THEODORE PARKER ON THE GUILT OF SIN.

BY THE REV. JOSEPH COOK.

WHEN Charles IX. of France was importuned to kill Coligny, he for a long time refused to do so publicly, or secretly; but at last he gave way, and consented in these memorable words: "Assassinate Admiral Coligny, but leave not a Huguenot alive in France to reproach me." So came the massacre of St. Bartholomew. When the soul resolves to assassinate some holy motive; when the spirit determines to kill, in the inner realm, Admiral Coligny, it, too, delays for a while, and, when it gives way, usually says: "Assassinate this accuser of mine; but leave not an accusing accomplice of his in all my kingdom alive to reproach me." So comes the massacre of the desire to be holy. Emerson quotes the Welch Triad as saying: "God himself cannot procure good for the wicked.". Julius Müller, Dorner, Rothe, Schleiermacher, no less than Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates, assert that, in the nature of things, there can be no blessedness without holiness. Confucius said: "Heaven means principle." But what if a soul permanently loses principle? Si vis fugere a Deo, fuge ad Deum, is the Latin proverb. If you wish to flee from God, flee to him. The soul cannot escape from God; and can two walk together unless they are agreed? Surely, there are a few certainties in religion, or several points clear to exact ethical science in relation to the natural conditions of the peace of the soul.

It is plainly possible that a man may lose not all subsidiary, but all predominant, desire to be holy.

If he does lose that, it remains scientifically certain that even omnipotence and omniscience cannot force upon such a character blessedness. There can be no blessedness without holiness; and there can be no holiness without a supreme love of what God loves, and a supreme hate of what God hates. It is possible that a man may so disarrange his nature as to fall into a permanent loss of the predominant desire to be holy.

Theodore Parker, as his biographers admit, must be called a great reader, rather than a great scholar. But De Wette, his German master, although most of his works have ceased to be authorities in biblical research, ought to have prevented Theodore Parker from asserting that the Founder of Christianity did not teach that there may be a permanent loss of a predominant desire to be holy. Theodore Parker himself ought to have prevented himself from that assertion. In his earlier career he held that our Lord did teach a

possibility of the lapse of some for ever and for ever from the supreme love of what God loves, and the supreme hate of what God hates. He thought that the New Testament, properly interpreted, does contain in it a statement that it is possible for a man to lose permanently the predominant desire to be holy, and this was one of Parker's reasons for rejecting the authority of the New Testament. But toward the end of his career he tried to persuade Frances Power Cobbe that the Founder of Christianity did not teach that any will be lost. Parker's writings are self-contradictory on this supreme topic, most of the real difficulties of which he skipped.

It is the wisdom of all science, however, never to skip difficulties. In addition to the nine chief errors of Parker's theology already mentioned, it is important to notice that—

10. He failed to distinguish properly between arbitrary penalties and natural wages of sin.

I know how widely intellectual unrest on the topic I am now introducing fills minds that never have been much troubled by Theodore Parker. I know that many conscientious and learned persons have asked themselves the question the disciples once asked our Lord: "Are there few that be saved?" He answered that inquiry very distinctly: "Yes, there are few." Does science answer in the same way?

It would not follow, even if you were to take our Lord's answer as supreme authority, as I do, that this universe is a failure. All ages

to come are to be kept in view-all other worlds. Our Lord's word referred to our present evil generation; and, if you ask the central question in the best modern form, you must answer it in his way. How many, in the present state of our earth, love predominantly what God loves, and hate predominantly what God hates? How many have acquired predominant similarity of feeling with God? Only those who have, can be at peace in his presence, either here or hereafter. That is as certain as any deduction from our intuitions concerning the nature of things. As sure as that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time in the same sense, so sure is it that a man cannot be at peace with God when he loves what he hates and hates what he loves. There must be harmony or dissonance between them. Dissonance is its own punishment. Dissimilarity of feeling with God carries with it immense wages in the nature of things. In the name of science, ask: Are there few that have acquired a predominant love of what God loves, and a predominant hate of what God hates? We must answer, in the name of science, that broad is the way and wide is the gate which, in our evil generation, leads to dissimilarity of feeling with God, and many there be who go in thereat; but straight

is the way and narrow is the gate which leads to similarity of feeling But there are

time that find it.

with God, and few are they in our other worlds; there are other ages. "Save yourselves from this untoward generation." Who knows that in the final summing up the number of the lost may be greater than that of the saved? Or, as Lyman Beecher used to say in this city, "Greater than the number of our criminals in penal institutions is in contrast with the whole of the population." But I talk of the galaxies, I talk of the infinities, and of the eternities, and not merely of this world, in which you and I are to work out our deliverance from the love of sin and the guilt of sin, and have reason to do so with fear and trembling.

I ask no man to take my opinions. You are requested to notice whether discussion is clear; not whether it is orthodox. Let us put aside all ecclesiastical and denominational tests. This Lectureship has for its purpose simply the discussion of the clear, the true, the new, and the strategic in the relations between science and religion.

What are some of the more important natural laws which enable us to estimate scientifically the possible extent of the natural penalties of sin? 1. Under irreversible natural law sin produces judicial blindness. Kill Admiral Coligny, drive out the Huguenots, permit the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and you have made a new France. Carlyle says that it pleased France to slit her own veins and let out the best blood she had; and that she did this on the night of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and that after that she was historically another creature. Having killed Coligny, you cannot look his friends in the face. You kill them, and your kingdom is a new one.

When

a man sins against light, there comes upon him an unwillingness to look into the accusing illumination, and the consequence is that he turns away from it. But that effect itself becomes a cause. Keep your eyes upon your Shakespeare, upon your Greek poets, or upon whatever is a good mirror of human nature, and tell me whether these six propositions are not all scientifically demonstrable :

1. Truth possessed, but not obeyed, becomes unwelcome.

:

2. It is, therefore, shut out of the voluntary activities of memory and reflection, as it gives pain.

3. The passions it should check grow, therefore, stronger.

4. The moral emotions it should feed grow weaker.

5. An ill-balanced state of the soul thus arises, and tends to become habitual.

6. That ill-balanced state renders the soul blind to the truths most needed to rectify its condition.

"On the temperate man," said Aristotle,* " 'are attendant, perhaps

* "Rhetoric," Bohn's edition, p. 70.

forthwith, by motion of his temperance, good opinions, and appetites as to pleasures; but on the intemperate the opposite."

A man sins against light boldly. To the divine “I ought,” he answers “I will not; " to the divine "Thou shalt," or "Thou oughtest," he replies "I will not." The consequence instantly is, that he ceases to be at peace with himself; and light, instead of becoming a blessing, is to him an accusation. The slant javelin of truth, that was intended to penetrate him with rapture, fills him now with torture. If we give ourselves to an exact study of the soul's pains and pleasures, there is in man no greater bliss than conscience can afford, and no greater pain than it can inflict. In this stage of existence the highest bliss comes from the similarity of feeling with God, and the highest pain from dissimilarity of feeling with him. The greatest pains and pleasures, therefore, are set over against our greatest duties; and so God's desire that we should agree with him is shown by our living under the points of all these penalties and blisses. But light having become an accuser, man turns away from it. Then the virtues which that light ought to quicken are allowed to languish. The vices which that light ought to repress grow more vigorous. Repeated acts of sin result in a continued state of dissimilarity of feeling with God. That state is an effect; but it becomes a cause. According to New England theology, sin exists only in acts of choice; but the newest school of that theology need have no war with the oldest, for the former recognises, as fully as the latter can, that the state of dissimilarity of feeling with God is the source of the evil acts of choice.

That state of the dispositions is the copious fountain of sin, and as such is properly called depravity.

This state, continuing, becomes a habit; then that habit, continuing long, becomes chronic; and so the result is an ill-balanced growth of the character.

When I hung my hammock up last summer on the shores of Lake George, I noticed that the trees nearest the light at the edge of the forest had larger branches than those in the interior of the wood; and the same tree would throw out a long branch toward the light, and a short one toward obscurity in the interior of the forest. Just so a man grows toward the light to which he turns. According to the direction in which he turns with his supreme affection he grows; and as he grows he balances; and, under the irreversible natural law of moral gravitation—as fixed as scientific a certainty in the universe as the law of physical gravitation-as he balances so he falls; and, according to science, after a tree has fallen under that law, the prostrate trunk continues to be under the law, and, therefore, as it falls so

it lies. Under moral gravitation, no less, surely, than under physical, every free object that falls out of the skies strikes on its heavier side.

They showed me at Amherst, the other day, a meteorite that dropped out of the azure, and it struck-on which side? Of course, on its heavier. As the stream runs, so it wears its channel; wears its channel, so it runs.

as it All the mythologies of the globe recognize this fearful law of judicial blindness.

Go yonder into Greenland with Dr. Ranke, and you will find a story among the men of the lonely North to the effect that if a sorcerer will make a stirrupjout of a strip of sealskin, and wind it around his limbs, three times about his heart, and thrice about his neck, and seven times about his forehead, and then knot it before his eyes, that sorcerer, when the lamps are put out at night, may rise into space and fly whithersoever his leading passion dictates. So we put ourselves into the stirrup of predominant love of what God hates, and predominant hate of what God loves, and we coil the strands about our souls. They are thrice wound about our heart, three times around the neck, seven times around our foreheads, and knotted before our eyes. If the poor savages yonder, where the stars look down four months in the year without interruption, are right in their sublime theory as to the solemnities of the universe, we, too, when the lamps are out, shall rise into the Unseen Holy, and fly whithersoever our leading passion dictates.

Greenland says that hunters once went out and found a revolving mountain, and that, attempting to cross the chasm between it and the firm land, some of these men were crushed as the mountain revolved. But they finally noticed that the gnarled, wheeling mass had a red side and a white side. They waited till the white side came opposite them, and then, ascending the mountain, found that a king lived on its summit, made themselves loyal to him, surrendered themselves to him affectionately and irreversibly, and afterwards found themselves able to go and come safely. But the mountain had a red side, and it turned and turned, and there was no safety on it except on the white side, and in loyalty to the king at the summit in the clouds. That mythology of the North, lately read for us by scholars, has in it eternal verity and a kind of solemnity like that of the long shining of the Arctic stars, and the tumbling icebergs, and the peaceable gurgle of the slow-heaving Polar Ocean, far gleaming under the boreal lights of the midnight Arctic sun. Stunted, you think, the men of that zone. Why, on the banks of the Charles, yonder, your Longfellow, taking