Page images
PDF
EPUB

We have before remarked that the conflict which exists in the universe is not one of physical power, for in this respect God is unlimited he can instantaneously annihilate all which he has ever created. But when God is engaged in a moral conflict it is not thus. If God has created a universe of free agents, and chooses to keep them in existence, and not to reduce them to mere machines; the nature of the case requires that he govern them as free agents, that is by motives. And in this respect God has limited himself to the use of motives, so that, if he does not present motives strong enough to induce his creatures to love him, and keep his law voluntarily, he of necessity, loses his power to rule them.

It is as absurd to suppose him to keep the moral universe in order by physical force as it would be to suppose him to control the planets in their orbits by motives and persuasion. Here then God is called on to display his manifold wisdom in producing and exhibiting such varied moral developments as shall produce the greatest possible degree of holiness among all the inhabitants of his vast dominions, and this we have no doubt he will do; nor can we doubt that the work of redemption, as connected with the incarnation of Christ, is intended as such a display of the character of God, of the evil of sin, and of the excellence of holiness, as shall forever establish the holy part of the universe, so that God will gain the great battle as it regards moral influence throughout all his vast dominions. Any other victory than this would be comparatively insignificant and unworthy of God. For he who has physical power to create, can easily conquer all physical resistance. But to preserve the laws of mind in free agents and then to make such displays of wisdom and goodness as shall unite their hearts forever to God, is a work worthy of the infinite Jehovah, and which corresponds with the glowing language of the Bible with regard to his government. And this view of the subject does not rest on mere conjecture; we are expressly informed that "God created all things, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God." We are also informed that Christians are made "to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards them through Christ Jesus." We are also told that the object of God from all eternity was, "that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, (that is a dispensation to be introduced when the appropiate time had fully arrived) he might gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth;" that is, God intended to unite and establish the holy universe through the incarnate Mediator. And a passage in the first chapter of Colossians is remarkably ample and particular on this point. God, says the inspired apostle,

"hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son; in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God and the Lord of all the creation. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or power, all things were created by him, and for him, and he is before all things, and by him all things consist; and he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell, and having made peace by the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself: by him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven." In this passage almost every topic of this discussion is presented to our view, especially the sublime truth that God intends not only to reconcile the redeemed from the sinful race of man to the holy universe and to himself, but also to unite them all in one universal kingdom through Christ and to establish them in holiness forever through him.

President Edwards, in his history of the Work of Redemption thus presents his understanding of these passages of the Word of God. "Another great design of God in the work of redemption, was to gather together in one all things in Christ, in heaven and in earth, i. e. all elect creatures; to bring all elect creatures, in heaven and in earth, to an union one to another in one body, under one head, and to unite all together, in one body to God the Father. This was begun soon after the fall, and is carried on through all ages, and shall be finished at the end of the world." He expresses his views of the influence of the humiliation of God in Christ on all orders of beings in these words: "Christ's humiliation in many ways, laid a foundation for the humiliation of all elect creatures. By seeing one infinitely above them descending so low, and abasing himself so much, they are abundantly made sensible that no abasement is too great for them. Lucifer thought what God required of him too great an abasement for so high and worthy a creature as he; but in Christ Jesus they see one infinitely higher than he, descending vastly lower than was required. of him. It tends to humble the angels, and to set them forever at an immense distance from any thought that anything that God can require of them can be too great an abasement for them; and then it tended to humble them that this person that appeared in such meanness, and in so despicable a state, is appointed to be their Lord and their God, and that they were required humbly to minister to him in his greatest abasement." Similar illustrations and confirmations of the views advanced by us could be derived in abundance from the writings of our most eminent and spirit

ual divines. But it is needless. We do not rest on authority, but upon the clear testimony of the Word of God.

In view of this comprehensive outline of the ends, relations, and influences of the Incarnation, one inference is obvious. The great peculiarity of the Scriptural view of this subject is, that the Incarnation was designed to meet a great temporary crisis in the universal kingdom of God, and to put the whole universe of intelligent minds into a different state from what they were in before. It matters not by what name the opposers of this view are pleased to call it, whether "theological rubbish" or any other term of contempt. Still, in our humble judgment, it is the only view presented in the Word of God, and it is the only view that is worthy of him. To suppose that the course of moral development in this world, is an illustration of the natural development, education, and government of minds in all ages and worlds, is as absurd as to suppose that the life of diseased patients in a hospital is a fair illustration of life in all circumstances and all worlds; or that the conflict of a battle-field is a fair illustration of all conditions of the social system in all worlds.

It may seem to some a light matter when a Christian teacher denies that there are angels who never fell-and casts the existing doctrine of fallen angels into the heaps of theological rubbish, and teaches the doctrine that no beings can arrive at stable virtue except through a course of experimental sinning. It is only his theory of the origin of evil, it may be said. Let him enjoy his own philosophy. We are not disposed to deny him this privilege. But we are disposed to say, and we do say, that such a mode of philosophizing is no light matter. It of necessity subverts from its deepest foundations the whole system of the Word of God. There is, according to it, no universal conflict and victory of God in this world, affecting the destiny of all worlds and changing the state of the universe forever. It is merely a course of educational development on principles common to all minds, in all ages, and in all worlds. We do not wonder that one who speculates on such principles should be unable to understand one of the sublimest passages of the Word of God: "Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule, and authority and power. For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." Who can ever understand this passage who casts into "immense masses of theological rubbish," the current doctrines of the Christian community, "about angels that have never sinned, and angels that have, and about other worlds, and the reach of Christ's atonement there," and in place of the sublime view of the Word of God in

troduces a theory of the necessity of sinning to a finished education which degrades in its fundamental conception the very idea of free agency itself, and tends to cut up by the roots all deep and genuine abhorrence of sin as utterly needless, and in the highest degree criminal and inexcusable. A similar degradation of our ideas of free agency is effected by the fundamental theory of Swedenborg, that the law of life, development, and death in this world is that of all worlds, and is so far as we know to be eternal. The universe of worlds exists in the form of a grand man, and from all these school-house worlds spirits are entering the interior spiritual world, as they drop the natural bodies in which development began. But according to the Bible, the system of this world is an exception to all that precedes it, and all that follows it. It is the great, singular, anomalous dispensation of the universe. Time was when sin did not exist. Time will be when its power will be subdued. All between is one great moral conflict, and thrice blessed is he who in this conflict shall overcome. The human race is a peculiar race. Of their own kind they had no predecessors, they have no contempories in other worlds, they will have no successors, the confident assertions of Swedenborg to the contrary notwithstanding. The whole system implies to the contrary. The great end of God now, is not education and development according to fixed and eternal laws, but war and conquest. The incarnate God is not chiefly an educator but a warrior. There is a God, a king and a kingdom to be destroyed-and he is the great destroyer. For this end he reigns and wields universal power. For this end angels and principalities and powers are subjected unto him. And he will reign till all enemies are put beneath his feet: THEN COMETH THE END. Then a new and immutable system of the universe shall take the place of that which now is, and shall endure for

evermore.

Nor is there the slightest tendency in the progress of natural science to subvert these views. What though the Ptolemaic system has passed away? What though we know that the earth is not flat but round, and that it is not the centre of the system, and that the system of the universe does not revolve around it? Does it therefore cease to be true that the eternal and infinite Jehovah is the centre of the universe of minds? Does it follow that this world is so small that he cannot make in it a development of himself that shall penetrate throughout the boundless tracts of space and time, and illuminate all ages and worlds with his glory, and bind all orders of holy intelligences, created or to be created, to his throne by indissoluble ties of reverential love? What have intellectual and moral precedents and developments to do with the size of worlds? What though the diameter of our little planet is but seven thousand miles? Is it not large enough,

for all this, to be a theatre of the full revelations of his glory, whom not even the heavens, nor the heaven of heavens can contain ?

If, then, amidst the splendid revelations of modern astronomy, it ever seems incredible that a world so small as this should be spoken of as for the time the moral centre of the universe, let it never be forgotten that he who in fact is that moral centre became incarnate there, and that till his final victory it is and will be the centre of that great conflict in which the highest interests of all created minds are involved. Let us cease to confound moral with local greatness, and to suppose that if God desires to display his glory, he must needs seek out the world of the greatest diameter and the most central position, if such there is, in the distant regions of illimitable space.

In conclusion, it is hardly necessary to say that the essence of Christianity lies here, and that those views of the character of Christ are entirely defective and erroneous which deny his divinity, incarnation and atonement, and their attending consequences. Of those who deny these doctrines, few are satisfied what the character and offices of Christ really are. He is to them an inscrutable mystery. To some he is a mere man, to others a super-angelic being, some venerate him as a teacher, others as an example, some assert that he died to sanction his testimony with his blood, others admit that there may be reasons for his death more important than this, but to us unknown. But to all these views there is one important objection; we mean the Bible. The divinity, incarnation and death of Christ, with their consequences, are the very essence of the Bible; and those who deny them are constantly employed in explaining not what the Bible means, but what it does not mean. That these doctrines are essential to the Bible is manifested by one fact-those who deny them are always tempted to become infidels. The solution of the fact is this, their hearts and feelings are entirely opposed to these doctrines; and if the Bible does teach them, who can wonder if they are tempted to deny its inspiration and reject its authority. This has been the fact in Germany, in England.

It was also distinctly foretold that such would be the consequences among us. This prophecy is now history. Even the resurrection of Christ has been denounced as an idle tale, by one who boasts that he is but carrying to their mature results the principles of those who began their career by a denial of the divinity and atoning sacrifice of Christ.

On the other hand, all tendencies to return to the pure faith of the Word of God in Europe, are marked by a renewed interest in the great doctrines of the divinity of Christ, his incarnation, and salvation through his atoning blood. Here is the rock of ages. All else is but shifting sand. Who then is wise? Let him shun the sand, and build on the rock

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »