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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 ap- pointed 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 in- dwelling 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 servantf, becoming subject to legal and local limits, that He might embody before us a picture of Gt)d'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 im- mortality. If Sdkya had in like manner risen from the grave, we should have more reason for examining his doctrine reve- * Acts XY. 9 ; xxvi. i8. f Pbilippians ii. 7. SiiKYA'S SHORTCOMING. SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 449 rentlj : or, if we had found his doctrine a sufficient mediation between God and man, we should not have been surprised at Grod having in like manner raised him. But no such rising from the dead is even pretended for him. Nor do we find in his doctrine, as it now is, the power of regenerating men and bringing them to God, which we find in that of Christ. W© 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, M. P. 29 450 HINDU CONCESSIONS. CHAPTER Xm. PART I. On General and Special Providence, and on rarious aspects qf Revelation in History ^Letter and Spirit^ Inspiration — Bible—Church — TVtUh '-'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 conTert my soul, and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness, for his Name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the vaUey 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 xxiiL "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, Whuy- soever ihall caU upon the name of the Lord ehall he taved. 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 t Or even if the Lord makes known his graoe to Greeks and Indians, yet you object that they do not believe the good news ; just as Isiuaii said. Lord, who hath believed our report of thy deliverance ? So then you argue, the Gentiles have not &ith ; for faith comes by hearing, and hearing by an erprees mes- sage, 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 wit- nesses, 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 Grod 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, / was found of them that sought me not; I was revealed to them thcU inquittd not of me. But to the elect nation He says. All day long have I stretched forth mn hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people, — Paraphrase of St Paul, Romans x. II — 21. Compare ch. ii. 17 — 10 ; i. 19, 20 ; and Paalms xix. 4, and viii. 3, 4. " Many of the objections raised," here remarked Sad^anda, "have received from the stranger answers, which seem to me HINDU 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 degra- dation 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.