical Sermons," pp. 123-125, quoted in C. F. Hudson's
" Debt and Grace," pp. 54, 55.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 73
reason why sin came into the world, why the earth is strewed
with the dying and the dead, and why man must suffer to all
eternity.
'' 1 have never yet seen a particle of light thrown on these
subjects, that has giv^en a moment's ease to my tortured mhid;
nor have 1 an explanation to oifer, or a thought to suggest, that
would be of relief to you. I trust other men — as they profess
to do — miderstand this better than I do, and that tliey have
not the anguish of spirit which I have; but I confess, when 1
look on a world of sinnei's and sufferers, upon death-beds and
grave-yards, upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to suifer
forever; when I see my friends, my parents, my family, my
people, my fellow-citizens, — when I look upon a whole race, all
involved in this sin and danger; and when I see the great mass
of them wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can
save them, and yet he does not do it, — I am struck dumb. It
is all dark^ dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it."
There is something mournfully pathetic in such a con-
fession as this. It reminds us that the tenets of Calvinism,
even with the discriminations which they make in favor of
those who accept them, are not held by tender and humane
believers without pain and struggle of soul. Again we
ask, can this be the natural and proper effect of the glad
gospel of " peace on earth, good- will to men"? There
are many sources of doubt and mystery in the world about
us. It is the office of religion, truly interpreted, to help
us to meet them with manly hope and faith, and not to
create, from traditional and legendary assumptions, artifi-
cial mysteries which are more distressing than those which
are real. Dr. Barnes here assumes, in accordance with
the standards of his church, that "the whole race" is
"involved in this sin and danger, and that "the great
mass of them'''' will not be saved from eternal ruin,
although God might do it if he wished. Is it any won-
der that he says "it is all dark, dark, dark," and confesses
that he has never " seen a particle of light thrown on these
subjects, that has given a moment's ease to {his] tortured
mind"?
74 THE DOOM OF THE
A STUBBORN AND AWFUL FACT.
In the first volume of his scholarly work on "The
Creeds of Christendom," Dr. Pliilip SchafF, in criticising
the Westminster system of doctrine, candidly admits '' the
stubborn and awful facts" which confront it, and the
difficulties that inhere not only in Calvinism, but in all
other Orthodox systems : —
" It must in fairness be admitted that the Calvinistic system
only traces undeniable facts to their first ante-mundane cause
in the inscrutable counsel of God. It draws the legitimate logi-
cal conclusions from such anthropological and eschatological
premises as are acknowledged by all other Orthodox churches,
Greek, Roman, Lutheran, and Reformed. They all teach the
condemnation of the human race in consequence of Adam's
fall, and confine the opportunity and possibility of salvation
from sin and perdition to this present life. And yet everybody
must admit that the vast majority of mankind, no worse by nature
than the rest, aud without personal guilt, are born and grow up
in heathen darkness, out of the reach of the means of grace,
and are thus, as far as we know, actually ' passed by ' in this
world. No orthodox system can logically reconcile this stubborn
and awful fact with the universal love and impartial justice of God'*
{Creeds of Christendom, vol. i. p. 793.)
Dr. Emmons, who labored hard to reconcile this doc-
trine with the justice of God, would probably have been
shocked at this candid admission of Dr. Schaff ; but the
strenuous efforts he made to strengthen this obviously
weak point in his theological system only shows that he
was aware of one of its greatest difficulties. Indeed,
there is seldom a writer on this doctrine who does not,
consciously or unconsciously, betray its essential defect.
SAD AND LAMENTABLE.
We know, for instance, of no preacher, on the subject
of the few that are saved, who more implicitly believed
it than Henry Scougal of Aberdeen, 1650-1678. He
'^ MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 75
even praised the curiosity of the man who asked Jesus
the question recorded in Luke ; but the " sad and lament-
able" side of the doctrine did not escape his notice. In
his sermon entitled " That there are but a Small Number
Saved," he says; —
*' Seeing we are assured that there are different and very pppo-
site estates of departed souls, some being admitted into happiness,
and others doomed to misery, beyond anything that we can con-
ceive; this may put them upon farther inquiry, how mankind
is like to be divided ? Whether heaven or hell shall have the
greater share ? Such a laudable curiosity as this it was, that
put one of our blessed Saviour's followers to pi'opose the question
in the text : ' Lord, are there few that be saved ? ' " (Scougal,
Works, p. 131.)
"Duty doth oblige us, and the Holy Scriptures will warrant
us to assure you, that there are very few that shall be saved ;
that the whole world lieth in wickedness ; and that they are a
little flock to whom the Father will give the kingdom." (/6.,
p. 134.)
" The doctrine we have been insisting on is sad and lament-
able ; but the consideration of it may be very useful. It must
needs touch any serious person with a great deal of grief and
trouble to behold a multitude of people convened together, and to
think that, before thirty or forty years, a little more or great
deal less, they shall all go down unto the dark and silent grave,
and the greater, the far greater, part of their souls shall be
damned unto endless and unspeakable torments." (lb., p. 147.)
The conflict of the moral sense with the supposed facts
of revelation is apparent in the following: —
" When we have said all that we can say, there are many that
will never be persuaded of the truth of that which we have been
proving. They cannot think it consistent with the goodness and
mercy of God, that the greatest part of mankind should be
damned; they cannot imagine that heaven should be such an
empty and desolate place, and have so very few to inhabit it.
But oh, what folly and madness is this, for sinful men to set
rules unto the divine goodness, and draw conclusions from it so
expressly contrary to what himself hath revealed ! " (/6.,
p. 146.)
76 THE DOOM OF THE
There are still many who think it "folly and madness"
to dispute Orthodox interpretations of the Scripture, or
the theological tenets concerning the destiny of man
which have been founded upon them ; but the moral
sense can no longer be defrauded of its right to " prove
all things, and hold fast that which is good ;" and we mny
feel perfectly confident that declarations or interpretations
of Scripture, afiirmations or anathemas of creeds, and all
practical or theoretical assumptions concerning God and
humanity which affront the moral sense, must sooner or
later be abandoned.
EXCRUCIATING THOUGHTS.
In a missionary sermon delivered in 1834, Rev. Gardiner
Spring, D.D., of New York, presented with great power
some of the "excruciatingr thoughts" which believers in
this doctrine must inevitably suffer : —
" Who can tell if some poor Pagan is not this day struggling
for the assurance of a happy immortality, who ' through your
mercy might have obtained mercy.' To the hopes of the dying
believer he is a stranger. He never dwelt in a Christian land.
He never heard a sermon, nor saw a Bible. He knows not that
the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin. No ; he is the victim
of a dark and dreadful idolatry 1 Around his bed of death
gather the shades of an impenetrable night. Over his prospects
for eternity are collected heavy and dense clouds of unappeased
indignation. Approach and see. His bosom is torn and dis-
tracted with anguish. His lips quiver with agony, and he draws
his last gasp in despair ! And oh, that it were one solitaiy
Pagan only! But, think of Uoentif-fire mdVwm of your fellow-
men every year sinking in such a death ; and then look into that
deep abyss, where millions after millions of years roll on, and
the miserable sufferers encounter new dangers, new fears, new
scenes of anguish, without any prospect of termination; and
what emotions of grief, abasement, and horror may smite our
bosoms! ' We are verily guilty concerning our brother.' Here
are miseries which our faithfulness might have relieved. But
for our guilty slumber, multitudes of these immortal beings
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 77
might have been trained to a happy immortality. Excruciating
thought ! O immeasurable responsibility ! because the remedy
for these woes is in our hands. Sin infinite! to be washed away
only by atoning blood." (pp. 28, 29.)
DARK AND DISTRESSING.
Rev. Samuel Miller, D.D., Professor in the Theological
Seminary, Princeton, N. J., thus calculated in 1835: —
" Of the eight hundred millions of the world's population,
but little more than an eightieth part are even professors of
religion in any Scriptural form, or claim to know anything of its
sanctifying power. . . . Such is, confessedly, at present the <'/a?-fe
and distressing state of the great mass of our world's popula-
tion. . . . What a little remnant, among all the multiplied
millions of mankind, have any adequate or saving knowledge of
the religion of Christ ! " {Sermon before the American Boards
1835, p. 15.)
AN AWFUL YIEW.
The following, from a sermon before the American
Board in 1859, by Rev. Robert W. Patterson, D.D., of
Chicago, completely concedes the two points we have
endeavored to establish; namely, that the "majority"
are doomed to endless woe by Orthodoxy ; and secondly,
that the doctrine is one " awful " to contemplate. It is
ui-ged by Dr. Patterson as a motive for missionary effort : —
" The gi'eat Scriptural doctrine that this is the only place of
probation to the members of our fallen race, and that those who
die out of Christ are lost forever, sets before our minds an awful
view of the destiny that awaits the majority of the living generation
of our race; while it presses home an appeal to the sympathies
of all who know the value and preciousness of the Christian
hope, which must, if anything can, stir them up to make haste
and send the word of life to their dying fellow-sinners. It bids
us to keep in mind that the time is short within which there can
be anything done to save the six hundred millions of heathen,
and the three or four millions of Mohammedans and dead
formalists and heartless unbelievers, who are now hastening to
/O THE DOOM OF THE
the close of their probationary life without any preparation for
a happy eternity. And it admonishes us to remember that we
ourselves can have, at the most, only a few years to be spent in
efforts to rescue the souls of our fellow- heirs of immortality
from the woes of the second death." (p. 34.)
PERSONAL EXPEKIENCE.
It may not be wholly out of place for the writer to add
his own experience. With humiliation, and with all charity
for those from whom he now differs, he must confess that
he once held this doctrine himself. He was taught, on
uniting with the Christian Church, that it was infallibly
revealed in the Scriptures. He recalls the sense of hum-
ble gratitude he experienced when he felt that God had
called him from before the foundation of the world to
be an lieir of glory, while millions of others better entitled
to this distinction, the vast majority of the race, were left
to perish. He recalls, too, the terrible conflict which this
conviction had to encounter with his sentiments of justice
and benevolence; his struggle with creeds, texts, and
" divine decrees," until finally he determined to " let God
be true, though every man a liar."
2, Evangelical Protests,
The admissions we have presented, conceding — with
dark, mysterious, sad, lamentable, awful, and various other
adjectives — the painful and difiicult features of this view
of the eternal destiny of the vast majority of the race,
have been taken enlirely from Evangelical writers, most
of them accepting the doctrine and seeing no way of
escape from it. We now call to the witness-stand another
class of Evangelical writers, — those who have felt the
difficulties and implications of this dogma so strongly
that they have been obliged to abandon some of its most
obnoxious features and to protest against them. Most of
these protests are not directed against the assumption of
MAJOEITY OF MANKIND. 79
the eternal doom of the majority, but against the as-
sumption that it is the majority of mankind that are
eternally doomed. It is the first assumption that consti-
tutes the chief horror of this doctrine. If that were
removed, there would be no need to protest against the
second. Arminians have generally been quite as guilty
as Calvinists in teaching the endless misery of those who
are damned ; but the battle between them has related
mainly to the extent of the atonement, the conditions
of salvation, and the proportion of those who should avail
themselves of it. As we have seen in the chapter on
the Evangelical Creeds, the Arminians bitterly reproached
the Calvinists for teaching the damnation of the majority
of mankind. Calvinism has never been able to clear its
skirts of this reproach. It is a natural and logical infer-
ence from its theological system ; it is indelibly written
in its creeds and inscribed in its literature, and remains
to-day, as we have shown, an acknowledged tenet of its
modern advocates. Arminianism, on the other hand, —
while in some of its presentations it has taken refuge in
the miserable device of water baptism to wash out from
the blood of infants the taint of inherited sin, — has refused
either to damn infants on account of Adam's transgres-
sion, or to damn the heathen for not accepting a gospel
which had never been presented to them. In its rejection
of the harsh, high Calvinistic views of predestination and
reprobation, in its proclamation of an unlimited atone-
ment and the freedom of all men to accept it, Arminian-
ism did much to relieve our conception of the character
of God from the imputation which these doctrines have
cast upon it.
NOT JESUS BUT THE DEVIL.
The reproaches which modem Universalists and Unita-
rians have cast upon Orthodoxy, for teaching the damna-
tion of the majority, have not been more severe than those
80 THE DOOM OF THE
which have sometimes been hurled at it from Evangelical
and Anti-Calvinistic sources. Curio, in 1569, instead of
attributing the opinion of the fewness of the saved to
Jesus, went so far as to attribute it to the devil, arguing
that God wished to pour forth his goodness and pity on
the most, and not on the few.^ Curio was much abused
for the book, but two hundred years later Charles Wesley
made precisely the same charge. Those who have known
the Methodist poet only in his milder devotional hymns
may be surprised to see with what bitter sarcasm, pointed
invective, and intense feeling he opposed the Calvinistic
assumption of the doom of the majority. His series of
hymns entitled " Hymns on God's Everlasting Love" are
nearly all of them directed against what he calls this
"hellish blasphemy." Note the keen irony and bold
denunciation of the following : —
"Ah! gentle gracious Dove,
And art Thou griev'd in me,
That sinners should restrain thy love,
And say, ' It is not free ;
It is not free for all :
The most Thou passest by,
And mockest with a fruitless call
Whom Thou hast doom'd to die.*
" They think Thee not sincere
In giving each his day,
Thou only draw'st the sinner near,
To cast him quite away :
To aggravate his Sin,
His sure damnation seal :
Thou shew'st him heaven, and say'st, ' Go in,'
And thrust'st him into hell.
1 Quoted by Farrar, "Mercy and Judgment," p. 25.
MAJOKITY OF MANKIND. 81
" O Horrible Decree, i
Worthy of whence it came !
Forgive their hellish blasphemy,
Who charge it on the Lamb :
Whose pity Him inclin'd
To leave his throne above,
The friend and Saviour of mankind,
The God of grace and love.
« To limit Thee they dare,
Blaspheme Thee to thy face,
Deny their fellow- worms a share
In thy redeeming grace :
All for their own they take,
Thy righteousness engross.
Of none effect to most they make
The merits of thy cross.
" Sinners, abhor the fiend,
His other gospel hear,
The God of truth did not intend
The thing His words declare ;
He offers grace to all,
Which most cannot embrace,
Mock'd with an ineffectual call,
And insufficient grace.
" The righteous God consign'd
Them over to their doom,
And sent the Saviour of mankind
To damn them from the womb;
To damn for falling short
Of what they could not do.
For not believing the report
Of that which was not true.
1 Whenever Wesley uses these words in these hymns he prints
them in small capitals. The capitalization of pronouns referring to
Deity is irregular.
6
82 THE DOOM OF THE
" The God of Love past by
The most of those that fell,
Ordaiii'd poor reprobates to die,
And forc'd them into hell,
He did not do the deed,
(Some have more mildly rav'd).
He did not damn them — but decreed
They never should be sav'd. *
" He did not them bereave
Of Life, or stop their breath,
His grace he only would not give.
And starv'd their souls to death.
Satanic sophistry!
But still all-gracious God,
They charge the sinner's death on Thee,
Who bought'st him with thy blood.
" They think with shrieks and cries
To please the Lord of Hosts,
And offer Thee, in sacrifice,
Millions of slaughter'd ghosts;
With new-born babes they fill
The dire infernal shade.
For such (they say) was thy great will
Before the world was made.
" How long, O God, how long
Shall Satan's rage proceed!
Wilt Thou not soon avenge the wrong,
And crush the serpent's head!
Surely Thou shalt at last
Bruise him beneath our feet;
The devil, and his doctrine cast
Into the burning pit.
" Arise, O God, arise,
Thy glorious truth maintain,
Hold forth the bloody sacrifice
For every sinner slain !
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 83
Defend thy mercy's cause,
Thy grace divinely free ;
Lift up the standard of thy cross,
Draw all men unto thee."
(Hymns on God's Everlasting Love, Hymn xvii. p. 30.)
In another hymn Wesley indignantly disclaims ''the
devil's doctrine : " —
" God forbid, that I should dare
To charge my death on Thee :
No, thy truth and mercy tear
The Horrible Decree!
Tho' the devil's doom I meet,
The devil's doctrine I disclaim ;
Let it sink into the pit
Of hell, from whence it came.
(Hymn vii. p. 14.)
The following is Wesley's not very courteous explana-
tion of Calvinism : —
" They would not the pure truth receive,
Sav'd when they might, they would not be,
God therefore left them to believe
The devil's Horrible Decree:
And lo ! they still believe a lye,
That God did Nine in Ten pass by.
** In them the strong delusion reigns.
That none but they in Christ have hope.
The poison spreads throughout their veins,
And drinks their angry spirits up ; ^
' Let all but us in Tophet dwell,
Away with reprobates to hell.' "
(Hymn x. p. 62.)
In the following he thanks God for restraining him
from believing in " the devil's law :" —
84 THE DOOM OF THE
** I could the devil's law receive,
Unless restrain'd by thee;
I could, (good God! ) I could believe
The Horrible Decree.
" I could believe that God is Hate,
The God of love and grace
Did damn, pass by, and reprobate
The most of human race.
** Farther than this I cannot go,
Till Tophet take me in :
But O forbid that I should know
This mystery of sin."
(Hymn vi. p. 52.)
"Wesley even prays that his hate of this doctrine may
be increased ; but the reader of these poems will be in-
clined to agree with his surmise that that is hardly
possible : -—
"Increase (if that can be)
The perfect hate I feel
To Satan's Horrible Decree,
That genuine child of hell ; •
Which feigns Thee to pass hy
The most of Adamh race,
And leave them in their blood to die,
Shut out from saving grace."
(Hymn xii. p. 66.)
MODERN METHODIST PROTEST.
Methodism has maintained this attitude towards Cal-
vinism down to the present day. But a few weeks since,
Rev. W. F. Mallalieu, D.D., of Boston, said, in Zioiis
Herald (Jan. 31, 1883), the Methodist paper of that
city : —
*' The fact must pretty soon become apparent that Orthodoxy
will have to give up Calvinism, with all its narrowness and incon-
MAJORITY OP MANKIND. 85
gruity, or it will disintegrate at a rate so rapid that living men
will see the last of it. It is too late in the history of the world
to undertake to defend the dogmas of Calvinism ; they deserve
neither defence nor apology; they have dishonored God and his
gospel from the very first; they have been an immeasurable
hindrance to the triumphs of Christianity; and the sooner they
are buried in the grave of oblivion, the better for all concerned."
The Central Christian Advocate^ an organ of the
Methodist Church, published at St. Louis, said in its issue
of Feb. 28, 1883: —
" Now the humanity and spirituality of this century has
thoroughly undermined the principles of this un-Christian
theology. Men are no longer willing to believe that immortal
souls are consigned to eternal punishment without having a
chance of salvation. And this doctrine of a probation after
death is simply a metaphysical scheme to save a tottering theo-
logical system. . . . Methodism has taught, and will continue to
teach, that Christ died for all men, and that all men will be saved
who make the best of the light, talents, and opportunities which
God offers them. We do not claim to be able to explain the
divine methods perfectly, but we affirm with confidence that God
is the loving Father, wise, just, merciful, and loving, not desir-
ing the death of any, but offering them spiritual help and
salvation. Probation after death is simply a speculation, and
does not commend itself to thoughtful men. Christ teaches us
plainly how to meet these questions to which there is no definite
answer in his own words. When one came unto him and asked,
' Are they few that be saved ? ' his answer was, ' Strive to enter
in at the strait gate ; for many, I say unto you, will seek to
enter in, and shall not be able.' "
Though the Methodist Church has taken strong ground
against the doom of the majority^ and though the doctrine
of everlasting punishment is not taught in its " Twenty-
five Articles of Religion " drawn up by John Wesley,
yet Methodists, in common with other Arminian bodies,
have preached the endless doom of the minority. The fear
of hell has been a great weapon in Methodist revivals, and
86 THE DOOM OF THE
the future destiny of all those who reject the atonement
of Christ has been described in lurid, sulphurous language.
There is no worse description of the horrors of hell in
Jonathan Edwards, Boston, or Wigglesworth, than may
be found in Charles Wesley's hymn entitled " The Cry of
a Reprobate." ^
EPISCOPALIAN PROTESTS.
Some of the most earnest and determined opponents of
this doctrine of the doom of the majority have been found
among preachers and writers of the Church of England.
We need only refer to a few.
A striking repudiation of the doctrine is found in a tract
entitled "God's Sovereignty and his Universal Love to
the Souls of Men reconciled, in a reply to Mr. Jonathan.
Dickinson," by John Beach, A.M., Boston, 1747 ; and a
second tract by the same author entitled " A Second Vin-
dication of God's Sovereign Free Grace indeed," Boston,
1748. In the course of this debate Mr. Beach said : —
" But to draw the Picture of the ever-blessed God according
to our Idea of the very worst of Beings ; to represent him as an
Hater of the greater Part of Mankind^ as one who hated his own
Offspring before they were born, and resolved to damn them to
Hell- Torments before they had done Good or Evil, or were capa-
ble of offending him, mei-ely to shew his Sovereignty, and that
he can do what he pleases with his own ; as one whose Justice is
such, that he sets the Children's Teeth on Edge, because their
Father had eaten sour Grapes Thousands of Years before they
were born ; and makes them a motly Mixture of Beast and Dev'd^
as fast as he gives them Being, because Adam sinned, which
was not in their Power to prevent, as one whose Love to the
Souls of men is so very little that when all might have been
redeemed by Christ's Passion as well as a few, he of his meer
Pleasure chose that the bigger Part hy far of them who equally
needed it, and would have equally improved it, should be excluded,
and shut out, and have no Part or Share in it; not because it
1 Hymns on God's Everlasting Love ; Hymn xi. p. 21.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 87
would have made any Addition to Christ's Sufferings, but merely
because God did not chuse that they should be saved. And
though he declares his most tender Love to Mankind, and his
compassionate Concern for their Salvation, and intreats them to
be happy, and swears to them that he does not will their Death,
but their Conversion and Life, and asks them affectionately, why
they will d^e ? and how long it will be ere they be made clean ?
and what could be done for them more ? and wishes they w^ould
hearken to him, and says: O that thou hadst known the Things
that belong to thy Peace, yet notwithstanding all this Show of
Mercy, his secret Decree and unchangeable Will and Desire is,
that the most of them shall burn forever in that Fire prepared
for the obstinate Devil and his Angels. And therefore would
not that his Son should eft'ectually redeem them, or his Spirit
yield them sufficient Grace, without which he knew, they could
no more escape Hell than they could shun Death. Now when
we represent God to our Minds surrounded with this amazing
Horror, how can we prevent our Hearts rising against him, and
wishing there was no such God. I profess for my Part, I had
rather a Million Times, never to have had a Being, than to
think thus of God." (A Second Vindication of God^s Sovereign
Free Grace indeed ^ p. 80.)
More than a hundred years have passed since this was
written, and, sad to relate, there is still occasion for the
same protest.
Mr. Beach further said in regard to the heathen : —
" You take it for granted, that we have the same Notion of
the Heathen World, as you have of the Reprobates who were
doomed to Hell- Fire before they were bom, and when brought
into Being are left under a Necessity of being wicked and mis-
erable ; but you are very much mistaken ; for we utterly deny
that the Heathen are left under a Necessity of being Eternally
miserable, and I am sure you cannot prove it till the day of
Judgment, when we shall see how God will deal with them."
(God's Sovereignty and His Universal Love, ^c, p. 38.)
Dr. Thomas Pyle, Canon of Sarum, and author of
" A Paraphrase on the Acts of the Apostles and the
88 THE DOOM OF THE
Epistles," devotes two of his Sixty Sermons to the theme,
" Are there few that be saved ? " and says : —
*' Honest and well-meaning Christians, whose lot in life hap-
pens to fall in an age of irreligion and vice, are wont to be
disheartened at the woful prospect of the final state of their
fellow-creatures. To think that the far greater part of their own
species, of their own image, will utterly perish and be undone,
is a most uncomfortable thought." (Pyle^s Sermons, 177'3,
p. 438.)
"From a right interpretation of these Scriptures, must appear
the strange and wretched mistake of those Christians who
ascribe the smallness of the number of such as they suppose will
be saved, to some absolute and arbitrary decree of God, by
which he selects a chosen few, and rejects all others, — an opinion
against which men can never be too often cautioned ; since it
effaces, and strikes out, every amiable character that is given us
of God, and spoils the whole sense and purpose of our gospel
account of rewards and punishments." {Ibid., p. 442.)
" These Scriptures never make, nor were ever designed to
make, any absolute comparison between the numbers of such as
will be finally saved, or finally lost. They only set forth the
qualifications requisite to save all men; namely, righteousness,
and a watchful care, and a good improvement of the talents and
graces committed to us all ; and the certain reasons why any
will be left to perish, viz., wilful negligence, and deliberate
vice." (Ibid.,^. 428.)
Bishop Colenso of Natal, after quoting passages from
an American Missionary Report, in which the heathen are
sorrowfully consigned to hell (see page 66, ante), enters
"a solemn protest against such views, as utterly contrary
to the whole spirit of the Gospel, — as obscuring the Grace
of God and perverting his message of Love and Good-
will to Man, and operating with most injurious and dead-
ening effect, both on those who teach and on those who
are taught." ^
1 Ten Weeks in Natal, p. 253.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 89
Rev. F. Nutcombe Oxenham, in his reply to Dr. Pusey
already referred to, entitled, " What is the Truth as to
Everlasting Punishment," shows that the doctrine that
the vast majority are to be lost has contributed very
largely to undemiine belief in endless punishment. This
is one of the few things for which we have to thank this
painful dogma : —
" No doubt it is perfectly true, as Dr. Pusey intimates, that
the thought of these vast multitudes ' going away ' to suffer the
' damnum ' which awaits all evil-doers, has contributed very
largely to enforce a conviction that this 'damnum,' this punish-
ment, will not be endless. It has done so, and it ought to have
done so, and it always will do so ; and as long as reasonable
Christian men, not driven by the exigencies of controversy to
rely on idle and groundless sophistries, form their belief in this
matter not simply, though primarily, on the testimony of Holy
Scriptures, but also on the teaching of what they see in the world
around them, they will continue to believe that ' the wicked,'
those who die wicked, are many and not few, a vast muUitude, —
fearful to contemplate, whether they are actually a numerical
majority of all mankind or not; and they will not believe that
all these are hopelessly and finally lost, that all these will be kept
alive forever, simply to be ' punished with the devil.' " (p. 42.)
Canon Farrar we may expect to find warmly denounc-
ing the popular views : —
" If the popular views be true, the multiplication of the human
race is an unmitigated evil, for it serves mainly to people with
agonizing myriads an endless hell. If the popular views be
true — if most souls are lost — then to bring human beings into
the world can be little 'short of a selfish crime." (Mercy and
Judgment, p. 138.)
Canon Farrar has not stated his protest any too
strongly.
CONGREGATIONAL PROTESTS.
There have not been wanting Congregational ministers
also who have disowned and rebuked this doctrine, though
they have been obliged to deny Calvinism and oppose
90 THE DOOM OF THE
Congregational confessions of faith in order to do so.
Rev. W. W. Patton, in an article on the True Theory of
Missions, quotes the tenth chapter of the Westminster
Confession,^ which plumply consigns the whole heathen
world to eternal destruction, and says : —
" This is sufficiently positive, especially as it contradicts both
our Saviour and the Apostle Paul. It represents heathen who
live according to their light as ' much less ' able to be saved than
men who hear the gospel and reject it, thus directly contradicting
our Saviour, who declared that those who rejected his words
would receive a heavier condemnation than even the depraved,
unrepentant inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, or Tyre and
Sidon (Matt. xi. 20-24). The ' Confession of Faith ' declares
the salvation of conscientious heathen to be ' much less ' pos-
sible than that of unbelieving hearers of the gospel; while Christ
asserts, that even the most flagrant sinners of the heathen shall
find it ' more tolerable ' in the day of Judgment, than such
unbelievers. Equally at variance with the ' Confession of
Faith ' is the declaration of Paul in Rom. ii. 14, 26, 27, in which
he shows how those ' having not the law may be a law unto
themselves,' and how their ' uncircuracision shall be counted for
circumcision.'" {Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1858, p. 553.)
Dr. Patton exposes the moral objections to this doctrine
with considerable force ; —
" It is revolting to our moral sense. ... To assert gravely,
then, that the heathen who have never heard of Christ, are shut
out from all possible hope of pardon and are not in a salvable
position in their present circumstances, is to offend the moral
sense of thoughtful men, as well as that, of the common multi-
tude. . . . Such a theory practically denies the divine grace by
suspending its exercise, so far as the heathen (the majority of the
human race) are concerned, upon the action of those already
enlightened. It declares that there is no possible mercy for the
heathen unless Christians choose to carry the gospel to them.
Does it seem rational, or in harmony with the universality and
freedom of God's grace, that the only possibility of salvation
1 Quoted on p. 41.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 91
for the mass of mankind should be suspended, not on anything
within their control, but on the conduct of men on the opposite
side of the globe? By such representations the minds of men
are shocked, and a reaction takes place, which is unfavorable
not only to the cause of missions, but to evangelical religion as
well." {Ibid., p. 554.)
Rev. Washington Gladden, in a discourse printed in the
Springfield Repuhlicayi, March 15, 1879, after making
various citations showing the harsh nature of Calvinism,
said : —
" Do not the citations that I have shown you, outlining the
history of several doctrines, indicate that the men who framed
and taught these doctrines must have been somewhat deficient
in moral perception? Could their ideas of right and wrong have
been very clear ? I bring against them no railing accusation.
Out of their own mouths you have been permitted to judge
them. I believe that most of them were good men, that many
of them were brave, faithful, self-sacrificing, that we may find
in their conduct worthy examples of purity and consecration;
but I do not think that their moral standards, their notions of
justice and righteousness, can be accepted at this day."
OTHER PROTESTS.
The Boston Sunday JTer aid (Jan. 7, 1883), in an article
entitled " Hell-Fire Missions," says : —
*' The doom of the majority is one of those theological fictions
which can be traced to a strictly human origin, and is against
the belief in a whole God, a whole Christ, and a true realization
of the ends of human existence."
The New York Independent, Jan. 16, 1883, admits that
some way out of this doctrine must be found. In dis-
cussing the question of probation after death, it says : —
*' Only one thing will persuade thinking men to adopt it ;
and that will be the conviction that, without it, God's experiment
of humanity is a failure, and that there are few that be saved.
If it be really true that on this theory the great majority of the
92 THE DOOM OF THE
world are lost, if that be the outcome of the New England
theology, as the Christian Register is now trying to show in reply
to Dr. Withrow, then we may be sure that some escape from that
conclusion will be sought, if not by adopting Dorner's theory,
then by some improvement on the New England theology. VVe
confess that we are startled by what Mr. Cook ^ yields as to the
salvation of the heathen. He says, ' Human nature is such,
however, that only a few among millions do accept the essential
Christ of conscience.' We do not see how that can be safely
asserted."
PRACTICAL FAILURE OF THE DOCTRINE.
In addition to the admissions and testimonies we have
presented to the moral and theoretical difficulties of the
doctrine, a powerful argument against it is found in its
inadequacy as a practical missionary motive. We have
shown in the previous chapter how constantly the lost
state of the vast majority of mankind has been urged as
an incentive to missionary zeal. It has failed, however,
to convert the heathen world, because the heathen cannot
be made to realize their eternally lost condition. We
acknowledge the great good foreign missions have accom-
plished ; but what they have wrought for the elevation,
instruction, and improvement of the temporal condition
of the heathen, whatever they have done towards ushering
in a nobler form of life, cannot be credited to the preach-
ing of this doctrine. These incidental and practical results
are to us the really valuable features of missionary work ;
but they are not what has been primarily aimed at, and
they could more easily have been achieved by more direct
means. We have the confession of Dr. Hopkins, Dr.
Goodwin, and a host of preachers, that all these results
are inadequate compared with the salvation of the heathen
soul. Nevertheless, after all that has been done, the hea-
then are not converted; the vast majority, if Orthodoxy
1 For Mr. Joseph Cook's attempted palliation of the doctrine, see
paragraph on " The Essential Christ'' in the succeeding chapter."
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. ^3
be true, are still under this terrible curse, and daily going
to a horrible doom. In a missionary sermon delivered in
1863, Rev. Dr. Cleaveland, of New Haven, said: —
" Fifty years ago the heathen were estimated, in round num-
bers, at six hundred millions. You remember how those terrific
figures, emblazoned before the eyes of Christendom, trumpeted
in startling appeals from land to land, were employed by the
Holy Ghost as one of the grand arguments that first roused
the Church to the work of modern missions. Now let me ask.
What, after a half-century of missionary labor, is the present
number of the heathen? Can we report any material diminution
in those dreadful figures ? Can we reduce them by so much as
one million, or even half a million ? No. Thousands and tens
of thousands have been brought to Christ, but there are six
hundred millions still ! The banner of the cross has been planted
in almost every pagan land, and many are the witnesses for Jesus
among those idolaters. Still there are the countless masses of
India, the untrodden depths of Africa, and the unexplored
regions of China ; as if, in defiance of all our eiforts, heathenism
still glories in her proud temples, still whitens the earth with the
bones of her victims, and darkens the sky with the smoke of
her idolatrous sacrifices. . . . Glorious things have been
achieved, it is true. But, after all, there are the six hundred
millions still groping in the shadow of death, and perishing,
twenty millions a year! '*
We have already noted the confession of Rev. Dr. Kirk,
" that more pagans are born, more die, in one year, than
have been converted in over fifty years."
But this motive has not only proved inadequate to con-
vert the heathen ; it has also failed to impress Christians
with its truthfulness. The Christian world has never
acted as if it really believed this terrible doctrine. Now
and then, under the influence of missionary meetings,
when the lost state of the heathen has been presented as
a motive with earnestness and power, spasmodic efiTorts
have been made to conceive and act upon it as if it were
94 THE DOOM OF THE
a dreadful reality ; but such results have only been tem-
porary. The Orthodox Christian world lives, for the
most part, as if the doctrine were not true. The mis-
sionaries themselves have again and again arraigned the
indifference of Christians on this subject so thoroughly as
to relieve us from the necessity of any such disagreeable
task. Rev. George H. Pond, a Presbyterian missionary,
shows how fully this idea has taken hold upon the
churches : —
" They often hear the Macedonian cry come up from the
perishing millions, and they echo that cry in the ears of the
churches at home, and still there is no response, or, if the churches
return an answer, it is often only that the treasuries are empty,
or that the men cannot be found who are willing to go ; while it is
well known that multitudes in these very churches are amassing
wealth by hundreds, by thousands, and by tens of thousands,
and that scores and hundreds of ministers even are seeking in
vain to crowd themselves into the towns and cities of our own
country, many of which are already more than supplied. Does
not this state of things evince an astonishing amount of unbelief
on the part of multitudes of the professed friends of Jesus and
♦of his cause on earth? If not, what does it mean, when we see
countless multitudes of our fellow-creatures groping their dark
way down to the regions of death and hell, perishing for lack
of knowledge, with no one to instruct them, while our churches
are full of the professed followers of the toiling, suffering, self-
sacrificing Saviour, who are loading, burdening, themselves wath
costly but useless and often disgusting ornaments to feed their
vanity, and luxuriating in wealth while their Lord's treasury is
empty, or only stingily supplied with a very small part of the
unused surplus of the proud rich, mingled with the mites of
the poor. . . .
" The churches do not believe the testimony of Scriptures touching
this matter. They do not believe that the heathen will be turned
into hell with all the nations that forget God. . . . They do not
believe that the gospel can renovate and save the degraded and
idolatrous nations, and that ' there is no other name,' except the
name of Jesus, 'given under heaven, whereby we must be
saved.' " (Presbyterian Quarterly Review^ Jan. 1861.)
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 95
Such an ai-raignment of the Church from a Christian
missionary is very significant. It shows what has always
been apparent, that the professed belief of Christians and
their actual belief on this subject are wider apart than
the gulf which separated Dives from Lazarus.
Bishop Colenso, himself a missionary to the heathen,
rejecting this doctrine of the damnation of the heathen,
thus reproaches those who profess to believe it : —
" Why! if such be indeed the condition of the heathen world,
how can a Christian comfortably eat butter with his bread, ride
in a carriage, wear a fine nap upon his coat, or enjoy one of the
commonest blessings of daily life? What a monster of selfish-
ness that man must be, who could endure the thought of ease, or
enjoyment in body or soul, for himself, while such was the
horrible destiny of so many millions of his fellow-men, simply
because they knew not — had never heard of — that name of
Love, and the Hope of Life Eternal." {Ten Weeks in Natal j
p. 253.)
Attempted Mitigations.
The preceding chapter has made it evident that there
are many who are not insensible to the intellectual and
ethical difificulties of this doctrine. With Dr. Barnes, Dr.
Shedd, and Dr. Schaff, they admit the " dark and awful "
character of a belief which consigns millions on millions
of mankind to endless woe ; but accepting without ques-
tion the premises on which the doctrine is founded, they
see no way to avoid the logic of the doctrine itself. They
therefore take refuge in an entrenchment to which Cal\ in-
ism has often been obliged to retreat when hotly pressed
by its opponents ; they hide themselves in the very dark-
ness they have created, saying, with Dr. Schaff, it is " a
deep and dark mystery;" or, with Dr. Albert Barnes,
" It is all dark, dark to ray soul, and I cannot disguise it."
96 THE DOOM OF THE
There are no manifestations of the strength of the reli-
gious sentiment which are more sublime than when it
throws itself back upon its trust in the mercy and good-
ness of God, though it can see no intellectual or moral
ground for affirming them. Such occasions may arise in
individual experiences in practical life, when the view of
God's dealings is limited to single and isolated examples,
or confined to a small portion of time ; they do not arise,
however, in any large and enlightened conception of God
and of the universe which he governs. To take, as
Calvinism asks us to do, a sweeping view of the whole
universe, over immeasurable eternities, embracing the en-
tire history of God's dealings with the whole human race,
— not only here, but in the interminable future in which
human destiny is conceived to be fixed, — and then to adudt
that our conception of God is one which cannot be recon-
ciled with his mercy and goodness, is to put the religious
sentiment to a greater strain than it can be expected to
bear. However admirable the strength this sentiment
has exhibited in coping with this difficulty, we deem it a
far higher and purer exhibition of its authority, when,
instead of meekly acknowledging such conceptions of the
dark nature of God and of his government, it grandly
refuses to accept the premises on which they are founded.
To admit that God has so created and governed the
world that the vast majority of the race are destined to
perish, is a reflection upon the divine mercy and good-
ness ; but also upon the divine wisdom. A farmer who,
by his own inaction, should allow the greatest portion of
his crop to rot when he might have gathered it all, would
be considered a poor farmer. A king who should so
manage his realm as to involve the far greater part of his
subjects in hopeless misery, would be considered a very
unskilful ruler. If we knew, also, that it was in his power,
by a simple royal mandate, to grant to every one of liis
subjects the happiness enjoyed by a few, we should think
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 97
he had a bad heart if he did not issue it. It is no won-
der, then, that Calvinism has often writhed under the
reproaches which liave been cast upon it for teaching the
damnation of the majority, and that it has sought in
various ways to soften the harshness of the doctrine.
These earnest attempts show the modifications which
have taken place in Calviuisra itself. It has widely
departed from its historic and original form. The cur-
rent Calvinism of the day is at variance with its ancient
standards. We have already referred to the change of
view which has taken place in regard to inf.mt damnation.
Early Calvinism asserted it; modern Calvinism repudiates
it, though it still holds to creeds which naturally imply it.
These departures from early Calvinism are the result of
the pressure of a nobler view of Christianity, and the
development of a higher form of civilization. As Chan-
nino^ well said : " Calvinism has to contend with foes more
formidable than theologians ; with foes from whom it
cannot shield itself in mystery and metaphysical subtili-
ties — we mean with the progress of the human mind,
and with the progress of the spirit of the gospel." ^
The expedients which have been invented to save Cal-
vinism have acted powerfully to disintegrate it. The
original system was mercilessly logical. Having laid
down his foundation premises, Calvin had the courage to
build his system upon them. He drew a straight line from
premise to conclusion. Modern Calvinism pretends to
accept the premises, but seeks to avoid the conclusions.
The line it draws is not straight, but sinuous. It falters,
wavers, and evades. The beautiful logical symmetry of
the system is destroyed. Modern Calvinism is inconsist-
ent and contradictory. It seeks to read new meanings
into old documents. It invents explanations, probabilities,
and mitigations. Much of the strength of modern Cal-
vinism is exerted in apologizing for its parentage, or in
* Moral Argument against Calvinism, p. 468.
7
98 THE DOOM OF THE
the more fruitless task of trying to build a sightly and
hospitable structure on the old foundation. Nevertheless,
though inconsistent, illogical, and inartistic, there is more
heart in the derived form than there was in the original.
Early high Calvinism had looked so steadily at the face
of its terrible Gorgon-God that, like those who gazed
upon Medusa, it had well-nigh been turned into stone.
But that Gorgonian head has lost much of its power to
petrify human sensibility. There is a new leaven working
to-day ; and may we not hope that eventually the new
leaven may purge out that which is old ?
What now are some of the methods with which modern
Orthodoxy seeks to avoid the reproach of this doctrine
that the majority are lost ?
THE INFANTILE QUIBBLE.
It is argued by some that as Protestants, both Calvin-
ists and Arminians, now generally admit that all dying
in infancy are saved, therefore, as the majority of the race
die young, the majority of the race will be saved. This
position is taken in defiance of the Westminster and the
Augsburg confessions, both of which, historically inter-
preted, teach the damnation of infants. The numerical
quibble aifords no relief, however, from the moral difii-
culties of the doctrine; for it still remains true, according
to Orthodoxy, that the vast majority of the adult portion
of mankind are lost.
We are quite content to let our indictment of Calvin-
istic Orthodoxy rest upon the doctrines which it still
teaches; we do not upbraid it for those it has outgrown.
It still teaches that the vast majority of the adult popu-
lation of the globe are doomed to irretrievable misery. It
is this doctrine that we urge it to repudiate as blasphe-
mous and untrue.
Canon Farrar was met with this quibble. He says : ^ —
1 Mercy and Judgment, p. 140.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 99
" Even in some of the so-called answers to my sermons, the
difficulty was only met by the argument that ' the majority
of mankind die in infancy and therefore that the majority of
mankind would be saved.' It is not worth while to argue with
writers who take refuge in quibbles. By the ' majority of man-
kind,' I mean, as all serious writers have meant, the majority
of those who have attained to years of discretion. But by using
such an argument these writers imply their belief, and it is still
the common opinion of those who claim to be ' orthodox,' — too
often at the expense of ' speaking deceitfully for God,' — that
most men ' perish ; ' and by this they mean that most men pass
after death 'into a life of endless torments.' They have not
only held this, but further, — that the vast majority of Christians
also pass after death into endless torments." {Mercy and Judg-
ment^ p. 140.)
THE MILLENNIAL HOPE.
Another attempted mitigation is the millennial hope.
This has been a source of consolation to many. It is the
faith that ultimately tlie whole world will be converted ;
and, when all are gathered in, " the number of the lost
will be inconsiderable as compared with the whole num-
ber of the saved."
Thus the late Dr. Charles Hodge says, in his Commen-
tary on Romans v. 20 : —
" Since the half of mankind die in infancy, and, according
to the Protestant doctrine, are heirs of salvation; and since, in
the future state of the Church, the knowledge of the Lord is to
cover the earth, — we have reason to believe that the lost shall
bear to the saved no greater proportion than the inmates of a
prison do to the mass of the community."
Rev. Albert Barnes, whose pathetic admission we have
published in a preceding chapter, found comfort in the
same view, which may be found in his Commentary on
Isaiah liii. 11 : —
*' It is morally certain that a large portion of the race, taken
as a whole, will enter into heaven. Hitherto the number has been
small. The great mass have rejected him. and have been lost. But
100 THE DOOM OF THE
theie are brighter times before the church and the world. The
pure gospel of the Redeemer is yet to spread around the globe,
and it is yet to become, and to be for ages, the religion of the
world. Age after age is to roll on when all shall know him and
obey him; and in those future times, what immense multitudes
shall enter into heaven. So that it may yet be seen, that the
number of those who will be lost from the whole human family,
compared with those who will be saved, will be no greater in
proportion than the criminals in a well-organized community
who are imprisoned are, compared with the number of obedient,
virtuous, and peaceful citizens."
This is the single ray of light on this subject that seemed
to come to Dr. Barnes. It is a new evidence of the depth
of the darkness which oppressed him, when he was forced
to take comfort in this millennial device. In a recent arti-
cle in the Christian Intelligencer,^ Rev. William Rankin
Duryee, D.D., presents this same hope. Rev. S. W.
Boardman, D.D., in a letter to the writer, says : —
"It is undonhteflly the opinion of most Orthodox Christians
that the great majority of the human race, who have as yet died in
mature years, are lost, but their hope is that when the whole
race shall have been brought into existence, and human history
on earth be completed, the great majority of all will have been
saved."
It is to be noted, in the first place, that this is an individ-
ual opinion. It is not supported by the Church creeds ; and
those who, like Dr. Withrow, insist that their orthodoxy-
shall be interpreted only throus^h the standards, cannot
consistently appeal to it. Dr. Schaff says that this opinion
— that the number of those who are ultimately lost is very
inconsiderable as compared with the whole number of the
saved — "would be preposterous in the Augustinian nnd
Roman Catholic systems." We may add with confidence,
that it would be equally preposterous in the Calvin istic
system. The straits to which that system has been
1 '* Quantity in Salvation," Christian Intelligencer, Feb. 14, 18b3.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 101
driven by Arminianisra are illustrated in this curious
attempt to escape from one of the logical consequences
of Calvinism.
But let us examine the implications of this millennial
device, and see how much relief it really affords.
In the first place it concedes that, up to tlie present
time at least, and until some remote future, the doctrine
we arraign is true. This concession is not merely left to
be inferred. Dr. Barnes and Dr. Boardman, with the
score of authorities previously quoted, directly express it.
" Hitherto," says Dr. Barnes, "the number has been small.
The great mass have rejected him and been lost." The
hope is entertained that at some future time the propor-
tions may be reversed. This hope for the future does
nothing to relieve the terrible blackness of the present
and the past. It does not relieve the condition of the
vast majority who have thus far been damned ; it does
not relieve of its blackness the character of the God who
has been guilty of damning them. Though it alters the
proportion, it does not lessen in any degree the absolute
number of the lost. That number is still left so great as
to be positively inconceivable. In his sermon before the
American Board, Rev. Dr. Skinner, of the Presbyterian
Church, calculated that the heathen had been passing to
their eternal destiny, strangers to the influence of God's
recovering grace, at the rate of 20,000,000 a year. 20,000,-
000 a year is a small estimate of the number of those
heathen who have died without accepting the gospel ;
but, even at this rate, the accumulation is frightful.
20,000,000, multiplied by 1882, gives a total of 37,640,000,-
000 souls in hell since the beginning of the Christian era
alone. Of the millions who were damned before it, Dr.
Skinner makes no estimate. How long it will be before
the whole world is converted we cannot tell ; but, at the
present slow rate of progress, it must take thousands of
years, and the American Board estimates that 500,000,000
102 THE DOOM OF THE
lieathen go to hell every thirty years. Confining ourselves,
however, simply to the Christian era, we have Dr. Skin-
ner's authority for saying that, at the present date, there
are 37,640,000,000 souls in the prison hell of which Dr.
Hodge speaks, and tliey are all doomed to everlasting
woe!
The prospect that the entire world will be converted to
Orthodox Christianity seems at present very remote. So
long as it preaches such doctrines as this, we cannot be
sorry at the delay. " We hear much," said Dr. Channing,
" of efforts to spread the gospel ; but Christianity is gain-
ing more by the removal of degrading errors, than it would
by armies of missionaries who should carry with them a
corrupted form of the religion." ^ Nevertheless, accord-
ing to the common Orthodox view, every year of delay
adds " twenty millions a year " to the number of heathen
in hell ! Rev. Gordon Hall, a missionary in 1812, supposed
a hundred years — "a longer time," he said, "than is al-
lowed by the ablest commentators " — would pass away
before the introduction of the millennium. And then, in
making an appeal to the churches, he added this signifi-
cant question. "But what must become of the souls who
are to appear on the earth between this and the millen-
niwnf To this momentous question Orthodoxy answers,
. The vast majority are doomed to endless woe^ And Dr.
Barnes and Dr. Hodge add a tearful "Amen."
All the comfort, therefore, that can be extracted from
this millennial hope, is the thought that God's government,
and the scheme of redemption, is not such a practical fail-
ure as it seems to be, on the supposition that only a small
fraction of the human family will enjoy its blessings.
The harvest of saved souls, it assumes, is larger than the
lost, and therefore the divine husbandry is vindicated.
The vindication is only numerical. It is not moral. The
1 " Moral Argument against Calvinism." Works (new edition),
p. 468.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 103
fact still remains, according to Orthodoxy, that millions —
yea, billions on billions — of lost souls have been consigned
to eternal damnation ; the fact still remains that there are
"twenty million souls" going to hell every year. God's
moral government cannot be vindicated by a system which
confines the blessings of salvation to a hypothetical multi-
tude, in a remotely future era, while the vast majority of
those who have lived for nineteen centuries on the globe
are forever lost. This palliation is but another form of
the Calvinistic doctrine of election. God chooses the mil-
lennial age to display his glory, and saves the nations in
bulk ; he reprobates all preceding ages, except the small
renmant of elected individuals that are saved from the
great mass. God becomes generous, merciful, and kind
in the millennial age ; but in all preceding ages he is un-
merciful and unkind, — a Shylock sticking to the bond,
clamoring for the covenanted pound of flesh, and willing
to take it not only from Antonio, — Adam, — but from all
his descendants.
Dr. William Rankin Duryee, although urging this mil-
lennial mitigation, is not without a natural suspicion of its
insufficiency. He says : ^ —
" If the men who cherish infidel or restorationist doctrine still
afl&rm that even such hopeful probabilities do not relieve the
subject of its sorrowful darkness, the believer throws the whole
matter on God, and will not exhaust his strength in vain ques-
tionings or vainer feelings. The Bible says there is some sin
from which is no redemption. As far as sentiment goes, one
soul eternally lost is as painful to contemplate as ten millions of
souls. And the sentiment, which sorrows over what God reveals
as His own will, is simply maudlin."
In his distrust and condemnation of the sentiments.
Dr. Duryee showed himself a Calvinist of the old-time
school. It has been the reproach of Calvinism that it
has dishonored the sentiments, especially the sentiments
1 Christian Intelligencer, February, 1883.
104 THE DOOM OF THE
of mercy and love, which are most outraged by this doc-
trine. And now with this horrible spectacle of millions
of doomed souls before us, we are coolly told that "the
sentiment, which sorrows over what God reveals as his
own will, is simply maudlin ! " This was the reproachful
sentimentality that Jesus showed when he mourned over
Jerusalem, and when he pathetically wept at the tomb of
Lazarus. What maudlin sentiment that David should
sorrow for Absalom ; or that Paul, yearning over Israel,
should be willing to be accursed for his brethren and
kinsmen according to the flesh !
The remarkable confession of Dr. Barnes, which we
print in the preceding chapter, furnishes one type of
modern Calvinism, that which reveals the power, depth,
and authority of the sentiments. Dr. Duryee's article
shows another type, that which suppresses or ignores
them. If the latter type has the impassivity of stoicism,
the first has the virtue of being humane.
The ease with which Dr. Duryee quenches the senti-
ments, and disposes of the mistaken compassion to which
the human heart is prone at spectacles of woe, is seen still
further in the following passage : —
" All kinds of compassion are not the types of the Divine
compassion. There is a sympathy with sin which may easily be
mistaken for sympathy with sorrow. There is a sympathy with
those whose punishment is deserved, which God and just men
alike despise. When the Christian finds out at last who are in
the regions of despair, and what they are there meeting, we are
very sure he will neVher he affected hy the number^ nor by the dura-
tion of their punishment.''^
Those Christians who have not entirely lost the
"maudlin" sentiments of mercy and love will not need
any refutation of this passage. Believing, as they do,
that the sympathy which arises from these sentiments is
never despicable, and that a condemnation of sin is quite
compatible with a sympathy for the sinner, they will be
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 106
more concerned to ask what apology can be made for Dr.
Duryee, for making in the year 1883 such extraordinary
statements. Dr. Duryeo would probably scorn any such
service, and thus make the need of an apology only more
apparent.
In defence of his position it may be said that the indif-
ference of Christians in this life to the eternal woe of the
heathen, when they have some power to prevent it, may
furnish reason for the inference that Christians in heaven
will be much more indifferent to such misery when they
have no power to arrest it. B'lt the indifference of
Christians in this life is not a virtue. We agree with Dr.
Skinner, Mr. Pond,^ Bishop Colenso, and a host of other
missionaries, that it is only a reproach if the doctrine be
true. We take it as ai» evidence, however, that the
doctrine is not true, since it is not possible for humanity
to act as if it were true.
Another apology — not wholly sufficient, we grant —
for Dr. Duryee's statement may be found in the fact that
it is not new. Jonathan Edwards, Nathanael Emmons,
Andrew Welwood, and others have presented its grate-
ful and benumbing consolations to the saints with equal
positiveness, and with more enthusiasm and power.
Dr. Emmons has told us that " We know that one part
of the business of the blessed is to celebrate the doctrine
of reprobation." ^
Jonathan Edwards considered the subject of so much
importance that he devoted an entire sermon to its devel-
opment. The sermon bears this comforting title : " The
End of the Wicked Contemplated by the Eighteous ; or,
the Torments of the Wicked in Hell no Occasion of Grief
to the Saints in Heaven." In this sermon Edwards first
depicts the horrors of hell: —
1 See his admission quoted in the previous chapter, p. 94.
2 Works, vol. ii. p. 402.
106 THE DOOM OF THE
*' The miseries of the damned in hell will be inconceivably
great. When they shall come to bear the wrath of the Almighty
poured out upon them without mixture, and executed upon them
without pity or restraint, or any mitigation; it will doubtless
cause anguish and horror and amazement, vastly beyond all the
suiferings and torments that ever any man endured in this
world; yea, beyond all extent of our words or thoughts."
(Works, vol. iv. p. 289, Worcester ed.)
Then he shows by contrast the joy of the saints in
glory : —
' ' The saints in glory will see this and be far more sensible of
it than now we can possibly be. They will be far more sensible
how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand
how terrible the sufferings of the damned are; yet this will be no
occasion of grief to them. They will not he sorry for the damned ;
it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them ; but on the
contrary, when they have this sight, it will excite them to joyful
praises.
*' The damned and their misery, their sufferings and the
wrath of God poured out upon them, will be an occasion of joy
to them. ..." (p. 290.)
To make the application of the sermon more effective,
Edwards paints a fearful picture of the separations that
must take place at the last day : —
" How will you bear to see your parents, who in this life had
so dear an affection for you, now without any love to you,
approving the sentence of condemnation, when Christ shall with
indignation bid you depart, wretched, cursed creatures into
eternal burnings ? How will you bear to see and hear them
praising the Judge, for his justice exercised in pronouncing this
sentence, and hearing it with holy joy in their countenances,
and shouting forth the praises and hallelujahs of God and
Christ on that account?
"When they shall see what manife-tations of amazement
there will be in you at the hearing of this dreadful sentence,
and that every syllable of it pierces you like a thunderbolt, and
sinks you into the lowest depths of horror and despair ; when
they shall behold you with a frighted, amazed countenance,
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 107
trembling and astonished, and shall hear you groan and gnash
your teeth ; these things will not move them at all to pity you,
but you will see them with a holy joyfulness in their counte-
nances, and with songs in their mouths. When they shall see
you turned away and beginning to enter into the great furnace,
and shall see how you shrink at it, and hear how you shriek and
cry out ; yet they will not be at all grieved for you, but at the
same time you will hear from them renewed praises and halle-
lujahs for the true and righteous judgments of God in so dealing
with you." (p. 296.)
" As to those who are damned in hell, the saints in glory are
not concerned for their welfare, and have no love nor pity towards
them; and if you perish hereafter, it will be an occasion of joy
to all the godly." (p. 297.)
In another discourse Edwards represents the happiness
of the saints as greatly heightened by the contemplation of
the eternal misery of the lost : —
*'The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the
saints for ever. It Will not only make them more sensible of
the greatness and freeness of the gi-ace of God in their happi-
ness; but it will really make their happiness the greater, as it
will make them more sensible of their own happiness ; it will
give them a more lively relish of it ; it will make them prize it
more. When they see others, who were of the same nature, and
born under the same circumstances, plunged in such misery,
and they so distinguished, O, it will make them sensible how
happy they are. A sense of the opposite misery, in all cases,
greatly increases the relish of any joy or pleasure." (Sermon
on the Eternity of Hell Torments. Works, vol. iv. p. 276.)
In his rhapsodical book entitled, " Meditations repre-
senting a Glimpse of Glory : or, A Gospel-Discovery of
Emmanuel's Land," ^ Andrew Welwood, a Scotch layman,
vividly describes the joys of the saints in witnessing the
tortures of the damned : —
1 The date of the first edition we do not know. An American
reprint was made in 1744 ; and editions were published in Pittsburg
in 1824 and in London in 1839. It has undoubtedly been a very
popular book.
108 THE DOOM OF THE
*' What joy! to behold Truth vindicated from all the horrid
Aspersions of Hellish Monsters. I 'm overjoyed in hearing the
everlasting Howliugs of the Haters of the Almighty ; what a
pleasant Melody are they in mine Ears? O eternal Hallelujahs
to Jehovah and the Lamb I O sweet! sweet! My Heart is
satisfied. We committed our Cause to thee, that judgeth right-
eously; and behold, thou hast fully pleaded our Cause, and shalt
make the Smoke of their Torment for ever and ever to ascend
in our Sight." (p. 107, ed. 1744.)
Again the rapturous author says : —
" The beholding of the smoke of your torments is a passing
delectation.'" (p. 109.)
That this doctrine which Welwood assisted to popu-
larize in England is not wholly extinct there is shown by
the testimony of Dr. Momerie, embodied in the following
paragraph from the London Inquirer of March 10,
1883: —
" We are sometimes told that the hideous doctrine of Eternal
Torment is dying out, at least in its more repulsive aspects.
The Rev. Dr. Momerie, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in
King's College, London, and one of the Select Preachers before
the University of Cambridge, gives unimpeachable testimony
that we are apt to overrate the progress of liberal sentiments in
other churches. In his recent work on ' The Basis of Religion '
he says that only a year or two ago he heard a clergyman deliver
himself from the pulpit as follows: 'My brethren, you may
imagine that when you look down from heaven, and see your
acquaintances and friends and relatives in hell, your happiness
will be somewhat marred. But no! You will then be so puri-
fied and perfected that, as you gaze on that sea of suffering, it
will only increase your joy.' For our part, we should prefer hell
itself to a heaven where such hellish joy would be possible."
Unfortunately for the progress of liberal ideas we can-
not affirm, as we should be happy to do, that this view
of the indifference of the saints in heaven to the tor-
tures of the damned in hell is obsolete in this country.
Dr. Duryee has revived it anew, and presents it as a
MAJORITY OF MAXKIXD. 109
merciful mitigation of tliis doctrine of the doom of the
majority. But it is a mitigation which does not mitigate.
It does not relieve the damned, but only the elect. At
the best it is a seltish view. The saints are fearful lest
their happiness in heaven should be disturbed by the
proximity of hell. " No," says Dr. Duryee, " when the
Christian finds out at last who are in the regions of de-
spair [parents or children, brothers or sisters, wives,
mothers, or friends we have loved on earth], and what
they are there meeting [tortures so horrible that no
tongue can describe them, and so lasting that eternity
cannot exhaust them], we are very sure he will neither
be affected by the number^ nor by the duration of their
punishment.^''
Whatever the effect of Dr. Duryee's attempted apology
may be upon the school of Calvinists to which he belongs,
we rejoice to believe that there are a vast number of
Christians who still retain a sufficient amount of human-
ity to feel that this attempted mitigation only adds a
new horror to those it seeks to relieve. It is the doctrine
of annihilation applied to heaven instead of to hell — the
annihilation of the sentiments of mercy and benevolence.
The wicked are allowed to retain these sentiments in hell ;
Dives is represented as exercising them ; but for the
comfort of the saints they are extinguished in heaven.
This view of heaven makes it, morally considered, several
degrees lower than hell.
PROBATION AFTER DEATH.
Whatever comfort the doctrine of the annihilation of
the sentiments may afford to ransomed or expectant
saints, it does not relieve the character of God of the
reproach of partiality and injustice. Dr. Schaff, after
admitting the objections, adds : —
" The only solution seems to lie either in the Quaker
doctrine of universal light — that is, an uncovenanted offer of
110 THE DOOM OF THE
salvation to all men in this earthly life — or an extension of the
period of saving grace beyond death till the final judgment for
those (and for those only) who never had an opportunity in this
world to accept or reject the gospel salvation. But the former
view implies a depreciation of the visible Church, the ministiy
of the gospel, and the sacraments. The latter would require a
liberal reconstruction of the traditional doctrine of the middle
state, such as no Orthodox church — in the absence of clear Scrip-
ture light on this mysterious subject, and in view of probable
abuse — would be willing to admit in its confessional teaching,
even if theological exegesis should be able to produce a better
agreement than now exists on certain disputed passages of the
New Testament and the doctrine of Hades." (Creeds of
Christendom, vol. i. p. 793.)
Of these solutions, that of probation after death is being
earnestly presented by the more liberal section of the
Orthodox body. The active discussion that has been held
has revealed the fact that there is a growing number who
find relief in the thought that those who do not have an
opportunity to receive the gospel here, may have it ofifered
to them hereafter. This view, if generally accepted,
would not relieve the subject of its darkest and worst
feature; but it would certainly lessen its horror. It
assumes that every one must have an opportunity to
receive the gospel before he can justly be punished for
rejecting it. It does not deny the dogma of endless
misery; but it refuses to confine to this life the pro-
bation which human souls are supposed to undergo. It
thus relieves the character of God of the charge of
damning the heathen and all others who die in ignorance
of the gospel. It throws some rays of divine mercy
across the grave. It is a reaction against the severity of
Calvinism. Arminianism has less need of this mitigation,
because it commits to the divine mercy and judgment
those whom the gospel has not reached. On the other
hand, this theory of probation after death is an improve-
ment on the assumption held alike by Arminians and
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. Ill
Calvinists, that the destiny of the soul is fixed at death
for all eternity.
The movement in favor of this doctrine is strongest in
the Congregational body. Rev. Newman Smyth, D.D.,
of New Haven, and Professor Egbert Smyth of Andover,
have been prominently before the public as its defenders.
Mr. Joseph Cook, Professor Park, Dr. Goodwin, and many
others have assailed it. The prolonged discussion it has
received has helped to make the doctrine familiar and
tolerable to many people ; but it cannot be said to have
received any general acceptance. The liberal element in
the Congregational body is making a brave fight to estab-
lish it. As a more merciful view of the divine govern-
ment, its general adoption would be a grateful sign of
progress. It is founded on noble conceptions of the
divine justice and mercy. Once let such conceptions
have full freedom, and the dogma of endless punishment
will eventually be carried away like a rotten pier before
a spring flood.
But while welcoming any extension of the sentiments
of justice and mercy to theological discussions, we believe
it is safest to found them on correct premises and to extend
them on right lines. It is an essential defect of the move-
ment in favor of probation after death, that it accepts
most of the false premises on which Orthodoxy is built, —
man's ruined nature, the necessity of an atonement, and
the certainty of endless punishment for those who reject
the gospel. We do not believe that any permanent relief
can be obtained so long as these premises are admitted.
Nor can we agree that this life, or any limited period in the
next, is to be considered as a state of probation. Life is
not a probation; it is a discipline, a school for character,
a field for growth.
The only satisfaction, therefore, that we have in observ-
ing the growth of the doctrine of probation after death,
is in the hope kindled that it may lead to something
better.
112 THE DOOM OF THE
THE ESSENTIAL CHRIST.
Mr. Joseph Cook, having undertaken in his Monday
Lectures to attack " Probation after Death," attempted to
show that the Orthodox view of God's dealing with tlie
heathen did not require this exjDedient. " God is imma-
nent in the moral nature of every man," says Mr. Cook,
"and whoever permanently accepts or rejects the inner-
most voice of conscience, accepts or rejects the essential
Christ." This sounds very liberal and very plausible. It
is precisely what Unitarians and other liberals have main-
tained for years. Paul stated it much better than Mr.
Cook, without the possible confusion which may come
from the terra essential Christ. "God [who] will render
to every man according to his deeds : . . . tribulation
and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, . . .
but glory, honor, and peace to every man that worketh
good." This is sound doctrine, and at the outset Mr.
Cook seems to believe in it. To save his Orthodoxy,
however, which would be practically destroyed by such an
admission, he makes the following qualification : " Human
nature is such, however, that only 2i.few among millions
do accept the essential Christ of conscience. A knowledge
of the character, life, and death of the historic Christ must
therefore be carried to the heathen and to the whole
world." We do not wonder that the Independent was
"startled" at this statement; we wonder that Mr. Cook
was not startled by it himself. He has unwittingly drawn
up an indictment, not against the heathen, but against
the God who made them. If God has so constructed
human nature that it cannot obey the laws of life he has
prescribed for it, then the divine wisdom and goodness
are at once impeached. In casting into the bottomless pit
the clay which he has tried to form in his own image, the
Divine Potter simply shows the failure of his own handi-
work. Mr. Cook opens the door to the heathen, only to
slam it in their faces when they try to enter. He prac-
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 113
tically records himself as one who believes in the damna-
tion of the majority. The " fair chance " he offers to the
heathen to get. into heaven is considerably less than they
would have of reaching the opposite shore in safety, if
required individually to cross Niagara on a tight-rope.
VI.
Unmitigated Features.
The palliations we have considered are of interest
mainly as showing the need that is felt among a large
class for some relief from the distressing features of this
doctrine. None of them, however, furnish a relief that
is adequate. They have not yet been accepted by Ortho-
doxy. They are arguments for the revision of the historic
creeds, but the desired revision has not been made.
Merely to file off the rough edges of the old creeds will
not suflSce. The objections we urge are not merely against
Orthodox standards, but against the Orthodox system
which they represent. That system, as it is now held and
taught, cannot be reconciled with the justice, goodness,
and mercy of God. That it is no malice which prompts
this statement may be seen from the Evangelical admis-
sions, protests, and attempted mitigations which we have
brought together in the two preceding chapters.
These objections are not simply metaphysical or logical ;
they are above all things ethical. The ethical basis on
which the old theology was constructed is one which has
been outgrown. Civilization and society have advanced,
but theology still clings to its mediaeval God. Nothing
but the voice of authority, urged as the voice of God him-
self, is able to support a theistic conception which would
otherwise be promptly rejected as irrational and unjust.
These ethical difficulties are not confined to this special
dogma J they belong to the whole theological system upon
8
114 THE DOOM OF THE
which it is built. But they appear conspicuously in two or
three aspects of this doctrine ; namely, in the relation
which God is supposed to hold to the number, the character,
and the state of the doomed.
1, The Number of the Doomed,
Orthodoxy teaches that God "passes by" the far larger
portion of the human race in conferring the blessings of
salvation, and deliberately remands them to a fate from
which his love and mercy miglit hav^e saved them. We
say "passes by," for that is the expression used in the
Westminster Confession: "God was pleased, according to
the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he
extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the
glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass
by the rest of mankind, and to ordain them to dishonor
and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious jus-
tice." This " glorious [?] justice " operates to condemn to
death the great majority of the heathen world, without
even giving them a chance to accept the gospel which
would save them. As one of the most prominent of
Orthodox theologians. Dr. Philip Schaff, says, in a pas-
sage to which we have previously referred : —
" Evei-ybody must admit that the vast majority of mankind,
no worse by nature than the rest, and without personal guilt,
are born, and grow up hi heathen darkness, out of the reach of
means of grace, and are thus, as far as we know, actually
' passed by ' in this world. No Orthodox system can logically
reconcile this stubborn and awful fact with the universal love and
impartial justice of God.^^ {Creeds of Christendom, vol. i.
p. 793.)
Dr. Channing, in considering this doctrine, that "the
vastly greater portion of the human race is abandoned by
God," was moved to earnest remonstrance: —
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 115
" It is the doctrine of the mass of Christians even now, that
the heathen are the objects of God's wrath. All who live and
die beyond the sound of the Gospel, it is thought, are doomed
to endless perdition. On this ground indeed it is that most
missionary enterprises rest. We are called upon to send the
Gospel where it is not preached, because men conceive that,
beyond the borders of Christendom, God is an implacable Judge;
because no other parts of the earth are believed to hold commu-
nication with heaven ; because it is feared that the human being,
whose fate it is to be born a heathen, carries to the grave an
inherited curse that will never be repealed. Well do I remem-
ber the shock once received from reading a missionary address,
in which the speaker computed the thousands of the heathen
world who would die during the few hours of the meeting; and
he asked his hearers to listen in thought to their shrieks as they
descended into hell. But how can a sane man credit, for an
instant, that the vastly greater portion of the human race is
abandoned by God? If Christianity did actually thus represent
the character of God, we might well ask what right we have to
hold or to diffuse such a religion. For among all the false gods
of Heathenism, can one be found more unrighteous and more
cruel than the Deity whom such a system offers as an object for
our worship ? But the Christian Religion noM'here teaches this
horrible faith. And still more, no man in his heart does or can
believe such an appalling doctrine. Utter it in words men may;
but human nature forbids them to give it inward assent. Were
the Christians who profess it deliberately to consider what such
a doctrine means, and bring it home to themselves as a reality,
— could they distinctly once conceive that every hour, by day
and night, thousands of their fellow-beings are plunged by the
never-ceasing anger of God into an abyss of endless woe, — how
could they endure even to exist? They would look on this world
as a hell, and long to escape from the sway of its merciless
despot. No! The human heart is a far better teacher than
these gloomy systems of theology. In its secret depth it believes,
what perhaps it dares not to put into words, in God's Impartial,
Equitable, Universal, and Parental Love." (^The Universal
Father, Sec. I. 4.)
In 1837 the New School Presbyterians of this country,
116 THE DOOM OF THE
ill the so-called Auburn Declaration, adopted the follow-
ing article : —
"AVhile repentance for sin and faith in Christ are indispensa-
ble to salvation, all who are saved are indebted, from first to
last, to the grace and Spirit of God. And the reason that God
does not save all is not that he wants the power to do it, but that
in his wisdom he does not see Jit to exert that power further than he
actually does." (Schaff's Creeds of Christendom, vol. iii. p. 779.)
Channing has not stated more strongly, in an equal
number of words, the moral difficulties of Orthodoxy, than
they are stated by Dr. Schaff in the passage above, or
than they are unconsciously revealed in the Auburn
Declaration. How can we believe in the goodness and
mercy and justice of God, and yet suppose that those who
have had no opportunity to hear the gospel are to be
banished to eternal night ? God knows their condition ;
there is room enough in heaven for them all ; he can save
them if he will ; it is not possible, says Orthodoxy, for
them to be saved without him. Nevertheless God
passes them by without mercy, and surrenders them to
an endless misery to which he alone has ordained them.
The old Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation, in which
Emmons and Edwards delighted, that God positively
reprobated to death those whom he did not choose to save,
is not held so sternly by modern Calvinists. They are
content* to say that God chooses some to salvation, and
passes by or leaves the rest in the ruin in which the fall
of Adam has plunged them, " not that he wants the
power " to save them, " but that in his wisdom he does not
see fit to exert that power further than he actually does."
The trouble with this attempted alleviation is that it softens
the will of God without softening his heart. The old
Calvinistic God exerted his power; he cast souls into hell.
The new God withholds his power, and they slide in by
themselves. There is little choice between such descrip-
tions of God. The immoral grandeur of the first can
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 117
be as easily defended as the immoral languor of the
second.
Is this the result of the teachings of Jesus Christ ? Is
this a fair representation of his view of the Father?
There is a little story which Jesus himself told, which
shows how he would have regarded this view of God : —
" A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho;
and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and
departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain priest
was going down that way; and when he saw him, he passed by on
the other side. And in like manner a Levite also, when he
came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side.
" But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he
was ; and when he saw him he had compassion on him, and
went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine;
anJhesetljim on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and
took care of him. And the next day, as he was about to leave,
he took money from his purse and gave it to the host, and said;
Take care of him ; and, if you spend any more, I will pay you
when I come back.
" Which of these three, said Jesus, do you think was
neighbor unto him that fell among the robbers?
" He that took pity on him.
*' Then said Jesus, Go and do thou likewise."
Now the defect of the Orthodox theology is that,
instead of deriving its ideal of God from the Good Samar-
itan, it has taken it from the Priest and the Levite.
Humanity, it assumes, has fallen. It lies wounded and
bleeding by the roadside. And yet the Almighty, the
infinite Father, passes hy on the other side. He sees
his child groaning before his eyes; but, although it
has fallen by the sin of another, he puts forth no hand
to save it. What words could express human indignation
at the conduct of such a Father? And if we knew that,
by the cruel neglect of this unnatural parent, the wounded
child was left to be torn to pieces by wild beasts, or that
he was captured by savage tribes and subjected to months
118 THE DOOM OF THE
of slow torture and finally death, we should hold the father
as a murderer, and remand him to the universal execra-
tion of mankind.
If such would be our feelings toward an earthly parent,
how much more intensely should we repudiate all views
of God which charge him with a neglect more culpable
and a cruelty more intense. Let not this doctrine of the
damnation of the heathen be charged upon Jesus Christ.
The tenth of Luke and the fifth of Matthew are a lasting
rebuke to the Westminster Creed and all who hold it. If
we think of God at all, we must think of him not as being
worse, but as infinitely better than humanity. So thought
Jesus, and therefore urged men to be like unto him : —
' ' Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy
neighbor and hate .thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them which despitef uUy use you and persecute
you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven ; for he maketli his sun to rise on the evil and on the
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect."
2, The CJiaracter of the Doomed.
Another remarkable ethical defect of this doctrine
is that it represents God as ignoring profound moral
distinctions.
1. God ignores moral distinctions in treating the inno-
ceyit as if they were guilty.
The astounding statement is made that by the sin of
Adam the whole race partakes not only of the conse-
quences of his sin, but also of his guilt. Adam was the
representative of the race, says Calvinism ; when he fell,
the race fell with him. Ev^ery human being is born into
the world steeped in original sin and under the penalty
of eternal death. Even the innocent babe, dying without
MAJORITY OP MANKIND. 119
any consciousness of sin, without, in fact, consciousness of
its own existence, cannot be saved without the application
of the atoning blood of Christ to its soul ; and according
to the belief of Catholics and Lutherans we can only be
sure that this blood has been applied when the child has
been sprinkled with water.
We object to this view that it is merely a theological
fiction, — that it is not true, and that it would be unjust if
it were true. If men are born into the world with a
nature so corrupt that they cannot obey the law of God,
it is unjust to punish them for its violation.^ Guilt can
only follow where there is sin ; sin is only possible to
creatures that have moral ability. In punishing creatures
that are only theoretically sinful, God would show himself
to be only theoretically just. The assumption, however,
that all men are born totally depraved we assume to be
false to begin with. It is contradicted by the facts of
human nature ; it is contradicted by the example and pre-
cepts of Jesus Christ, who presented the humility and
purity of childhood as an ideal to his own disciples by
which they were to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Modern Calvinists and Arminians, believing that all
dying in infancy are saved, attribute their salvation to
the atonement of Jesus. But such a view is unjust
to God. It supposes that God regards infants as guilty of
sin. On the contra ly we affirm that children are not
guilty of sin until they are able to commit it, and that if
not guilty of sin, they require no atonement for their
salvation.
2. JBut God also ignores profound moral distinctions
in treating the guilty as if they were innocent,
1 Rev. Dr. D. D. Whedon, editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review,
in his article on " Arminianism " in Johnson's Cydopcedia, forcibly
states a moral and logical objection to Calvinism " If a man is to be
damned for fulfilling God's decrees, ought not that imaginary God to
be afuiiiori damned for making sucli a decree? " (Vol. i. p. 253 )
120 THE DOOM OF THE
A large and influential part of Protestantism has
revolted against the assumption that men are only pun-
ished for the guilt of Adam. It is assumed therefore that
all men actually transgress the infinite law, and are thus
liable to an infinite penalty. The degree of the trans-
gression is not important. All that is necessary is to
commit an infinitesimal sin, to incur the judicial sentence
of eternal torture. That all men sin we may readily
admit; that any justly deserve infinite punishment for a
finite sin we cannot grant for a moment. The object of
this device is to defend the justice of God in bestowing
punishment by assuming the guilt of the sinner. If,
however, we grant, as we are asked to do, the actual as
well as the inherited guilt of the sinner, we find that,
although God may observe moral distinctions in damning
men, yet he ignores moral distinctions in his method of
saving them. The saved have no righteousness of their
own. They are polluted and corrupt before God. Does
the divine mercy save them? No. Orthodoxy will not
allow it to operate here where its blessing is so much
needed. It may operate in the choice of those who are
saved, but not in the method of their salvation. How
then are the guilty saved ? Simply because God agrees
to consider them righteous on account of the righteous-
ness of his Son. They are not actually righteous ; but
righteousness is imputed to them.
It is not possible to transfer righteousness from one
moral being to another. If a man incurs debt through
immorality, it does not make him any better, any more
righteous, if a friend pays the debt for him. We cannot
put righteousness on or off as if it were a garment.
Judas would still have been Judas, if he had worn the
robe of Jesus. The only way righteousness can be
achieved is in the way Jesus achieved it himself, through
moral experience. God therefore ignores moral distinc-
tions if he treats the guilty as if they were innocent.
^ MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 1'21
3. God ignores actual moral distinctions in choosing
those who are saved
W'e say actual distinctions. We mean those distinc-
tions which are recognized as real and positive in this
life. We know that these distinctions are not taken as
the basis for Orthodox theology. Its ethical theories are
as original and hyjjothetical as its lacts. The distinction
it makes between a "righteous man" and a "sinner" is
not the distinction which is made in the community;
it is not the distinction which corresponds to character.
We do not mean that Orthodoxy considers good charac-
ter in this life unimportant ; far from it ; but it assumes
that good character in this life has notliing to do with
obtaining salvation in the next. Salvation is obtained
only through the merits of Christ's blood. Only those
are saved whom God has chosen to this privilege. If God
chose only the good and the virtuous and the noble and
the benevolent, we might infer that his choice was made
with reference to some moral judgment. But according
to Orthodoxy this is not the case. The most abandoned
sinner is chosen as readily as the saint. Let the sinner
but repent an hour before his death, and express belief in
the atonement of Jesus, and he is saved. The man, how-
ever, who has lived an irreproachable life, who has
endeavored to observe the Golden Rule and the two great
commandments, who has tried to obey his own conscience,
to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God,
— such a man, if he does not accept the Orthodox " plan
of salvation," is hopelessly lost.
Mr. Spurgeon, in his commentary on Psalm ix. 17,
"The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations
that forget God," thus expresses his conviction in regard
to the good character of the damned.
'* How solemn is the seventeenth verse, especially in its warn-
ing to forgetters of God. The moral who are not devout, the
honest who are not prayerful, the benevolent who are not believ-
122 THE DOOM OF THE
ing, the amiable who are not converted, — these must all have
their portion with the openly wicked in the hell which is prepared
for the devil and his angels. I'here are whole nations of such.
The forgetters of God are far more numerous than the profane
or profligate; and, according to the very forceful expression of
the Hebrew, the nethermost hell will be the place into which all
of them shall be hurled headlong." {Treasury of David.)
Is it not clear then that God igiK^res actual moral dis-
tinctions, when he allows ''the moral," "the honest," "the
benevolent," and "the amiable," to go to the "nethermost
hell"?
But a small proportion of the good people of the woild
are gathered into the Christian Church ; and if it be true
that only those who "accept Christ" are saved, there will
be but a small proportion of the good in heaven. Some
of the grandest souls that have ennobled human life and
character have been reared under the name and influ-
ence of paganism. Though they have not professed the
Christian religion, they have "been diligent to frame their
lives according to the light of nature and the law of that
religion they do profess ; " yet, if the Westminster Cate-
chism, and the system of theology which it represents, be
true, they cannot be saved in any way whatsoever, and
" to assert and maintain that they may is very pernicious
and to be detested."
One of the charges brought in 1874 against Rev. David
Swing of Chicago, on his trial for heresy, was that he
had used language contrary to this section of the Confes-
sion of Faith : —
" He [David Swing] has used language in respect to Penelope
and Socrates which is unwarrantable and contrary to the teach-
ings of the Confession of Faith, Chap. X. Sec. iv. ; that is to say,
in his sermon entitled ' Soul Culture' the following passage
occurs: 'There is no doubt the notorious Catherine H. held
more truth and better truth than was known to all classic Greece
— held to a belief in a Saviour, of whose glory that gifted land
knew nought; and yet such is the grandeur of soul above mind,
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 123
that I doubt not that Queen Penelope, of the dark land, and the
doubting Socrates have found at heaven's gate a sweeter wel-
come, sung of angels, than greeted the ear of Russia's brilliant
but false-lived queen.'" {Specification 12.)
No matter what tlie purity and moral altitude of a
heathen soul may be, " the heathen in mass," according
to Dr. A. A. Hodge of Princeton, " with no single definite
and unquestionable exception on record, are evidently
strangers to God, and going to death in an unsaved con-
dition." 1
Precisely the same rules which exclude Penelope, Soc-
rates, Epictetus, Plato, Plutarch, Confucius, and Gautama,
exclude also Channing, Emerson, Parker, Garrison, Lin-
coln, Longfellow, Spinoza, Humboldt, Darwin, and a
numerous host of " the moral," " the honest," " the ben-
evolent," and " the amiable," from the joys of the future
life. It is therefore clear, according to Orthodoxy, that
God not only chooses but a few from the whole race to be
saved, but that he ignores all actual moral distinctions in
selecting this number, and therefore but a small percent-
age of the good can reach heaven.
The moral enormity of this doctrine is thus clearly
exhibited in the inevitable conclusion to which it leads,
that not only the great majority of the race, but the great
majority of the good^ are doomed to endless woe.
S. The State of the Doomed,
It is not merely the number and the character of the
majority that make this doctrine hideous, but it is the
nature and extent of the doom they suffer — a misery in-
describable in its severity and uneiiding in its duration.
It is a sufficient condemnation of the Orthodox view of
God that, in dooming the great majority of the race, his
practical and moral government of the universe is proved
1 Com. on Conf. of Faith, p. 242.
124 THE DOOM OF THE
to be a failure. It is a still greater condemnation of the
system that God is represented as ignoring all practical
moral distinctions in choosing the saved, while he violates
the principles of justice and mercy in condemning the
lost; but the climax of injustice is not reached until we
remember the utter horror and endlessness of the misery
to which they are consigned.
We have directed this treatise against a point in regard
to which Orthodoxy seems to have developed an unex-
pected sensitiveness. Certain modern Calvinists are in-
dignant that Orthodoxy should be represented as teaching
that the majority are doomed, while they manifest no
indignation whatever at the nature and extent of the
doom which this majority must suffer. Yet it is the
severity and endlessness of the punishment which makes
the number of its victims of importance.
Dr. William Rankin Duryee has said that "so far as
sentiment goes, one soul eternally lost is as painful to
contemplate as ten million souls." ^ It depends somewhat
upon the nature of the sentiment invoked. The senti-
ment of justice has a problem to deal with in considering
why God should create the greater part of the human
race simply to damn them for his glory, which it does not
have in considering tlie damnation of a single unrepentant
soul; but to the sentiment of pity we do not know
which seems more pathetic, to contemplate billions of
human souls in endless torment, or to think of a single
lost soul left in utter loneliness in the eternal abyss.
Perhaps, if we had the ingenuity of Emmons, we mij^ht
discover a flickering indication of divine benevolence in
the very fact that God, out of pity to the few, damns the
vast majority, that they may enjoy toofether that company
which misery is said to love. " Solitude," says Donne,
"is a torment which is not threatened in hell itself." ^
1 Christian Intelligencer, Feb. 14, 1883.
'-^ Works, vol. iii. p 518.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 126
Certainly not, if we accept the official estimates of the
American Board as to the number of souls hell contains —
estimates based on accepted data of Orthodox theology.
One of the Schoolmen, quoted by Donne, declared, how-
ever, that hell could not be possibly above three thousand
miles in compass, and that one of the torments of that
place would be its crowded state.^ And it is apparent
tliat neither Emmons nor Edwards, nor any modern expo-
nent of the horrors of that place, intends that we shall
derive any comfort from the fact of numbers.
It is evident, therefore, Dr. Duryee being our witness,
that no mere alteration in the number of the lost can
remove the darkness of the destiny to which the lost are
consigned. Upon this point Calvinism and Arminianism
stand on the same plane. Arminianism has nobly pro-
tested against the doom of the majority, but it has failed
to protest against the doom of the minority. It has sought
to make God less cruel and vindictive, it has endeavored
to throw the responsibility of future punishment upon
man instead of God, it has recoiled with indignation
from the doctrine of reprobation, it has refused to believe
in the condemnation of the heathen in mass, it has offered
the atonement to all; but, with individual exceptions,
Arminianism has taught, and still teaches, the endless
misery of all those who fail, during a probation confined
to this life, to accept the gospel. Methodism has been the
resolute opponent of Universalism ; it has vied with Cal-
vinism in depicting, with lurid and painful particularity,
the fearful and unending state of those who fall into hell.
If it were the purpose of this treatise to show what Evan-
gelical denominations have taught concerning the horrors
of hell, we should hardly know whether Arminian or
Calvinistic annals furnished the more abundant material.
The prominence which this doctrine has had in both sys-
tems, and the frequency with which its terrors have been
1 Works, vol. iii. p. 325.
fui^lVEESITT?
126 THE DOOM OF THE
exposed, render any further delineation of its physical and
mental horrors unnecessary. It has been the especial task
of those who have believed in an endless hell to exhibit,
for greater effect, the agonies it imposes on its victims.
The books, sermons, and tracts which have been printed
to illustrate it would fill a good-sized library; and we
may thank heaven that by far the larger part of the myr-
iads of sermons preached to propagate it have escaped
the printing-press and suffered a just oblivion. A brief
reference to the titles collected by Dr. Abbot, in his Bibli-
ography of the Future Life already referred to, will show
how many treatises have been devoted to the special work
of depicting endless horrors. Jonathan Edwards is more
widely known to-day for his famous descriptions of hell-
torment than for other things which deserve belter to be
remembered. The resources of human ingenuity and of
human language seem to have been exhausted in inventing
forms of torture through which the divine wrath may be
exhibited during the unending cycles of eternity.
At the present day dehneations of the physical terrors
of hell are less common. Only the uneducated perhaps
would maintain with Charles Wesley that —
" A real, fiery, sulphurous hell
Shall prey upon our outward frame; "
(Hymns on God's Everlasting Love, Hymn xi. p. 23.)
But the Orthodox conviction of the severity of the tor-
ture has been in no degree relaxed. Its form has been
changed only to add to its intensity; and those who
no longer believe in a physical fire still assert with
Wesley : —
"But sorer pangs the soul shall feel
Tormented in a fiercer flame."
It matters little whether we are taught that the damned
are forever burned in a lake of fire and brimstone, whether
they are remanded to the tortures of a Satanic persecutor,
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 127
who shares with God the glory of their pain ; or whether
they are simply abandoned to the more excruciating tor-
tures of a sleepless conscience, or affections lacerated by
eternal separation from all that is lovable. In any case
the suffering is represented as the most extreme that the
human mind can conceive, while its duration is described
as absolutely unending.
If, as we have said, it has been the especial task of
believers in an endless hell to expose the physical and
mental horrors of the doctrine they have taught, it has
been reserved for those who oppose the doctrine to point
out its moral enormities. If the pictures drawn of the
state of the damned are horrible, the picture of God pr
gented is still more horrible. We cannot avoid the
conviction that the damned are morally superior to a God
who, with malignant hate or cruel indifference, would
consign them to a fate which they have in no measure
deserved. All attempts to found this doctrine upon
rational premises utterly fail. It is in its very nature
irrational and arbitrary ; and it can only exist under the
suf)i)osition that God is a tyrant to be feared, and not a
Father to be loved and obeyed.
The conception of law is totally opposed to a punish-
ment which is lawless in its execution ; and all ethical
considerations are violated when we find God meting out
infinite punishment for a finite sin. Of all the lame
apologies which Orthodoxy has been driven to make in
its behalf, none avail to remove the fearful moral diffi-
culties of this doctrine, and the terrible reproach it casts
upon the character of God.
That retribution for acts done in this life may extend
to the next, and that the vast majority of mankind may
have much to repent of, we do not deny. Such a concep-
tion is rational and ethical ; but it is the fearful curse of
endless woe that makes future punishment hideous. It
assumes that evil must forever continue in the universe,
128 THE DOOM OF THE
and that Infinite Goodness has no power to subdue it ; or
if God's power be acknowledged, it assumes that he is not
willing to exert it, and thus while his power abides, his
goodness perishes.
The doctrine of endless punishment, and the idea of
God that accompanies it, belongs to an age that is past —
an age of superstition and cruelty. It is a belief which
could never yield the fruits of righteousness and peace.
It does not draw men toward God ; it drives them from
him. Its practical results have been such as we might
expect from so cruel a theory. Rev. Stopford Brooke
justly claims that "the doctrine of eternal punishment
ought to be denied because of its evil fruits."
*' A good tree does not bring forth corrupt fruit, and we owe
to this doctrine all the slaughter and cruelty done by alternately
triumphant sects in the name of God. It gave birth to the
Inquisition ; it drove the Jews to unutterable misery ; it burnt
thousands of innocent men and women for witchcraft ; it tor-
tured and rent the bodies and souls of men ; it depopulated fertile
lands ; it ruined nations ; it kept the world for centuries in dark-
ness, held back civilization, and in all ages urged on the dogs
of cruelty and fanaticism to their accursed hunting." {Eternal
Punishment : a sermon, preached at Bedford Chapel, London,
Nov. 5, 1882.)
None too severe is this bold arraignment. If this
doctrine has not always been the direct and immediate
cause of such cruelties, it has sprung from the very spirit
that created them, and has powerfully assisted in their
perpetuation. Men have appealed to the cruelty of God
to justify the cruelties which they have wrought with their
own hands. And what are the practical effects of the doc-
trine to-day ? Mr. Brooke has observed them in England
and thus speaks : —
" Those were its fruits in the past, and on this account we
ought to deny its truth. But now we ought to fight against its
lies day by day; for we who do not believe it have no notion of
the harm it is doing to those who do believe it. We are bound
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 129
to contend against it if we have any desire that a nobler Christi-
anity should prevail among men, for its teaching drives men into
infidelity and atheism. The less educated classes — who yet feel
strongly, and more strongly than the educated, the things of the
conscience and the heart — say that it denies all their moral in-
stincts. And so it does. It makes them look on God as an
unreasoning and capricious tyrant, and they turn from him with
dread and hate. It makes them consider the story of redemption
as either a weak effort on the part of an incapable God to save
man, or as mockery by him of his creatures, on the plea of a
love which they see as derisive, and a justice which they see
as favoritism. And till we free the teachings of Christianity
from this doctrine, religious teachers will still continue to give,
as they do now, the greatest impulse to infidelity among the
working-classes, an impulse much greater than any given by
all the materialism of philosophers or all the mouthing of
iconoclasts." (lb.)
There are grateful signs that this doctrine is losing its
hold upon the popular mind. The Evangelical churches
find it less politic to use it as an aggressive weapon.
Formerly the doctrine was used to defend the authority
of the Church ; at present the Church is obliged to defend
the authority of the doctrine. It still stands in all its
grimness on the church creeds, but apologies are required
for its presence there. One of them lies before us. It is
a tract entitled "Eternal Destruction," issued by the
Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, in 1882,
to show "that eternal death, or everlasting destruction, is
both reasonable and necessary, as the highest penalty
under the divine government." " Our object," says the
author, "is rather to tone up the faith and correct the
errors of many who, while professing to hold fast to the
doctrine of future punishment as set forth in the creeds
of the Evangelical churches, do it, nevertheless, with
apparent misgivings, and when they speak of it are wont
to say in substance that it is a terrible mystery that such
a doctrine is contained in a revelation from the God of
130 THE DOOM OF THE
infinite love, and that they could not receive it were it
not for the positive teaching of inspiration. If they at-
tempt to use the terrors of future retribution as a part of
God's message to sinful men, they do it so ddlcately^ and
with such softening circumlocution, as fairly to suggest
tliat either the Evangelical ministry of the present day do
not half believe the doctrine of endless punishment, or
that they have not the courage to preach it. And those
who repeat this saying care perhaps very little which of
these alternatives is true, for the want of courage to de-
clare one's convictions must imply that such opinions are
passing out of the general belief of the community."
Tliat such a defence should be necessary shows the
higher ethical demand which compels it. That the Presby-
terian Board should be willing to make it, shows, on the
other hand, the tenacity with which this doctrine is clung
to as an essential part of the Orthodox system. It is a
belief which is destined to die, but not without a long
struggle. It behooves those who have once held it, to
make a continued and earnest effort to relieve other minces
of the darkness which it casts over the horizon of life.
There is no surer way of contributing to its extinction,
than by insisting that ethics shall have the authority in
tlieology that it has in common life. Theology has prac-
tically ignored the profoundest moral relations. It can-
not regain its authority until it bows to the moral law
that it has ignored.
VII.
The Solution.
It would be a painful task to expose the " dark and
awful " features of the doom of the majority, if we did
not know that there is a brighter and nobler view of God
and human destiny which should displace it. It is un-
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 131
doubtedly true, as we have said before, that the great mass>
who hold this doctrine, only nominally believe it. It does
not affect their happiness, because they never realize its
fearful import. Human nature has other resources besides
logic vvitli which to protect itself against superstition. As
a bullet may be encysted in the body, so a painful and un- ^
natural belief may become encysted in the mind. Yet there
are thousands of devout, earnest, and thoughtful people
who are periodically sensible of the oppressive weight of
this dogma. They would gladly be relieved of the bur-
den if they could but see how it might be rolled off. To
such minds Orthodoxy offers no help. The logical super-
structure of Orthodoxy has been carefully built. So long
as the foundation premises are acknowledged, its conclu-
sions inevitably follow. The whole system is based on an
ancient but palpably false conception of the universe. The
false premises must be removed before we can expect to
destroy the false conclusions.
In denying the premises of Orthodoxy we do not, ne-
cessarily, deny those of Christianity. The fundamental
principles of all religions are far deeper than the theo-
logical systems that are built upon them. Indeed, it is
by a re-assertion of essentially Christian principles that
we find a corrective for many of the errors that have
been taught in Christianity's name. Infant damnation,
for instance, is historically a dogma of Christian theology;
yet nothing could be more diametrically opposed to the
original principles of the Christian religion. If the gos-
pels be not a lie, Jesus treated little children as if they
were the offspring of God, not as if they were the oft-
§prin<r of the devil.
What, then, is the natural, rational, and ethical relief
for this doctrine of the doom of the majority? It is not
one of our own invention. If it were simply a private
and personal solution we should hesitate to offer it ; but
it is one towards which the spirit of the age is irresistibly
132 THE DOOM OF THE
moving. We are merely reporting its utterances. It is
a solution which is an outgrowth of broader and healthier
conceptions of God and humanity, and a more enlightened
view of the functions of reason, ethics, and religion. We
have not space to unfold it at length ; we can only briefly
indicate some directions in which its influence is evident.
1, A More Enlightened View of the JBible.
The doctrine we have endeavored to refute is not a con-
genial one to the reason or the heart. It would promptly
be abandoned by the majority who hold it, if it were
not supposed to rest on Biblical authority. The creeds
which contain it are authoritative mainly because they
are presumed to be a correct exposition of the Bible on
the points they cover. Hence, in the endeavor to refute
the Orthodox view of this doctrine, much attention has
been necessarily directed towards a better interpretation
of the Scriptures. The discussion has long been waged on
the battle-ground of exegesis. Tliis has not been without
valuable and helpful results. Unfortunately, however, it
has usually been conducted under the limitations imposed
by an erroneous view of the Bible itself. It has been
assumed that there is no appeal from its acknowledged
teaching; that it concludes all debate on the subjects of
which it speaks ; that it is divinely inspired and infallible.
Bound by this view of the infallibility and dominant au-
thority of this collection of books, the only resource which
has been left to those who accept it, when struggling
against doubtful or uncongenial teachings, has been to
exercise a desperate ingenuity in the interpretation of
texts. The temptation has been strong on one side to
admit only traditional interpretations, or those which har-
monized wdth an accepted theological system ; on the other
side, the temptation has been to make the Bible mean
always what we would like to have it mean. The integ-
rity of the intellect has been sacrificed to quiet the moral
MAJORITY. OF MANKIND. 133
sense or to allay disturbed emotions. Much has been read
into the book that does not belong there, and much has
been lead out of it that it really teaches. This has been
occasioned wholly by the unjust claims made in its behalf,
and the artifices to which men have resorted in evading
them.
In an address which excited wide attention, and which
led to the debate on the special topic of this book. Rev.
George E. Ellis, D.D.,^ said with great truth : —
" Orthodoxy cannot readjust its creed till it readjusts its estimate
of the Scriptures. The only relief which one who professes the
Orthodox creed can find, is either by forcing his ingenuity into
the proof-texts or indulging his liberty outside of them. All the
most vital and searching forces now at work in their bearing
upon themes of loftiest import to man demand, and are working
toward, the intelligent and fearless reconsideration of the ac-
cepted view of the Bible, which opens the most teasing contro-
versies, which deals with them all in a most unsatisfactory way,
and leaves them all unsettled, if not more perplexed.
" Here is a volume of miscellaneous and heterogeneous con-
tents, some of them written we know not when, where, or by
whom, all of which are unified as from one divine source and
authority. In that volume is matter, instruction, warning,
precept, and promise of priceless and transcendent value for the
life and the hope of man. For that, it is consecrated and
bedewed with the most sacred of human affections. Because
of such contents, that book has become to Christendom a
gracious gift of God. We refer to its influence, with that of
the steady progress of material and physical science which it
has helped to quicken and guide, — all the most elevating, refin-
ing, beneficent, and regenerating agencies which are advancing
and redeeming humanity.
" Now look at that book from the other side, as what is called
Church History centres around it. There are matters in that book
1 " The Position of the Liberal Body as affected by the Rupture '
in the Orthodox Body of Congregationalists," Christian Register, Nov.
16, 1882. See also additional statements of Dr. Ellis in issues of the
same paper for Nov. 23, 1882 ; Jan. 18, 1883.
134 THE DOOM OF THE
which, if they have not been the cause, have been the occasion,
the agency, the instrumentality, backed by an assumed divine
warrant, of strifes, feuds, superstitions, persecutions, barbari-
ties, and atrocities of every staiji and hue, which have strewn
the world for ages with wrecks of woe and agony. I will not
fill up that outline. I shudder over the summary ; and I cannot
challenge the charge which assigns all this to the estimate and
use of the less lovely, the less benedictive lessons of the Bible.
President Mather of our young college, for many years the most
eminent and honored man, citizen, and divine in this colony,
expressly taught that the divine command to the Israelites to
exterminate the Canaanites was a full warrant for the desolation
of our Indian tribes. Search to the bottom the history of that
delirium of dread and frenzy and outrage which we call the
witchcraft delusion here, nearly two centuries ago. You will
find but a single palliation for the agency of good and upright
men in those horrors. Judges, witnesses, yes, even the victims,
read in a book — which they had all been taught to believe, and
did believe, was written by the finger of God — this sentence :
* Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.'
"It is not alleged by any one that there is a single sentence
in that book which was written with intent to deceive or mis-
lead. But there is much in it, with the authority and purpose
claimed for it, which has grievously misled many of the best of
our race, and which does so now. A steadily increasing number
of persons of all grades and classes in intelligence, sincerity,
and devoutness, leave that book from year to year through a long
life unopened. Not as preachers complacently say, because of
their sin-hardened hearts, for very many of them are seeking
and longing for some blessed religious guidance. It is because
what they remember and hear said about the book, as coming
direct from God, perplexes, astounds, and shocks them. Theie
are those who continue to be readers, and who share those feel-
ings, publishing their doubts and denials, often with ridicule and
scorn. They find in the book commands, purposes, and acts
assigned to God, at which they would shudder if ascribed to
heathen deities. Standing on this modern earth and beneath
these ancient heavens, men boldly, sometimes sadly, say that
there are assertions and statements in that book which they know
positively to be untrue, — untrue to fact, to history, to the verities
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 135
of nature and life, to the attributes and rule of the Being to
whom their loftiest and most devout convictions rise as the God
over all. A clerical discussion upou the point whether Scripture
texts can be interpreted so as to allow a hope for idiots, infants,
and heathen, who have had an ' imperfect probation ' here,
does not reach to their relief. When a few of those texts are
alleged as certifying that the vast majority of the human race
are to be the victims of endless woe, the questions cannot be
silenced: ' Who wrote those words, and with what authority ?
Were they correctly reported and duly certified ? ' "
In these words Dr. Ellis goes to the very bottom of the
difficulty. A scholarly, conscientious exegesis may furnish
some relief; but no adequate and satisfactory solution is
possible until the Orthodox estimate of the inspiration and
infallibility of the Bible is revised. Justice to those who
wrote these books, as well as to those who read them,
requires such a revision. A candid study of the book
shows, we believe, that the Orthodox view of the Bible is
not taught in the Bible itself. Like the doctrine of the
Trinity, it is something imposed upon it.
Before we can test anything by the Bible, we must test
the Bible itself. The tests we may employ are threefold
— historical, rational, and ethical.
THE HISTORICAL TEST.
Whence, when, and how, we must ask, did this collection
of books come ? Who wrote them, whom did they address,
and to what end ? How was this collection put together,
under what influences, and by whose decision ?
The simple historical answer, which we cannot present
in detail, shows that the Bible grew up precisely as other
sacred books grew, — that, while it records miraculous
events, it has no miraculous history itself. It was written
in Hebrew and Greek, by different men of widely different
character, during an interval of a thousand years. The
original manuscripts have not been preserved. The copies
136 THE DOOM OF THE
that exist vary suiRciently to make an infallible text impos-
sible. No truthful man can put a copy of the Greek or
of the Hebrew Testament into the hands of a reader of
these languages, and say, "Here is the book just as it
was originally written." There are many manuscripts to
choose from, and the best Hebrew and Greek text of the
Bible is that which shows the best human judgment and
the widest and most accurate scholarship in its selection.
Still further, historical research shows that the books
which compose the Bible were not bound together by the
command or indication of God ; they were selected by
men. We have no evidence that the judgment of Christi.in
communities, leaders, or councils was infallible. On the
contrary, the Christian Church has never agreed as to
the number and selection of books which constitute the
Bible. Thus, Augustine had one Bible, and Jerome
another; the Roman Church has one Bible, and the Prot-
estant another ; the Swedenborgians one Bible, and the
Orthodox another. The history of the formation of the
Bible Canon is a refutation of the claim that is made for
the infallibility of the book. " It is clear," says Dr. Samuel
Davidson,^ " that the earliest Church Fathers did not use
the books of the New Testament as sacred documents
clothed with divine authority, but followed for the most
part, at least till the middle of the second century, apos-
tolic tradition orally transmitted. They were not solicit-
ous about a Canon circumscribed within certain limits."
And in regard to the principle which guided selection
Dr. Davidson says: —
'' The exact principles that guided the formation of a Canon
in the earliest centuries cannot be discovered. Definite grounds
for the reception or rejection of books were not very clearly
apprehended. The choice was determined by various circum-
stances, of which apostolic origin was the chief, though this
1 Article on " The Canon," in Encydopoedia Britannica, nint'u ed.,
vol. V. pp. 9, 10.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 137
itself was insufficiently attested ; for, if it be asked whether all
tiie New Testament writings proceeded from the authors whose
names they bear, criticism cannot reply in the affirmative. . . .
" Inste9,d of attributing the formation of the Canon to the
Church, it would be more correct to say that the important stage
in it was due to three teachers, each working separately and in
his own way, who were intent upon the creation of a Christian
society which did not appear in the apostolic age, — a visible
organization united in faith, — where the discordant opinions of
apostolic and sub-apostolic times should be finally merged. The
Canon was not the work of the Christian Church, so much as
of the men who were striving to form that Church, and could
not get beyond the mould received by primitive Christian
literature."
Lutlier exercised the right of private judgment very
freely in regard to tlie books which should compose the
Bible. Esther, he thought, did not properly belong to it.
The Apocalypse he " considered neither apostolic nor
prophetic, but put it almost on the same level with the
Fourth Book of Esdras, which he spoke elsewhere of toss-
ing into the Elbe." ^ The Epistle of James he thought
an "epistle of straw;" and he denied apostolic authorship
to James, Jude, and Hebrews. If Luther could be so
free and independent in judging the authority of whole
books, why may we not judge with equal freedom the
authority of special texts ?
If God had seen fit to make an infallible book, we may
be certain that he would have surely indicated what books
or chapters should belong to it, and that he would not
have left its interpretation such a doubtful matter. The
Roman Catholic Church has consistently maintained that
an infallible interpretation is necessary to an infallible
revelation.
It is evident therefore, on external and historic groundsj
that there is not the slightest foundation on which to build
this dogma of Protestantism.
1 Ibid., p. 14.
138 THE DOOM OF THE
THE RATIONAL TEST.
If there is no external authority for the interpretation
of the Bible, we must judge it by its contents. We must
apply to it precisely the same tests that we apply to all
other books. If the Bible appeals to reason, we must
judge it by the laws of reason. If the Bible contradicts
reason, reason may justly contradict the Bible.
Bishop Butler clearly recognized the rational test : —
" I express myself with caution, lest I should be mistaken to
vilify reason; which is indeed the only faculty we have where-
with to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself; or be
misunderstood to assert, that a supposed revelation cannot be
proved false fiom internal characters. For it may contain clear
immoralities or contradictions; and either of these would prove
it false." (Butler's Analogy, Part II. ch. iii. p. 219, Bohn's Ed.)
Again : —
" Reason can, and it ought to judge, not only of the meaning,
but also of the morality and the evidence of revelation." {Ih.
p. 229.)
Dr. Channingdid noble service in maintaining the office
of reason in testing and interpreting the Bible. " How,"
he asked, "is the right of interpretation, the real meaning
\ of Scriptures, to be ascertained ? I answer, By Reason.
/ I know of no process by which the true sense of the New
/ Testament is to pass from the page into ray mind without
the use of my rational faculties. In truth, no book can
be written so simply as to need no exercise of reason."
In another passage. Dr. Channing says: —
" If I could not be Christian without ceasing to be rational,
I should not hesitate as to my choice. I feel myself bound to
sacrifice to Christianity property, reputation, and life ; but I
ought not to sacrifice to any religion that reason which lifts me
above the brute and constitutes me a man. I can conceive no
sacrilege gr- iter than to prostrate or renounce the highest fac-
ulty which wb have derived from God. In so doing, we should
offer violence to the divinity within us." (^Christianity a Rational
Religion.)
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 139
Again, in the same paper, he said : " We must never
forget that our rational nature is the greatest gift of God.
For this, we owe him our chief gratitude. It is a greater
gift than any outward aid or benefaction^ and no doctrine
which degrades it can come from its Author."
On this ground, which Channing took, we may main-
tain a firm stand. The Bible is a noble gift from humanity
to humanity ; but reason is still nobler and diviner, because
it is the witness we have that we are the offspring of the
Eternal Mind.
It is clear that reason must use to-day all the light that
eighteen centuries of increased knowledge may throw
upon the topics which the Bible treats. We need no
longer turn to Genesis to learn the story of the creation
of the world or the origin of man, or to explain the
diversity of human speech. Modern science can read the
story of creation more correctly from a still older Genesis.
Historical questions are to be determined by untrammeled
historical criticism, and all questions involving rational
judgment are to be decided on rational principles, or by
appeals to human experience.
Some years ago the writer attended a prolonged debate
in Utah, between Orson Pratt and Rev. Dr. J. P. Newman,
on the subject, " Does the Bible sanction Polygamy ? " The
Mormon marshalled texts with considerable skill, and the
debate concluded with a hot battle over the interpretation
of a certain text in Leviticus, which began with a " Thus
saith the Lord," the one side contending that it prohibited
polygamy, and the other that it permitted it; and the
Plebrew language suffered evident violence in the en-
deavor to make it mean one thing or the other. It was a
striking proof of the futility of appealing to an infallible
book without an infallible interpretation. ^ rational
method would have transferred the discussion to another
field, and decided it not by a text in Leviticus, but by the
common sense, the moral judgments, and the experience
of humanity.
140 THE DOOM OF THE
THE ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEST.
If reason is necessary to test the truth or error of any
given part of the Bible, the ethical and religious test is
still more necessary. We must decline to accept as au-
thoritatioe any interpretation of the Bihle^ he it true or
false, which affronts the moral sense of humanity or im-
pugns the righteousness of God.
The savage barbarities of the early Hebrews, for in-
stance, in the slaughter of their enemies, are defended
because done by divine command. We apply the ethical
test, and are forced to decide that God Qould not and did
not command any such atrocities. They are sufficiently
explained by the existence and unrighteous manifestation
of human passions, and find sad parallels even in our own
day. We cannot suppose that God ever literally com-
manded a Hebrew father to sacrifice his child upon an
altar, even if merely to try his faith. The story of Abra-
ham is an illustration of the ruling idea of early ages; and
we see how the patriarch, in climbing the mountain,
reached also higher and truer ideas of God. The moral
standard of the early Hebrews was lower than that we
accept to-day, and therefore is not to be received as au-
thoritative, unless confirmed or corrected by later and
higher tests.
It is from a failure to apply the ethical test to the Bible,
that Orthodoxy has reared upon it a theological system
which, as Channing well said, " owes its perpetuity to the
influence of fear in palsying the moral nature." "Its
errors are peculiarly mournful, because they relate to the
character of God. It darkens and stains his pure nature,
spoils his character of its sacredness, loveliness, glory, and
thus quenches the central light of the universe, makes
existence a curse, and the extinction of it a consummatian
devoutly to be wished." ^
1 Moral Argument against Calvinism.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 141
The moral darkness of that system is sufficiently illus-
trated and abundantly acknowledged in the evidence we
have presented in relation to this doctrine. In justice to
the Bible, it may be necessary critically to study its pages
to see if it teaches it ; but, when we are asked to decide
about the truth of the doctrine itself, exegesis has nothing
to do with it. The dogma must be tried at the bar of
reason and conscience ; and, when these condemn it,
its doom is sealed. The Bible is not the test of Ethics,
but Ethics must be the test of the Bible. Says Dr.
Channing : —
"Reason must prescribe the tests or standards to which a
professed communication from God should be referred; and,
among these, none are more important than the moral law which
belongs to the very essence and is the deepest conviction of the
rational nature." (^Christianity a Rational Religion.^
" How dangerous it is to read the Scriptures without carrying
into their interpretation our reason and the light of conscience !
. . . The free, bold language of the Apostle has been perverted
from its original significance, and made to support a system
which reason and conscience revolt from, and which transforms
Christianity from the gospel of glad tidings into the saddest
message ever preached." {The Universal Father.)
IS THE BIBLE AN ORTHODOX BOOK?
Not until we have put aside, as unbiblical, unreasonable,
and untenable, the Orthodox view of the nature and
origin of the Bible, and are prepared to treat it simply as a
collection of religious and historical books of purely human
origin, resting on the same basis with all other religious
books, are we in a position to ask what the Bible is, and
what it teaches. Only then can we approach it without
theological bias. We shall then find that it does not teach
the system of Orthodoxy, or any exact system of theology.
The doctrinal unity of the book is utterly broken. It was
written at different times, by different men, under the
142 THE DOOM OF THE
influence of different ideas. It shows growth, develop-
ment, diversity. A monotheistic conception dominates
both of its divisions ; but there is just as much difference
between Jahveh, the jealous God of the early Hebrews,
and the tender, loving Father whom Jesus worshipped,
as there is between the God of Calvin and the God of
Channing. The Canticles have no more reference to
Jesus than have Virgil's Eclogues. The writer of the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah no more thought of Jesus,
when he wrote that chapter, than he thought of Abraham
Lincoln ; and the lesson of the chapter is as applicable to
one as to the other, illustrating a grand truth which the
whole history of the world plainly reveals, that " without
shedding of blood there is no remission." Only through
the blood of its martyrs has humanity been lifted to a
higher plane of truth. Difference, diversity, opposition,
and development are seen in the New Testament. Paul
did not teach the miraculous birth of Jesus ; the Synoptics
do not give the speculations of Paul ; while the Gospel of
John, written under Grecian influence, presents a differ-
ent view of Jesus from the more Hebraic one of the
Synoptics.
Though it would be unjust to Orthodoxy to say that
none of its doctrines can be supported by Biblical texts,
and that some of them are not natural growths on Bib-
lical soil, yet we believe that the Bible, taken without the
constraint of this theory of infallibility, and interpreted
on the same principles on which we should determine the
meaning of a Greek or Latin classical author, does not
yield the Orthodox system.
There is another branch of study which greatly helps
in decidinor this question, and that is the department of
Church History. When we interrogate it, we find that
Orthodoxy, as a system, has not sprung full-formed from
the Bible, but that it is of much later origin and growth.
An effectual refutation of many of its errors is found
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 143
when we trace them back to their inception, and note the
influences that have shaped them, and the false premises
on which they are based. The doctrines of the Trinity,
the deity of Jesus, total depravity, the atonement, endless
])unishment, the infallibility of the Bible, — in short, the
very doctrines which Orthodoxy still regards as essential,
— are all subjects of post-Biblical growth and develop-
ment. In regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, for in-
stance, supposed by Orthodoxy to be fundamental, there
is not one passage in the Bible, from Genesis to Revela-
tion, which can be imagined to be a statement of it ; which
even sounds like saying "in the unity of the Godhead
there are three persons, the same in substance, equal in
power and glory." Not only is there no clear passage in
which any writer of the New Testament, speaking in his
own name, has called Jesus Christ God, in any sense, but
on the contrary, he is everywhere as clearly distinguished
from the "One God, the Father," as a distinct person or
being, in the ordinary sense of the words person or
being, as Peter is from John. He is everywhere repre-
sented, not as " equal in power and glory" to God, but as
subordinate to him and dependent upon him. If Jesus
Christ were to return to the earth to-day we believe he
would be profoundly surprised at the Christianity which
has been and still is taught in his name. His own disci-
ples misunderstood him ; and humanity has repeated,
perpetuated, and multiplied their mistakes. The Bible
has been a quarry to which men could go and, when-
ever they needed, find a text as the corner-stone for some
doctrinal theory. The stones thus wrenched from the
original strata have been shaped and fashioned in church-
councils, synods, presbyteries, and in the brains of profes-
sional theologians. From age to age the design of the
edifice has been changed, and redecorated and elaborated.
John Calvin was the master architect who rebuilt the
system, and secured for it his name. When we compare
144 THE DOOM OF THE
the Calvinistic system with the Christian one, they differ
as much as a mediaeval cathedral differs from the bound-
less sky under whose well-beloved benediction Jesus
delighted to preach. Calvinism can only accommodate
a few ; Christianity is large enough for all.
Whatever appeals may be made to the strong Oriental
imagery of special texts of the New Testament, in which
the idea of retribution is figured, the number of Christians
is increasing who refuse to believe that he who preached
the beatitudes, and told the parables of the Good Samari-
tan, the Prodigal Son, and the Ninety and Nine, ever
meant to teach either the damnation of the majority or
the endless misery of a single human soul.
The assumption of the infallibility of the Bible, and
the kindred assumption of the infallibility of the Pope,
both arose from the endeavor to preserve the authority of
the Church. One assumption is as insupportable as the
other, and we do not know which is the more mischievous.
Humanity will have nothing to lose, but everything to
gain, from abandoning them.
The Bible has been the test of Truth; now Truth must
be the test of the Bible. All that is just, pure, and true
in that book, all that helps and comforts, all that is in-
spired because it inspires, will be gratefully preserved.
Its errors, or the errors which have been built upon it, will
be gently and firmly laid aside. As Dr. Ellis has truly
said: "That the sanctities of that book may be retained,
the assumptions and superstitions associated with it must
be surrendered." ^
The removal of false notions concerning the absolute
authority of the Bible will lead to a more sympathetic
attitude toward the sacred literature of other peoples, and
the rehgions which they represent. The damnation of the
heathen has been frequently defended on account of their
idolatry. Even such a serious writer as Dr. Shedd, in his
1 Christian Register, Nov. 16, 1882.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 145
sermon on " The Guilt of the Pagan," presents this as one
charge in the indictment. Yet the conception of God
which the heathen often entertain is morally superior to
that of the God who is preached to them in the name
of Christianity. The idolatry of the heathen, instead of
establishing their guilt, is their vindication. It is but
another proof of the presence and aspiration of the
religious sentiment. The heathen who bows down to
wood and stone is more evidently human, more evidently
religious, than if he bowed to nothing.
This more sympathetic attitude towards other religions,
instead of diminishing our consciousness of the divine light
which shines upon the pages of the Hebrew-Christian
Bible, will help us to a recognition of the breadth,
fulness, and perpetuity of the divine manifestation.
There is an older and a larger Bible, whose Genesis was
"in the beginning" and whose Revelation has not closed.
Not only unto us, but unto all the nations, hath the Divine
Word spoken. God hath never left himself without wit-
ness, either in the works of nature or in the heart of
man.
We have quoted from Channing to show that this
rational and ethical test of the Bible was defended by his
illustrious pen. We cannot better close this chapter than
by reaffirming in his own words, from that admirable essay
on " God Revealed in the Universe and in Humanity,"
our conviction that the revelation of God is not confined
to the Christian Bible, but that it is as large as humanity,
as boundless as the universe : —
" Divine Wisdom is not shut up in anyone book. . . . We
cannot find language to express the worth of the illumination
thus given through Jesus Christ. But we shall err greatly if
we imagine that his gospel is the only light, that every ray comes
to us from a single book, that no splendors issue from God's
works and providence, that we have no teacher in religion but
the few pages bound up in our Bible. Jesus Christ came, not
10
146 THE DOOM OF THE
only to give us his peculiar teaching, but to introduce us to the
imperishable lessons which God forever furnishes in our own
and all human experience, and in the laws and movements of
the universe.
2. A Different Estimate of Human Nature.
Remove the stumbling-block of Biblical infallibility,
and theology will sooner or later adjust itself to the facts
of science and the demands of ethics. A more modern
view of the nature and origin of man will follow. If the
Bible be the architectural plan, the supposed fall of Adam
is the corner-stone on which the Orthodox system rests.
Take that away, and the logical superstructure falls. The
order for its removal has already been passed, and is
gradually being executed. This Semitic legend of the
introduction of sin into the world has exercised an im-
mense influence upon Cliristian theology. Its influence
has been exerted, not in what it teaches so much as in
what men have taught from it, — namely, that by this sin
our first parents "fell from their original righteousness
and communion with God, and so became dead in sin,
and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and
body; they being the root of all mankind, the guilt of
this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and cor-
ru))ted nature conveyed to all their posterity descending
from them by ordinary generation. P'rom this original
corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled,
and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all
evil, do proceed all actual transgressions." ^
The additions which have been made to the original
legend may be seen by comparing this version of the
Westminster Confession with the version in Genesis.
It is this sin of Adam which calls down the wrath of
God, opens the pit of an endless hell, and requires an
infinite atonement.
1 Westminster Confession, VI. ii.-iv.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 147
"Wlien, however, we learn that the story is simply a
legend^ and not tlie record of a fact, the poetry reinains,
but the horrible consequences disappear. Viewed through
the light of science, and the revelations of history and
philosophy, human nature is seen to be not ruined, but
incomplete. Humanity has not hopelessly fallen ; it has
ascended by slow and toilsome climbing the lofty spiral
of history. It has suffered checks and, in different
branches, retrogression ; but age by age its progress has
been upward and onward toward the attainment of ideals
which God has not failed to reveal to it. No curse of
God flows in the blood of humanity, for " in him we live
and move and have our being," " for we also are his
offspring."
This rational view of the origin of human nature and
its education and development lights up the whole track
of history, displays the method of God in the education
of the race, and, instead of hanging a dnrk pall over the
unknown future, paints the prospect before us in cheerful
colors of hope and trust.
There is a divine element in human nature, revealing to
us our kinship with the Eternal. There are instincts,
aspirations, and affections in the soul, which prophesy
growth and development. It may be through the disci-
pline of pain, through unremitting strugcrle ; but it shall
climb on the trellis which God has raised for it, and bear
fruit in future ages on a higher plane. Onr faith in the
destiny of humanity is planted deepjly in our confidence
in God.
3. A Nobler View of God,
Our thought of God should ever be the product of our
liighest and best ideals. Under Calvinism this is not ])os-
sible. God is surrounded by clouds and darkness; his
moral glory is eclipsed. A more just conception of the
character of God and his relation to humanity will require
148 THE DOOM OF THE
a complete revision of the traditional theology. We can-
not be satisfied with any representation of God which
makes him less just, true, and good than humanity. As
Dr. Ellis ^ truly says: '' Tliere cannot be two kinds of
justice, for God and man, any more than there can be
two kinds of mathematics, for measuring the fields of the
earth and the spaces of the sky." Our thought of God at
best is incomplete and imperfect. It is bounded by the
limitations of our nature. It must be to a great degree
anthropomorphic. The frames in which we picture God
as ruler, governor, creator, judge, cannot bound his in-
finitude. A lai-ger and more grateful conception is that
of the Divine Fatherhood or Motherhood. It is meta-
phoric, limited, incomplete, as any image of human rela-
tions must be when reflected upon the truth, beauty, and
goodness of the Eternal Perfection ; but it expresses more
fully than political or judicial metaphors the nature of
our relations to God. We are born of the life of God ;
nurtured and sustained by his care, educated by his laws,
corrected by his discipline, guided by his providence, and
redeemed by his love. It was under the image of the
fatherhood of God that Jesus conveyed his most touching
lessons of the divine attitude toward humanity. How
beautifully that love is pictured in the parable of the
Prodigal Son ! The father is not vindictive, cruel, or un-
forgivininr ; but when tlie son " was yet a great way off,
his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and fell
on his neck and kissed him." If historical Christianity
may be charged with presenting conceptions of God that
are nnw^orthy to be perpetuated, we must also gratefully
remember that it has likewise bequeathed to us tender
parables of the divine mercy and goodness, which shall
forever abide as proofs of the "light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The
parables of the Prodigal Son and the Ninety and Mne
1 Christian Register, Nov. 16, 1882.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 149
are far better pictures of the divine relations to the way-
ward and the " lost " than any of the cold, hard, creedal
statements of Evangelical theology. So long as he sins,
the Prodigal suffers ; but when, in penitence and self-abne-
gation, he determines to return to his father's house, he is
received with open arms, and the fatted calf is killed for
the feast. No sacrificial offering, no atonement^ in the
ordinary theological sense, is required of the son to pro-
pitiate the father. The wayward boy has suffered the
penalty of the laws he has violated. The father's joy is
that the son has henceforth determined to obey them.
This simple parable of Jesus exposes what we believe
to be a cardinal error in the Orthodox system, — namely,
the presumed necessity of a belief in the atonement of
Jesus as a condition of salvation. Some of the moral
objections to this view we have already pointed out. It
abrogates the divine law instead of honoring it. It teaches
that the actual consequences of sin may be averted by a
simple belief in the merits of the blood of Jesus. It
confers a righteousness which is imputative, not real. It
presumes that God needs to be reconciled to the sinner, as
well as the sinner to God.
The difficulties which the common view of the atone-
ment presents disappear under a higher, broader, and
more rational conception of divine and human nature.
Humnn nature is not at enmity with God, and God is not
at enmity with human nature. God is present in humanity
and in the world, '^ reconciling the world to himself." The
natural and the spiritual world are not in conflict. The
laws of nature are manifestations of the life of God.
The will of God is not capricious or arbitrary ; it is simply
the divine righteousness fulfilling itself. There is no
divine law, conceived in its universal aspects, but has some
element of good in it. The salvation of humanity is found
in reconciliation to the eternal truth, beauty, and good-
ness, — in the adjustment of the human will to that which
150 THE DOOM OP THE
is divine. The end of salvation is not release from an
arbitrary and unending punishment, but the attainment
of perfection in character. No higher ideal has ever been
raised for humanity than the ideal of Jesus : " Be ye per-
fect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."
t
TRIUMPH OF THE GOOD.
Whatever figure we may choose in which to picture the
divine character, none can be satisfactory to-day which
does not represent God as absolute righteousness. It is
our trust in the righteousness of God, joined to an equal
trust in his infinite goodness and infinite power, which
justifies and even compels our faith in the final triumph
of the good. Evil is but a relative term ; it cannot be a
permanent element in the universe.
Our trust in God's goodness does not extinguish the
idea of retribution in the next life ; it may even require
us to believe in it ; since retribution is but a fulfilment of
the divine law, and a part of the process by which hu-
manity is purified and redeemed. Reason and faith alike
forbid us to suppose that the sphere of human education,
and the rewards and punishments which belong to it, is
confined to this life. God is not hampered by time-limits
in the development of a human soul.
"We cannot argue," ^ says Channing, "that a being is
not destined for a good, because he does not instantly
attain it. We begin as children, and are yet created for
maturity. So we begin life imperfect in our intellectual
and moral powers, and yet are destined to wisdom and
virtue. We are to read God's End in our inherent tend-
encies, not in our first attainments." If God is able in the
ages to come to redeem humanity from the power of sin,
faith in his infinite mercy and goodness requires us to
believe that he will do it. Calvinists have tried to prove
* Trust in the Living God.
MAJORITY OF MANKIND. 151
the glory of God in the damnation of the vast majority
of the race; but how much more glorious do his justice
and goodness appear in their redemption. If Edwards
be true, there is joy in heaven over those that are lost ; if
Jesus be true, the joy in heaven is over those that are
saved. The Divine Shepherd cannot allow a single one
of his flock to perish. The lambs he carries in his
bosom, and every one of his sheep he knoweth by name.
There are ninety and nine in the fold ; they have all been
gathered in but one ; yet the tender compassion of the
Good Shepherd yearns with infinite pity over the sheep
that is lost. It is the Good Shepherd himself who goes
forth to seek it. No shade of the forest, no depth of
the valley, no cavernous darkness, can conceal the lost
and wandering one from the Shepherd's eye. The lost is
found, and, gently folded in the Shepherd's arms, is brought
to the fold. So a lost and wayward soul cannot wander in
any part of the universe, cannot reach any depth of sin,
where the love of God cannot find and save it. Not until
every soul of the innumerable flock shall have been gath-
ered into the divine fold will he see of the travail of his
soul and be satisfied.
INDEX.
Page
Abbot, Ezra .^ ... 23, 68, 126
A. B. C. F. M 53, 65
Allen, James 19
Anderson, Rufus 60
Andover Creed 25
Apostles' Creed 26
Arminians 30, 79, 125
Auburn Declaration .... 116
Augsburg Confession 26, 27, 28, 98
Augustine, St 6, 26, 136
Aquinas, Thomas 6
Barnes, Albert 54, 72, 73, 95, 99, 100,
101, 102, 104
Baxter, Richard 18, 67
Beach, John 86, 87
Bellows, H. W 68
Bethune, George W 60
Boardman, S. W. . . . 100, 101
Boothroyd 16
Boston Confession . . 44, 45, 47, 67
Boston Sunday Herald ... 91
Boston, Thomas 86
Bowman, Francis 60
Bremen Theologians at Dort . 31
Brooke, Stopford, A 128
Burkitt, William 15
Burnet, Bishop 39
Butler, Bishop 138
Calvin, John 4, 9, 10, 11, 18, 29, 30,
37, 67, 71, 97, 143
Cambridge Synod 44
Canons of Dort 41
Central Christian Advocate . . 85
Channing, William Ellery . 97, 102,
114, 116, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145, 150
Chapin, E. H 68
Chrysostom, St 6, 71
Church of England . . . 29, 39
Clarke, Adam 15
Cleaveland, Elisha L 93
Colenso, Bishop . 66, 88, 95, 105
Cook, Joseph ... 92, 111, 112
Page
Creed of the Park St. Church 46, 47
Cumberland Presbyt'n Church
of the United States ... 38
Curio, C. S 68, 80
Davidson, Samuel 136
Dean, John Ward 37
Dickinson, Jonathan .... 86
Diodati 13
Doddridge 16, 71
" Doleful State of the Damned " 19
Donne 125
Dort, Synod of . 30, 31, 41, 67, 69
Du-MouUn, Lewis 8
Duryee, William Rankin . 100, 103,
104, 105, 108, 109, 124, 125
Edwards, Jonathan, the elder 19, 86,
105, 106, 107, 116, 125, 126, 151
Eisenmenger 11
Ellis, George E. 133, 135, 144, 148
Emmons, Nathanael . 20, 21, 50, 51,
69, 74, 105, 116, 125
Episcopius 30
Estius 13
Examiner, The 70
Fairchild, James H 63
Farrar, Canon 5, 7, 12, 68, 89, 98
Flavel 18
Gladden, Washington ... 91
Goodwin, E. P. . 63, 64, 92, 111
Goulbum, Dean . . . . 17, 71
"Grand Motive to Missionary
Effort, The " 65
Gregory the Great 6
Hall, Gordon 57, 102
Henry, Matthew .... 14, 67
Hervey, William 58
Heubner 16
Hodge, A. A. . . 54, 55, 102, 123
Hodge, Charles . 28, 29, 69, 99, 102
Hopkins, Mark .... 59, 92
154
IXDEX.
Page
Independent, The .... 91, 112
Irish Articles of Keligion . . 40
Jenks, Francis 38
Jerome 136
Kirk, E. N 62, 93
Krauth.C. P. . . . 28, 29, 31,32
Krotel, G. F. 28
Lambeth Articles, The ... 40
Lapide, Cornelius A. . . . . 7
Luther 27, 28, 137
Lutheran Church 28
Lyon, Mary 58
Mallalieu, W. F 84
Marckius 31
Mather. Cotton 19, 38
Melanchthon 27, 28
Miller, Samuel 77
Molinaeus 31
Momerie, Dr 108
Moody, Joshua 19
Moody, S 19
Morris, E. D 9
Murraj'^, John 68
New School Presbyterians . . 115
North British Review ... 66
Norton, Andrews ..... 48
Olshausen 17
Origen 68
Orthodox Lady 69
Orthodox Minister 69
Owen, John J. 16
Oxenhara, F. N 5, 6, 89
Park, Edwards A. 20, 50, 54, 69, 111
Park St. Church, Creed of 46, 47, 48
Patterson. Robert W. . . . 61, 77
Patton, W. W 60, 61, 90
Personal Experience .... 78
Plymouth Declaration, The . . 44
Pond, Enoch . 21, 22, 52, 56, 69, 71
Pond, George H. . . . 62, 94, 105
Presbyterian, The 70
Presbyterian Board . . . 129, 130
Princeton Review 55
Pape
Pusey, Edward B. ... 5, 89
Pyle, Thomas 87
Recupito, Giulio Cesare ... 7
Reformed (Dutch) Church in
America 41
Savoy Declaration ... 43, 45, 67
Saxon Visitation Articles ... 38
Saybrook Platform ... 25, 44
Schaff, Philip 28, 29, 31, 74, 95, 100,
109, 114, 116
Scotch Confession of Faith . . 40
Scougal, Henry 74
Shedd, W. G. T. . 3, 4, 53, 62, 71,
95, 144
Skinner, Thomas H. 59, 101, 102, 105
Smyth, Egbert Ill
Sm3'th, Newman Ill
Spring, Gardiner 76
Spurgeon, Charles H 121
Swing, David 122
Swiss Theologians at Dort . • 30
Thirty-Nine Articles, The 25, 39, 41
Townsend, Jonathan .... 18
Treat, S. B 54
Twisse, William .... 33, 37
Tyler, M. C 37
Weiss, Bemhard 23
Welwood, Andrew . . 105, 107, 108
Wesley, Charles 80, 83, 84, 86, 126
Wesley, John 85
Westminster Assembly of Di-
vines 14, 33, 69
Westminster Confession . 25, 31, 32,
33, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 67, 90,
98, 114, 146
Westminster Larger Catechism 12,
42, 43, 118, 122
Whedon, D.D 119
Wiggles worth, Michael 33, 37, 86
Wight, J. K 55
Willard, Samuel 19
Winslow, Myron &8
Withrow, J. L. 4, 25, 26, 38, 49, 100
Wordsworth, Bishop .... 17
Zerneke 27
Zurich Consensus 30
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