HUMAN AND DIVINE.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15272, 23 June 1923, Page 11 (Supplement)

HUMAN AND DIVINE.

ANALOGY AND SEPARABILITY.

(By "Darius.”)

Preachers frequently compare our judges, in the administration of their offices, to the Heavenly Judge, but tills comparison cannot stand, because the transgressor when accused of his transgression finds his Judge his advocate if the Trinity constitute one God-head. The three persons in the God-head can scarcely be one in love and divisible in judgment. It is not reasonable to mentally conceive a divided Deity, one person standing for strict legal justice, and the other for unimaginable mercy and all-pardoning love. Though it is possible to imagine a Trinity ruling as One, it is impossible to imagine, in the courts of heaven, a divided Trinity, although the division may be perfectly amicable. It is also Impossible to imagine a spiritual bar of justice at which the accused cannot be heard, being already prejudged. Some will have it that the sinner is remanded from.the lower court of earth to the higher court of heaven merely for sentence to eternal death. Eternal spiritual law can never be vindicated by the infliction of eternal punishments. From the earthly court of condemnation, mercy the condemned to the scaffold. Is it possible that divine inscrutable justice meets him at the drop, takes up the tale of punishment where man has left off after the last dread exaction has been completed, and turns him over to the devil and his angels so that he may remain in torment for ever? Seeing there is not amongst mortals one who would so relentlessly pursue even a personal and abominated enemy, is it reasonable to suppose there is a Divine Being to whom mercy and love are attributed who would do so? The Finite and the Infinite. The tortures of the inquisition were cruel, but they were designed for salvation. I cannot see any such saving grace about hell. When man sets human mercy and love above Divine mercy and love, inferentially, what remains to bo said but that the human thought is unintentionaliy but undeniably dishonourable? Gan you imagine the Divine man praying hypocritically and unavailingly for His executioners: ‘‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do,” with the knowledge that forgiveness would not be granted? And again can you imagine those lewd and profane Goddestroyers finding mercy and forgiveness while the merely careless, unbelieving and ignorant of the world go to eternal perdition? It is in this the Heavenly Judge differs from the earthly—He has the power and right to exorcise mercy and pardon far beyond our deserts or our imaginings. Any human interpretation of God is necessarily incomplete and inadequate, no matter how far heavenly revelation has gone up to the present, for the,, finite cannot fully comprehend the .infinite, nor can the most gigantic mortal mind interpret the whole of the Bible or even the Whole of Shakespeare. Then if it be wrong to petition earthly powers and authorities for reprieve or pardon, would it not be wrong to so petition Divinity? Evidently the God-inclination is towards the pardon of enemies. It has been remarked that our prisons are signs and symbols of justice, but can anypne consider tiell, as it is pictured to us, standing as a symbol of justice and mercy, two of the Great Judge’s attributes? That it can be a symbol of that other attribute, lovq, is unbelievable. From the theological point of view this may all be false reasoning, and yet it seems reasonable because along such lines a clear, matured and unbiassed intellect, confronted for the first time with the great biblical problem, might reason. , Believing that the rnurdefer, unshriven aDd unabsolvcd, would pass to eternal punishment through the trap on the scaffold, what juror would consent to a verdict of “Guilty”? I believe the honest juror is nerved to consent to the execution of his fellow man by the conscious or sub-conscious thought that there is no such thing as eternal punishment reserved for the condemned, and sucli a thought-hon-ours himself and his God.

Faculty of Reason.

I cannot imagine the fear of hell making anything but a crawling and contemptible convert, any more than I can imagine the fear of prison making a decent-minded citizen; but I can imagine the compelling thought,- “Me loved me and gave himself for me,” making many into Christians; this and the desire for eternal fellowship and communion with the One who spoke as never man spoke. One cannot vision an attractive heaven without an attractive Divine personality ruling and governing in supreme felicity over those we love and loved upon earth. A great deal is being said about a “Whole Bible,” and “Back to the Bible.” I do not quite understand what these sayings are meant to convey, because I know none who desire to mutilate the Bible or to destroy it. Sales of the Book from year to year and from generation to generation indicate a distinct preference for that Inspired work far beyond any preference shown for other inspired works. Humanity always appears to the preacher in the form of a culprit, or so it seems to many of us. I do not think this is quite just. I do not know how a man can accept all the interpretations of the professors of theology: there are so,many and they differ so. It would be a great relief to many weary and perplexed minds if these men who carp and condemn would agree upon a general interpretation, stake their souls upon it, and guarantee it to us. Meantime we must continue to exercise the God-given faculty of reason we possess. In any case lam satisfied we should do so. Ido think it time that Voltaire and Tom Pain and Bradlaugh and all those super-atheists who are dead, wore left to whatever peace eternity affords, and that preachers ceased lo use them as “bogey men” who died horribly and with unavailing supplications in their hearts. One may wonder and reason and doubt in much perplexity, yet with adoration in the heart for Die Noble Being of tiie New Testament who made the supreme sacrifice of Ilis mortal body, and in firm belief that, unerringly, the Judge of All The Earth shall do right; and be fully assured that his Redeemer lives and that though "worms destroy his body, yet in the llesh he shall see Go* 1 ”