English
For some such reason, I suppose, the divine agency, though clearly inferred by the understanding, is witnessed only by faith, and not by sight. DIVINE RETRIBUTION. 183 " Again, what I have to suggest to you on the twin subjects of judgment and of moral retribution will be something of the same kind as what has just been said. When mankind punish criminals, they firequently do so, either from revenge, that is the desire of inflicting pain in return, or else from fear of suffering again ; but yet we recognise a justice in the punishment of crime apart from those somewhat selfish motives ; and we also consider that justice to be most perfect in proportion as the Judge is least affected by any such working impulses, and deals out his sentence according to the merits of the case in righteousness. We do not then suppose the Deity to judge or punish, as being warped by any such selfish passion or fear; but yet the con- science of all mankind points by its forebodings to the fitness of a recompense for actions, even when they have been secret from man. The course of this world confirms such forebodings, to a considerable extent, by the unhappiness which in a thousand ways of natural consequence waits upon guilt ; and where ex- ceptional cases appear of what seems to be an escape on part of the guilty, we shew by remarking such cases that they are contrary to what is usual, or to what we consider fitting. Perhaps we know not how rare they are, for the punishment in sore stripes of soul may be as secret from us in some cases as guilt is in others. Perhaps again, those general tendencies which we observe stamped on the course of this world for guilt to produce misery, may in some future life be more fully and in every case carried out, and justice deal its abundant doom. Our friend Vidydchdrya has told us that he thinks inequality and suffering in another life are the appointed penalties of sin in a former one. Saddnanda too speaks of the abode of Yama, and of witnesses to every portion of our life, and of dread avengers to come. Only it is obvious that he does not ascribe such sentences to the original providence of any supreme and creative Iswara. Even Vidydchdrya too appears to think such assign- ment of doom not consistent with the serene beatitude which he considers the lot of the praecreative Brahm. But why all this 184 DIVINE RETRIBUTION. imaginaiy intervention of inferior beings, unless it is that you are afraid to lower the Supreme Being by making him cognisant of such things ? May it not then be reasonably suggested, that the justice of the most High God may be free from the trammel of every imperfection such as clings to man, and yet be from everlasting to everlasting, without disturbance of passion, but wise in fore-ordaining, calm in observing, and mercifully inex- orable in suffering the wicked to eat by way of natural conse- quence the fruit of their own doings. I can imagine no other Being to whom the train of moral consequences in the Creation can be so reasonably ascribed, as to the Creator. I do not lessen, but rather magnify Him, by deeming Him to excel in that justice without some element of which no human being is other than contemptible; yet I am far from saying that our mental conception of justice is better than a faint picture of that which probably is bound up in the eternal Being of the Most High. It is not anger I ascribe to Him ; not indignation at mistakes ; nor such disproportionate judgments of the true value of com- plicated actions, varying as they do in all their circumstances of knowledge and intention, as we often find sully the sentences of man ; but that calmness of justice, which by way of image you may assimilate, if you please, to your fancied Nirvdna, but to which you must leave as it were the unsleeping eye, and an obedience of all powers in earth and heaven having the effect of a thousand swords in an ever outstretched arm. Truly His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways as our ways. Often perhaps, as we would willingly hope. He may choose to reclaim by mercy, where man in the paucity of his resources would have had no remedy but to strike. Yet, considering how much greater offences are when committed against the greatest of benefactors than when against any ordinary person, we must expect the justice of the Deity, when it strikes the irreclaimable, to be terrible in its stroke. Perhaps also, as regards the interests of mankind, we require even from tlie love of our Universal Father some security for retribution upon secret and injurious DIVINE RETRIBUTION. 185 crimes, such as wicked men madly fancy they can escape the consequences of by stealth or by dying. Nor do I think we are without such security in the very framework of the world. For it has been already noticed, that the tendency of sin on this earth of ours is to produce suffering of some kind. But astro- nomers also tell us, that the same law of gravitation which suspends our earth in its course about the sun, controls also the orbit, and upholds the substance of every world. Supposing then it were possible for any atheist or wicked person to pass by dying into another world, he would be within the range of the same physical law, and clearly therefore of the same moral justice from which he thought to escape. Whereas indeed it is probable that by putting off the veil of the flesh he would only pass into more naked and undisguised proximity to that clear Spirit, from which no secret is hid, and which here too is about our path and about our bed and spieth out all our ways, but which we apprehend most distinctly when our sensations no longer disturb us with the noises of earth, or dazzle us with the colours of an hour. I will not ask, what imagination can measure the horror, which the remorse of all evil memories when brought into clear contact with judicial purity may awaken in the distracted spirit; for you too agree with me that there is in some form a judgment to come ; only I could wish no metaphy- sical refinement to embarrass you, as if it were not possible for Grod Himself to judge the world, and yet be free from every trammel which attends what men call justice. " Moreover, just as I hope some of your difficulties in be- lieving what is justly credible may be removed by considering the difference between our conceptions of the Deity and the very realities which lie perhaps behind our thoughts, like some unseen substance which throws a shadow with but an imperfect resem- blance of itself, so I think some of the doctrines which you or your allies have advanced imply an entire forgetfulness of this great distinction between what is true enough relatively to us, and what may be absolutely true in the external object. For 186 WHAT IS CREATION BY "IGNORANCE?'* example, the Achdrya talks of the world's being made by Avidyd or ignorance. This singular way of speaking puzzled me exceed- ingly, only that the Saugata explained it in part, and other por- tions of your systems throw some light upon it. If, indeed, by Avidyd it were meant only that matter made the world, because matter may be called ignorance, just as mind is called intel- ligence, that would be only another way of saying that Pracriti made it, which is the very theory we are gradually discovering to be so irrational; but again, if it is meant that ignorance makes the world, I beg to ask whose ignorance ? You give me no answer ; and indeed, after what Vidy^hdrya has said about Mdy&, I could not expect one; but it is clear that he means our own ignorance, or that of mankind in general. All this mys- tery about Avidyd then means only that, if we are not mistaken in supposing the world to exist, we do not know, how it was made. Naturally, my friend, we do not ; but it does not hence follow that other and higher beings do not. This internal dark- ness of ours does not call into existence an external and prse- mundane darkness which has the power too of creating light. Such an argument is just as if an Englishman who had never been in India were to exclaim on seeing Hindus, these men come out of ignorance, because he did not know the land from which they came. Yet the solid land of India, Bhdrata-varsha, as your wise men call it, would not the less exist, nor would the Englishman's ignorance be anything more than a name for his not knowing.