448

DAY OF JUDGMENT.

RETRIBUTION.

stamped on them, or cease to be self-conscious ever for good or for evil. This life of ours now, then, seems to us the crisis of our everlasting destiny. We have before us life and death; and while God ever invites every man to choose the good, the immutability of his counsel (which you justly assert) forbids Him to change the laws against which we may dash ourselves into every wreck of self-conscious misery, if we determine to create for ourselves evil. Truly with Him is no variableness. For my own part, seeing that the issue is so tremendous, and that it turns upon a heart and life cleansed by faith*, rather than upon doubtful knowledge, I had rather take hold of the inheritance which God has promised, than speculate about the manner of its coming about. You may enlarge the Christian parables, of the Judgment, and the Thrones, and the Books, and the instruments of music, and the palm-branches, into whatever vision you think more spiritual, of retribution, and of memory, and of remorse or good conscience, and of communion with the Father of our spirits, and of triumph among all who have lived purely and acted nobly in every age and country. Still you must leave in reality of meaning that God has appointed to all men once to die, and after death the judgment. The more sober this truth sounds, or the more nearly your faith approximates to it, so much the more gladly you should welcome the good news of Christ, who though conscious of that indwelling in Him which was before Moses or Abraham, and beyond space or time, yet emptied Himself of that illimitable consciousness, and took on Him the form of a servant†, becoming subject to legal and local limits, that He might embody before us a picture of God's true being, and of his design for man; and so by living and dying, He brought home to us the holiest truth in a form suited to our human conceptions, and by entering visibly into his kingdom threw light on life and immortality. If Sákya had in like manner risen from the grave, we should have more reason for examining his doctrine reve* Acts xv. 9; xxvi. 18. + Philippians ii. 7.

SAKYA'S SHORTCOMING.

SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 449

But no such rising

Nor do we find in

rently or, if we had found his doctrine a sufficient mediation between God and man, we should not have been surprised at God having in like manner raised him. from the dead is even pretended for him. his doctrine, as it now is, the power of regenerating men and bringing them to God, which we find in that of Christ. We take hold then of that which has the higher attestation in history, and the purest persuasion in living experience, while it gives us also the clearest hope for the life to come. It may be that in this faith of ours, even because it is a faith, we know but in part. Yet the time will come for us to know, even as we are known. Any immortality which we could understand while in the flesh would fall short of our hope. But though things to come belong to the Eternal, we thank Him that the things He has revealed belong to us and to our children; and these are enough to shew us the way of peace now, with that of an endless hope hereafter. Jesus Christ therefore remains to us the author and finisher of our faith; and we are not ashamed of following Him as little children, if only we may so grow to the fulness of His spiritual stature, and be at length in the Holy Spirit One with Him, even as He is One with the Father,

29

M. P.

450

HINDU CONCESSIONS.

CHAPTER XIII. PART I.

On General and Special Providence, and on various aspects of Revelation in History-Letter and Spirit-Inspiration-Bible-Church-Truth -Faith-Sacraments-Seen and Unseen.

"The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort. He shall convert my soul, and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness, for his Name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me. Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me: thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full. But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."PSALM Xxiii.

"There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. Even our ancient writings say, Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But then you ask, How can Greeks or Indians have called on Jehovah, if they did not believe in Him? And how, you continue, could they have believed in Him, if they never knew Him by His name Jehovah? And how can they have known Him, unless He were revealed to them; and how can they have had a revelation, without a ministry, as we had, of prophets or heralds; as, for instance, it was written on the return from Babylon, How beautiful are the feet of them that proclaim good news of peace, and glad tidings of weal! Or even if the Lord makes known his grace to Greeks and Indians, yet you object that they do not believe the good news; just as Isaiah said, Lord, who hath believed our report of thy deliverance? So then you argue, the Gentiles have not faith; for faith comes by hearing, and hearing by an express message, such as the Lord has not sent to them. But I answer, Oh! thou that restest upon scripture and boastest of revelation, have not all nations heard something of the goodness of God? Yes, verily; as we read in the Psalms, of his starry witnesses, that their sound has gone into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. And again I ask, Had not Israel reason to know that God loves every human being in the wild isles of the sea? Certainly; for even Moses says, I will provoke you my elect people to jealousy by those whom you count no people, and to zeal by those whom you call foolish. But Isaiah is very bold in proclaiming the same truth, that God is the Father of all, and not of the elect nation only; for He says, I was found of them that sought me not; I was revealed to them that inquired not of me. But to the elect nation He says, All day long have I stretched forth my hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people.-Paraphrase of St Paul, Romans x. 12-21. Compare ch. ii. 17—20; i. 19, 20; and Psalms xix. 4, and viii. 3, 4.

"MANY of the objections raised," here remarked Sadananda, "have received from the stranger answers, which seem to me

HINDÚ CONCESSIONS.

451

satisfactory. For it makes a great difference, from what point of view doctrines are regarded, or who, and in what frame of mind, is the speaker of words conceived to embody them. Thus, if the doctrine of a Fall of Man is made to destroy our perceptions of right and wrong, it may become an instrument of moral degradation to the entire conscience; or if it forbids us, any more than brute creatures, to strive after immortality, it is injurious to the better soul within us; or, if it makes a single act of the first woman the alone cause of a change in the world's course, it derogates from the wisdom of whatever supreme Lord any of us are able to believe in; and if it transfers the guilt of that single act, with eternal penalties for it, to millions of men unborn, it shocks both justice and humanity. But if the same doctrine expresses rather mankind's keen sense of the difference between good and evil, with their earnest aspiration after the better part, and their generous shame at falling short of it, then it may become a wholesome instrument of contrition. So again, if it expresses our confidence in the Divine compassion as ever ready to rescue us from the evil we have brought upon ourselves, it may waken our courage and our thankfulness. Especially if the words thought to teach such a doctrine, are in the sacred writings either an outpouring of passionate penitence, or a fervid denunciation of sin, we may see them to be relatively true and wholesome, though they might ill bear cold inferences from logical bystanders, as if they were dispassionate descriptions; still less might they be useful to force with iteration upon all persons in all moods. For deep feeling, whether penitence or love, expresses a truth, but with a colouring of its own. So again, if there is a shortcoming, such as we admit, in the world either from misplacement or sinfulness in nature, the first instance of such a fall on part of a human being may well be recorded as critical, without being thereby made a cause. Nor do I know that the difference would be important if such an instance were symbolical, and were so to express the tendency which we find, for passion and darkness in man to warp goodness. But,

452

HINDU CONCESSIONS.

as the losing of a child in the first act of a play does not prevent it from being found with good fortune before the end of the last act, so the drama of the world may have always been harmoniously evolving, in spite of internal contradictions.

"The Christian doctrine of the Atonement too may vary much according to its aspect. For, if it is presented to us as a doctrine of ritual bondage, and of external compensation or vindictiveness, or if it makes an honest and good heart of less worth than mere confidence in the name and merit of another, then we could hardly call it wholesome. But, if the doctrine is rather one of freedom to the soul, by putting the love of a supreme Lord in strong contrast to a dreary round of sacrificial penances, and by shewing His compassionate desire to deliver men from all evil, and especially from the scourge of a law which He willed should exist as inherently good, though yet He did not will the penal effect which was through our acts an accompaniment of it, then I can understand how the soul is reconciled by such a doctrine to whatever is holiest above her, and does good, being delivered from evil. Nor do I see much difficulty in the clash of feeling, or of personality, which such a doctrine as that of the Atonement has been said to involve in the Divine Being. For though to myself all pure soul appears necessarily tranquil, yet whoever attributes agency either literally or metaphorically to a supreme Lord, must ascribe also volition analogous to that of man. But we find in ourselves an apparent clash of motives, and painful means to desirable ends. Thus the Will must work by reason, or with consideration, and these may unite in one consciousness. So the Divine Unity, if it correspond at all to our complex being, might have without offence to reason a triplicity of its own. Even the Sankhya admits a triple divinity or manifestation of one principle. The Vedánta, with still greater conformity to the Christian Trinity, teaches a certain divine outcoming of the eternal Spirit; and most of all, the Bauddhas, who worship a man as partaker of the highest intelligence, and join many agents in a sort of