02.02.05 - Section 5

Section V. The importance of harmonizing reason and revelation. For these reasons, we refuse to justify the sufferings of infants, on the ground that the sin of Adam was imputed to them. A sentiment so dark and appalling but ill accords with the sublime and beautiful spirit of the gospel. It partakes more of the weakness and infirmity of human nature than of the divine nature of Him who “spake as never man spake.” The best account which Plato could give of the sufferings of infants was that they had sinned in some former state of existence, for which they are punished in this. St. Augustine and his followers, rejecting such a view, and relying on the literal sense of the words of revelation, advanced the hypothesis that infants sinned, not in a preëxistent state, but in Adam; for which they are justly exposed to pain and death. Others again, not being able to conceive how infants could be really and personally in Adam many thousand years before they were born, so as to sin with him, adopted the hypothesis, that if they had been in his place they would have sinned, and are therefore justly exposed to the penalty due to his transgression; according to which theory each soul might be made liable to the guilt of infinitely more sin than any finite being could possibly commit. Another age, rising above such dark notions respecting the nature of sin and the justice of God, maintained the hypothesis that Adam’s sin was imputed to all his posterity, by which the fearful penalty due to his sin might be justly inflicted upon them. According to a fifth theory, it is clear that “nothing under the empire of Jehovah” can be sin, except a known transgression of the law; and infants are punished, because, as soon as they come into the world, they knowingly transgress the law of God. They cannot knowingly sin, says a sixth theory; but still they really transgress the law of God by those little bubbling emotions of anger, and so forth, as soon as they come into existence; and hence, the penalty of sin is inflicted upon them. Such are some of the hypotheses which have been adopted by Christian theologians to reconcile the suffering of infants with the justice and goodness of God. The more we look into them, the more we are amazed that the great lights of the world should have indulged in reveries so wild and so wonderful; and the more are we convinced, that the speculations of men on these subjects, and the whole theological literature of the world in relation to it, form one of the darkest chapters in the history of the human mind.

How unlike are such views respecting the origin and existence of natural evil to the divine simplicity and beauty of the gospel! “Who did sin, this man or his parents,” said the disciples to our Saviour, “that he was born blind?” They made no doubt but that the great evil of natural blindness must have been the punishment of some sin; and merely wished to know whether it were his own sin, committed in some former state of existence, or the sin of his parents. Their minds seem to have hung in a state of vacillation between the theory of Plato and that of imputation. But our Saviour replied: “Neither did this man sin, nor his parents,” that he was born blind; but “that the work of God might be made manifest in him.” We thank thee, O blessed Master, for that sweet word! How delightful is it, after passing through the dark labyrinths of human folly to sit at thy feet and drink in the lessons of heavenly wisdom! How pleasant to the soul—how inexpressibly cheering is it—to turn from the harsh and revolting systems of men, and listen to the sweet accents of mercy as they fall from thy lips! The great law of suffering, then, is that it is intended for the benefit of intelligent creatures. This is the case, even when it assumes the character of punishment; for then it is designed to prevent moral evil. Such a view of natural evil, or suffering, does not give that horrid picture of the world which arises from the sentiment that all pain and death must be a punishment for sin. This causes us to see the black scourge of retributive justice everywhere, and the hand of fatherly correction nowhere. It places us, not in a school or state of probation, to train us up for a better and brighter world, but in the midst of inquisitorial fires and penal woe. It teaches that all mankind became guilty by the act of one man; and that for one deed, millions upon millions of human beings are justly obnoxious, not only to temporal and spiritual, but also to eternal death.

We are perfectly aware of all the arguments which have been drawn from Scripture in support of such a doctrine; and we are also perfectly satisfied that they may be most easily and triumphantly refuted. But at present we do not mean to touch this argument; we shall reserve it for another work. In the mean time, we must be permitted to express the sentiment, that a system of theology, so profoundly unphilosophical, so utterly repugnant to the moral sentiments of mankind, can never fulfil the sublime mission of true religion on earth. It may possess the principle of life within, but it is destitute of the form of life without. It may convert the individual soul, and lead it up to heaven; but it has not the radiant form and power of truth, to command the admiration and conquer the intellect of the world. It may elevate and purify the affections, even while it depresses and confounds the understanding; but it cannot transfigure the whole mind, and change it into its own divine image. Nothing but the most fixed and rooted faith, or the most blind and unquestioning submission, can withstand the fearful blasts and dark impulses of such a system. No wonder, then, that under a system so deplorably deficient in some of the most sublime features of Christianity, infidelity and Pelagianism should so often have sprung up. If we write libels on the divine government, we must expect rebellions and insurrections. This is the natural consequence of the great fundamental heresy which places reason and revelation in opposition to each other. Orthodoxy, as she proudly styles herself, may denounce such rebellions; but she herself is partly responsible for the fatal consequences of them. Reason and revelation can never be dissevered, can never be placed in violent conflict, without a frightful injury to both, and to the best interests of mankind. Reason must find its own internal power and life in revelation, and revelation must find its own external form and beauty in reason. The perfection and glory of each consists in the living union and consentaneous development of both.

If we teach absurdity, it is worse than idle to enforce submission by arrogant and lordly denunciations of human pride, or of “carnal reason.” And we shall always find, indeed, that when a theologian or a philosopher begins by abusing and vilifying human reason, he either has some absurdity which he wishes us to swallow, or he wishes to be excused from believing anything in particular. Thus, the dogmatism of the one and the scepticism of the other unite in trampling human reason under foot; the one, to erect an empire of absurdity, and the other, to erect an empire of darkness upon its ruins. It should be the great object of all our labours to effect a reunion and harmony between revelation and reason, whose “inauspicious repudiations and divorces” have so long “disturbed everything in the great family of mankind.”(194)