"As firmly as you do." "Thanks; we can now go on—' "To hell?" sarcastically inquires the skeptic?" "Not with me, I trust," replied the preacher; "if you go there you must go alone. Neither God nor man sends you there. You simply go by the urgency of something evil within you." "By what law? If God has put within me a law that sends me to your hell, I would curse him and die. As you represent God," continued the skeptic, "you make him an unjust and merciless monster. Is it just to make the one sin of Adam, in which no one feels any participation, and for which no one feels personally responsible, the ground of the death, whether temporary or eternal, of every or of any descendant of Adam? Is this the award of your God of pity?" “We claim that, although men had sinned and brought death into our world, yet God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting life. But looking at the matter as you do, has nature, which is to you what my God is to me, any more justice or pity?" replied the preacher. "Death is here, with or without a reason. If nature brings death, and nature has no reason for it, then nature is a monster. If nature has a reason, what is it?" "It is as natural to die as to be born," said the skeptic. "Death is not a punishment based on moral reasons, but an ordinance of nature, sin or no sin. Why should your God kill a little bird for the sin of Adam? 66 Why," replied the preacher, "should your nature kill a little bird for no sin at all, of any one ? We say that man sinned, and death came into the world as a consequence. You say that sin, if there be any, had nothing to do with it. Instead of believing that there is a God who smites with a reason, you prefer to believe that there is no God, and nature smites without a reason. Any way, your bitterness will not help you to light," quietly remarked the preacher. 1. FALSE IDEAS OF THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. "In our last talk respecting the fact and locality of hell," said the skeptic, "you spoke of evil having no power within to stop itself, and you illustrated your idea by alluding to a falling ball, which would fall forever, unless arrested by some other body or some resistive force. How, then, according to such views of the nature of things, can any one be saved?" "That's a problem for you skeptics to answer. I confess that, looking at the constitution of things as you do, I do not see how any one can be saved." 66 But," insisted the skeptic, "suppose I am persuaded of the immortality of the soul-of the distinction between right and wrong-of the punishment here for all the wrongs we commit-and of the existence of a God; do you think it possible for him to punish forever, in burning brimstone, one of his poor, weak, blind children of earth, for acting, sinfully if you choose to call it so, in the line of weakness which He himself gave? "So changeable are the objections of skepticism," replied the preacher, "that it is no easy task to run them all down. They come around in periods, and rage as epidemics. As the stomach, long fed upon dainties, becomes morbid, so the mind, long cultivated in subtle speculation, leading to no satisfactory conclusions, becomes dyspeptic and despairing. One puts himself down on the plane of nature among the bugs and stones and trees, and tries to persuade himself that he will die, and like 'Imperious Cæsar, dead, and turned to clay, "Another hopes to rise from nature to supernature, and, ' aloft ascending, breathe in worlds To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.'" "You but aptly describe the future of the human soul, if it has a future," earnestly added the skeptic. "I expect for myself and all of my race, upon the theory of the immortality of the soul, an eternity of happiness prepared by a Father of infinite love and wisdom for all his children alike. Our Heavenly Father would no more put one of his children in everlasting fire than you would put the end of your child's finger in the fire for one minute. Would he? Now answer me candidly, as a father, and not as an advocate trying to make out a case. It is a pity for the progress of truth in the world that you preachers have to pretend to believe so much, and argue against what must be your convictions, to keep up your churches and salaries." "Most preachers can make far more at anything else than they do at preaching; but," continued the preacher, "let us keep to the question. You form your idea of God's fatherhood from the sentiments, shortsightedness and weaknesses of your own fatherhood." "Well, bow else," inquired the skeptic, "can I form an idea of God's fatherhood? Do you not say that I am made in his image?" |