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ought not to have read: "Forgive us our sins as we forgive them that sin against us; "* but thus: "Reckon it to us for righteousness that our sins are transferred to thy Son and that we are elected of Thee."

Then, again, when amid Christ's good tidings we heard of the great "joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth," the question would be sure to arise: "Why, when a sinner repents, should there be joy at all, if it be election, and not repentance, that has power to save? "

But chiefly would the wondrous narrative-teachings of Jesus be likely to arrest our attention; and what profound subject for thought should we find in them!

Suppose that, fresh from the Reformer's scheme of atonement, we came upon that noblest of parables, the story of the prodigal son. The father (we should read) bade bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. Was this advancement (typical of God's good-will to a sinner) due to the son's sudden adoption of a dogma, and to his certain belief that he was favored of his father and destined to happiness? "A thousand times, no!" (we should have to reply). It was due to the lost one's humility and repentance; to his sorrow for the past, and his resolution to lead an amended life of usefulness, even in a menial's place. "Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.'

Next, perhaps, reaching the parable of the man travelling into a far country, we might be reading how he called his servants and delivered to them his goods; how one servant improved the talents he had received and to him it was said: "Enter into the joy of thy Lord:" then how another servant left his talent unemployed, and was sent "into outer darkness.” Straightway it would suggest itself to us that, unless we had

* There are two slightly variant versions: Matthew vi. 12, 14; and Luke xi. 4.

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been misled by blind teachers, this parable ought to have stated that the one servant, who sought justification through the works he had done, was told that no man can be justified by works, and so, dismissed to "weeping and gnashing of teeth : :" while the other, who trusted not to works, should have been informed that if he confidently believed that he had been elected to enter on the joy of his Lord, it should be unto him according to his belief.*

At last, it may be, urgent to have our doubts resolved, we might turn over the leaves, seeking some definite statement touching the fate of human beings after death. Matthew, in his twenty-fifth chapter, would supply our need.

For there we should find Jesus depicting a graphic scene, typical of the effect which man's doings in this world produce on his state in the next.

"I was

When the King says to those on his right, "Come, inherit the Kingdom," he assigns the reasons for his choice. an hungered and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger and ye took me in, naked and ye clothed me; sick and in prison and ye visited me. me." And when they who were thus addressed disclaimed having rendered him service, the reply is: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me." Could we construe this except to mean that we best serve God when we do good to the lowliest of his creatures; and that if we spend our lives here in such good deeds, then when Death summons us to another phase of life, our state there will be a happy one? Yet,

* The passages that would be sure to startle our supposed Genevan catechumen are without number, and will occur to every candid searcher of the record. The parable that closes the Great Sermon is, perhaps, one of the most striking. "Whoso heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, shall be likened to a wise man building his house on a rock. But every one that heareth my sayings and doeth them not, is like a foolish man, building on the sand." Not the hearing, not the believing aside from works-the doing is the rock-foundation. Every thing else is a structure on sand, that shall be swept away.

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WHAT LEADS TO PUNISHMENT HEREAFTER.

if we still retained our Calvinistic proclivities, would it not seem to us that the words of the King ought to have been : “Come, inherit the Kingdom; for I have elected you of free grace to enter it, without reference to your works on earth, whether they have been good or whether they have been evil.”

But who, according to Christ, were to go into "everlasting fire," "whatever the words thus rendered may mean-at all events, who were to suffer instead of enjoying? They who, wrapt up during their earth-life in selfishness, failed to minister to their fellow-creatures. But unless, by this time, we had no longer the fear of Calvin before our eyes, how should we receive such a declaration? With incredulity, doubtless, or with a feeling that the sentence of the condemned should have been couched in some such terms as these: "Depart, ye cursed, to dwell for ever with the devil and his angels, for so from the foundations of the world was it determined, or ever ye were born or had done good or ill. That my purpose according to election might stand, not of works but of Him that calleth, I select as seemeth good to me: I take one and leave the other. These, on my right hand, have I loved; but you have I hated." +

* Christ's more usual and favorite paraphrase for the condition of evil-doers hereafter is "outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew viii. 12; xxii. 13; xxiv. 51; xxv. 30; and Luke xiii. 28); words seeming to typify an utter eclipse of the soul and grievous mental sufferings. In the body of this volume I shall give reasons for believing that these words of Jesus aptly describe the future state of those whose lives here have not fitted them for light and happiness in a higher phase of being.

I recommend those who have the habit of dogmatizing on the subject of eternal punishment and assuming that the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades have, in our Authorized Version, been correctly translated, to read the article "Hell" in Dr. Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible. They will find that the writer, after giving the result of much critical research, says: "Respecting the condition of the dead, whether before or after the resurrection, we know very little indeed. . . . Dogmatism on this topic appears to be peculiarly misplaced."

+ See, for Calvin's words on this subject, preceding page 76.

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Do you tell me that this is impious? I agree with you; it is the very climax of impiety. But it is John Calvin's impiety, not mine. And it is an impiety which seems secretly to have shocked the modern world's sense of right and wrong: for the last three centuries have given their verdict against it.

Yet, withal, there is a power and a subtile fascination* about the Genevese theology, terrible as Gustave Doré's conceptions of Dante's "Inferno." When I turn from Calvinism to Christianity, I feel as one awaking from some frightful nightmare— some dream of an arid desert peopled with phantom-shapes of demons and monsters-and coming face to face with the calm loveliness of a bright, genial spring-morning; the song of birds in my ears, the odor of dew-fed flowers stealing over my senses.

It is for you, guides of the Protestant Church, to say whether the facts adduced sustain the proposition which I have already advanced and which I here repeat: It was not the grand system of ethics taught by Jesus which was arrested in its progress for

* It is beyond doubt that it had strange attraction for the European mind in its state of transition during the sixteenth century. "About the year 1540 a little book was published, entitled Of the Benefits of the Death of Christ, which, as a decree of the Inquisition expressed it, 'treated, in an insinuating manner, of justification, depreciated works and meritorious acts and ascribed all merit to faith alone.' It had incredible success and rendered the doctrine of justification, for a time, popular in Italy; but it was finally so rigidly suppressed by the Inquisition that not a copy is now known to exist."-RANKE: History of the Popes, vol. i.

A significant expression, well worth pondering in connection with the hold which, in these rude days of public wrong and private outrage, this doctrine obtained on the human mind, occurs in the Augsburg Confession. Speaking of justification by faith without works, the Confessionists say: "This entire doctrine is to be referred to the conflict of the terrified conscience; nor without that conflict can it be understood."—Article 20.

A doctrine of fear, not of love.

"What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known," &c., is Paul's expression.

Romans ix. 22.

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centuries; which failed to make headway against human claimants of infallibility; which lost more than half the ground it had gained; which cannot hold its own against the Roman hierarchy to-day :-it was an Augustinian commentary on some of the scholasticisms of St. Paul.

You will judge, also, whether I have made good this other proposition: It is not a fair inference from the history of the Reformation and the reverses to Protestantism therein recorded, that Christianity is not in the nature of a progressive science; or that we have no security for the future against the prevalence of any theological error that has ever prevailed in time past among Christian men.

§ 11. EFFECT ON MORALITY OF CERTAIN FAVORITE DOCTRINES OF THE REFORMERS.

But it is not alone the divergence of some early Protestant doctrines from Christ's teachings, extreme as it is, that arrests one's attention. It is also the effect on civilization and human progress of the doctrines themselves. I intreat your attention to this branch of the subject, urgent in its importance.

-Urgent, for many reasons. It is far short of the truth to say that the material progress of the world in the last hundred years has exceeded that obtained in any ten previous centuries. Yet I am sure it must have occurred to you that the advance in morality has not kept pace with that in all physical arts and sciences. Especially in this new country of ours, liable as it is to the excesses and the shortcomings of youth, improvement in human actions and affections, as compared with im. provement in mechanical agencies, lags lamentably behind. Intemperance, partially checked from time to time, is yet a terrible power in the land.* in the land.* Vast wealth and stintiess luxury

* Special Internal Revenue Commissioner Wells, whose labors in connection with financial reform have made his name favorably known all over the country, states, in his Report to Congress for the year 1867