# Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 6

It is the penalty of all reform that those who wage it, opposing one error or abuse, necessarily incur the risk of swinging into another. Perhaps this has had no more striking illustration than is furnished in the rebound from the exaggerated doctrines of the sacrificial theology concerning sin,—as to its infinite enormity, on the one hand, and as to the vindictive and horrible punishment by which only can God duly attest His hatred of it, on the other. Not to enter into the broad field thus opened, however, it is enough now to ask whether we, as a people, have not shared in this extreme rebound. Arraigning and controverting these doctrines, have we not had speculations among us, and even definitely declared conclusions, the inevitable effect of which, logically, has been either to make sin an inconsiderable affair, a slight disturbance which is to be beneficently overruled, or to deny that there is really any such thing? Have there not been periods in our history, indeed, when such theories have to no small extent determined the burden of our pulpits, and the thought of our people? And do they not yet quite largely mingle in the opinions that prevail among us?
But are such theories morally healthful? Are they favorable to quickness of conscience, or to a propelling and inextinguishable sense of obligation? Do they tend to distress us with a rebuking consciousness of the guilt of sin, or to induce humiliation and penitence on account of it? In few words, are they fitted spiritually to arouse and stimulate anybody? to fill anybody with a loathing and abhorrence of sin? to move anybody to feel himself a sinner, and to cry out with Paul, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" or to stir believers or churches to zeal for the conversion of souls? ​These are important questions: is it not time that they should be seriously pondered?
Paul speaks of sin as "exceeding sinful": is it so? Conscience recognizes force in the word ought, and therefore recognizes the desert of goodness, and the demerit of sin: is conscience thus intimating facts, or only suggesting phantasms? The Bible is a continuous rebuke of sin, denouncing God's retributions upon it, expostulating against it, and pleading that we will abandon it as not only a curse, but as in itself a heinous wrong: is the Bible, in all this, imposing upon us by using words without meaning? These inquiries touch points that are vital to all that bears the name of moral science, and therefore vital to the whole subject of character and life. Of course, I am not ignorant of the answers made to them on behalf of the views of sin at which they are aimed. But with these answers, and the metaphysics they involve, I have now no concern. Such metaphysics, splitting hairs, throwing dust, pressing half-truths as if they were the whole, or the side of a truth without regard to its relations, proportions, or qualifications, using words that keep their seeming to the ear, but lose or change their meaning to the sense, and eliminating the very life out of every fundamental moral idea, have been our bane. It is time that we were wholly emancipated from them. I shall be tempted into no discussion with them here. I propose only to deal with the subject practically, as it meets us on the pages of the Bible, in our unperverted consciousness, and in the instinctive judgments of conscience and common sense. I have a conviction—the result of years of observation, and that, for some time past, has been every year growing deeper and stronger—that we have widely failed to feel and enforce the enormity and "exceeding sinfulness" of sin. Not that we have been indifferent to moral obligation, for, as the fact, no people have been more keenly alive to such obligation, or more observant of it, on its human side; not that we have not had much sensitiveness, much faithful preaching, and much sincere shame and contrition on account of sin; but that we have not, as a people, been pervaded by any such deep and remorseful sense as the Bible demands of what it is as an offence ​against God, and thus of what it is to be a sinner, an unawakened and spiritually thoughtless soul, in His pure sight. We have never said, or acted as if we believed, that sin is right. Very far from it. But we have quite extensively dallied with it, theoretically, as if it were not very wrong; and, naturally, the effect of such theoretical dalliance has been a proportionally languid sense of the guilt of sin, a proportionally feeble realization of the necessity of repentance, and a corresponding indifference to the obligations which require a pronounced religious life.
Under these circumstances, I am satisfied, we need a changed style of thinking on this whole subject. A profounder sense of the absolute wrong of sin—not only in its grosser forms, but in all its forms, even in its lightest shadings, a keener consciousness of guilt on account of it, and a deeper and more thoroughly prostrating conviction of the solemnity and imperativeness of the calls which are summoning us to penitence and consecration to God, are, I believe, among the conditions upon which alone is there for us the increase of spiritual power which we so much desire; nor, I am confident, can our possible destiny as a Church be at all fulfilled except as we at once and henceforth take higher ground than we have been accustomed to occupy in these particulars, and thus commit ourselves to a New Departure, theoretically and practically, in this regard.
A theory was, years ago, extensively current among us, which, happily, is now obsolete, to the effect that sin is exclusively of the body, not of the soul; that, amidst all the contaminations of wickedness and evil indulgence, the soul remains unpolluted, the pure image of God, no party in the evil, as a diamond, imbedded in the mire, in no way partakes in itself of the surrounding defilement. This theory was, and is, so superficial, as well as so opposed—as it seems to me—to every dictate of common sense as applied to the subject, that it could not retain its hold on intelligent minds when even the least degree of moral and intellectual science, or psychological knowledge, began to assert itself. But it was a mischievous element of our denominational life, so far as it ever did prevail; and if it anywhere finds belief now, it finds belief only to the same ​mischievous effect. It is hardly a doctrine to be in these days seriously argued against; and yet, should there chance to be those anywhere still addicted to it on the supposition that Paul (Rom. vii.) teaches it, I must beg them to consider these weighty words of Dr. Ballou, transposing two or three of them at the outset:—
   "It would be a gross mistake to suppose that St. Paul confines sin to the body alone, or regards the mind, the spirit, of man as incorrupt. He means nothing of this kind, even when he says that he delights in the law of God after the inward man, while the law in his members wars against the law of his mind, bringing him into captivity to the law of sin. Indeed, the mere body, or flesh, strictly speaking, can never sin, though it may work temptations. When taken by itself, it is neither intelligent nor conscious, and is as incapable of moral transgression as any other unintelligent mass of matter. And even when united with mind, as it is in every rational person, it is the mind which feels, knows, and acts through the body as its instrument. It is the mind which recognizes motives, controls impulses, or yields to them; it is the mind which forms within itself the purpose, whether good or bad, and then executes it in overt acts, by means of the body. The mind is the real agent; and it is the mind alone that is guilty and condemned, in the case of sin. If it should be said that this contradicts St. Paul's assertion, that with the mind he served the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin,—we will, for the argument's sake, grant, what is not strictly true, that there is a contradiction in words; but is there any in the meaning? Will any one contend, seriously, that, in serving the law of sin, the mind takes no part, neither premeditates, nor desires, nor balances motives, nor comes to a determination, nor wills, nor puts forth the effort; but that all this is done by about a hundred or two pounds of mere bone, flesh and blood, without any co-operation of the mental power? The utter absurdity of the supposition ought, of itself, to be a sufficient guard against such a misapprehension of the passages referred to. But if this be not enough to satisfy every one, the matter will be put at rest by appealing to St. Paul's habitual recognition of corrupt, defiled, lustful, reprobate, filthy, vain, unrenewed minds and spirit in man. The other writers of the New Testament agree with St. Paul on this point. St. James says, 'The spirit that dwelleth within us, lusteth to envy.' . . . St. John says, 'Believe not every spirit; but try the spirits, whether they be of God.' . . .
   "Neither can the blind appetites and propensities of the body sin. The farthest they can go in this direction, is, to operate on the mind as impulses or incitements to wrong. If the mind does not consent to an improper indulgence of them, there is no sin, how strongly soever they rage; if it does consent, there is sin, how slightly soever they be felt. . . . To use the phrenological nomenclature, . . . is it the blind propensity, say of destructiveness, or of amativeness, that is conscience-smitten, ​struck with remorse, made wretched, and that sometimes repents? or is it the person, he who indulged these impulses unlawfully? Which of the two is it that commits the sin, and suffers the consequences? It is not the impulses that are either good or bad, except as means. There must be an intelligent person to whom they belong, and whose mind, whose will, directs them, before they can have any moral character; and he alone is either the agent, or the responsible subject. . . . It is evident [then], that, by the flesh, the body, its members, &c., Paul means the domination of the senses, in the mind, to the neglect of the spiritual development of our nature. . . . These senses always lie in contact with the mind, with the will; and they communicate to it impulses, which must be either controlled or yielded to, by some exertion of the mental power. . . . If the person voluntarily follows these impulses too far, or neglects to restrain them within their proper limits, then sin begins, and not till then,—begins and continues in his will, or governing faculty."
Leaving the notion thus disposed of, out of the case, there are two other views which have largely divided our church-opinion upon this subject of sin: 1. That which assigns sin and every other thought, or aim, or act of man directly to God; and 2. That which, though not directly charging sin to Him, represents God as complacent and quite well-satisfied with it, because He can so easily, and will so certainly, overrule it for good. Both these views are to be deprecated, I believe—as grave errors, to be renounced, and especially as serious hinderances, to be cast aside.
I. The first strikes at the root of all moral verities, and transforms the world into a stupendous machine, in which men and women, divested of all self-determining power, are simply serving the uses of so many wheels and springs. What though it is insisted on as the logical sequence of the predicate that God reigns, and is alleged to be the inevitable conclusion if God is to be at all recognized as a factor in human affairs? The premises are unquestionable; but the conclusion does not follow. The error is in so emphasizing God as to ignore man, and in so affirming the Divine Will as a factor in human affairs as to make the human will nothing but a name. That the Divine Will is a factor in all human affairs, no one who believes in a Divine Will doubts; but ​because there is a Divine Will, is there, therefore, no human will, except in terms? Or, because God is sovereign, has man, as a distinct and responsible agent, no existence? The sovereignty of God is, doubtless, the foundation on which all theology must build, or be, finally, no theology. Either there is a God, God over all possible contingencies, or there is no God. But man, in his place, is as real as God in His; and to construct a theological system that is also an ethical system in fact as well as in name, recognizing the play of moral forces and ground for praise or blame, man must be assigned a separate, and in a sense, independent individuality, and must be so reasoned from, as well as God. Alike the Bible and our own consciousness attest that we have, each of us, such a distinct personality; and if there is anything I can be said to know, I know that, within certain limitations, I am the master of my own actions, and therefore accountable for them. Every moral instinct of my being is a lie, if it is not so.
But the theory before us denies me any such real selfhood, and resolves me and everything pertaining to me into God. All I do, or will, or think, it avers, is God's will, act, or thought, expressing itself through me, as the click of the telegraph is the expression of the electric fluid behind it. Where, then, is my will? or my individuality? or my accountability? Not one of these attributes can, in any actual moral sense, be alleged of me, except as it can just as well be alleged of the crank of a steam engine, or of a falling stone. However the word may be used, there is in fact no such thing.
Nor is this the worst of it. In thus stripping us of all power of self-determination, and giving the lie to the Bible and our ineradicable sense of freedom and accountability, this theory also strips God of His glory as a moral governor. He is, if this be true, only an infinite mechanic, or the master of a stupendous puppet-show, using souls as so many passive pieces of intelligence, precisely as a machinist uses his pieces of brass and iron, or as the manager of an automatic exhibition directs the movements of his manikins by his touch of the wires, or his adjustment of the springs. Give whatever name you please to such a system, or call the ​means by which God so acts in us, or through us, determining what we shall do, motives, influences, or whatever you will, looking beneath words to things, the purely mechanical nature of the arrangement is manifest. We are clearly not moral beings,—only so many lay figures, curiously constructed to think ourselves self-acting, but going through our appointed motions, obeying or disobeying, reverencing God, or blaspheming and defying Him, loving and serving man, or trampling, defrauding, murdering him, as God adjusts and injects the mechanical forces over which He presides, and in the midst of which He is all.
I hold that these several consequences, not to mention others, place the theory which necessitates them outside the pale of legitimate argument, as any hypothesis which contravenes known and accepted facts is universally conceded to be no subject of argument. Treating the subject on common-sense principles, in any fair use of words in their ordinary meaning, these consequences are inevitable and undeniable, if any result in logic or mathematics can be said to be inevitable or undeniable; and in view of them, it is impossible not to ask what there is from which evidence can come, that does not protest against such a view of God's relations to human life, so issuing in our non-responsibility, when, stripped of all its metaphysical verbalisms and entanglements, it is fairly and nakedly considered? Especially should it be noted as the final fact which closes the case against this theory, that it necessarily invalidates all moral distinctions, and renders all action, at bottom, of precisely the same quality. "Well, then," once asked a brother minister of one of the most distinguished advocates of this philosophy, at the close of a long debate upon it, "to sum up the whole matter in few words, virtue and vice, if I understand you, are only names which we give to different phases of human activity, that, in their nature, are essentially the same, inasmuch as both are equally necessitated?" "Yes," frankly responded the disputant. And to this conclusion, disguise, or seek to evade it, as its advocates may, the argument at last irresistibly conducts us.
And these things being so, is it not clear what the practical influence of such speculations must be, and that if, as ​a Church, we are to have any spiritual vitality and power, we must be rid of them? Grant that there have been, and are, those holding, or professing to hold, this philosophy, in whom conscience and an invincible integrity have been stronger than their dangerous theory; grant even that there have been those holding some such theory, who, in an exalted consciousness of God's instant and constant presence, and under the inspiration and guidance of the religious principle thus glowing and regnant within them, have so far risen superior to the natural tendency of such a method of thinking as to be among the world's examples of a rugged and heroic virtue, can there be any reasonable doubt as to what its natural tendency is? Really taken as a direct and positive element into life, must it not impair the sense of responsibility, lessen the strenuousness of religious motive, and leave one at the mercy of impulse, impression, or inclination, however it may prompt? In the nature of things, if I actually live out of this philosophy, testing myself by its standards, can I, however much a sinner, feel guilty, or be moved to prostrate myself before God, asking His forgiveness, or be stimulated to self-denial, or struggle, or prayerful consecration and work? Believing that there is no separate, personal I, and that what seems to be me is only God behind me, can I feel merit, or demerit, do what I may? Or, if some such feeling will assert itself in me, in spite of my philosophy, can I do otherwise than laugh at it as a curious sensation which has no basis, or justification?
II. The second of the two theories adverted to, though not so fatally mischievous as the first is fitted to be, is nevertheless open to much the same condemnation. We cannot believe that God is complacent, or satisfied, in view of sin, and at the same time feel very seriously troubled ourselves because of it. Inevitably, as the human mind operates, and under the law of influence to which we are subject, attributing such complacency, or satisfaction to Him, we shall more or less share in it, and our repugnance at sin and our feeling of guilt on account of it will be correspondingly abated. This being so, no one can affirm such complacency, or satisfaction, on God's part, or even ​entertain it as a possible hypothesis in respect to sin, without moral peril. There is moral safety, because there is any poignant self-condemnation on account of sin, and any abhorrence of it, for us, only as we see it condemned and abhorrent in God's sight.
And if God be the Infinite Holiness, how can sin be otherwise than abhorrent to Him? Being sin,—supposing it to be, according to the Bible and the universal moral consciousness, man's act or intention, and not His own through man as an automaton, it is a denial of Him, or rebellion against Him, aiming to pull down what He would build up, and to build up what He would destroy. How, then, except by denying himself, can He be satisfied or complacent with it? Looking upon His finished creation, indeed, if we may credit the record, He "saw everything that He had made," and pronounced it "very good." This, necessarily, was a satisfaction with man as a part of the creation, and this, too, notwithstanding a clear foresight of his sinfulness; but the satisfaction was not with sin,—only with man in spite of sin, in view of the sublime destiny he would ultimately fulfill. With sin, then as now and always, God was in essential antagonism. Everything in His nature is opposed to it. Every law He has ordained is arrayed, eternally and inexorably, against it. It is the one element in His universe against which He is everywhere in conflict, and for the prevention and expulsion of which He is perpetually at work. His enmity to it is thus shown to be absolute, unappeasable,—something that cannot be qualified, or cease, except as He becomes himself qualified, or ceases to be what He is. There is no significance or worth in the Bible, if it is not so. If it be not so, there is no meaning in language, no such thing as duty; all the invitations and threatenings of God's Word, the life and cross of Christ, and all that God has done and is doing ostensibly to persuade us against sin, or to save us from it, are but so many pretences; the voice of conscience and the sense of responsibility are deceits; we are not moral agents, but things, without personal centre or value; and in all His so-called moral dealings with us, God is but playing an empty game of make-believe, or a monstrous masquerade.
​These being the facts, I submit that no man, or company of men, is at liberty to theorize, or to speculate in any way, directly or indirectly, to implicate God with sin, or to compromise this hostility to it so intrinsic and unappeasable in Him. Here, unfortunately, is the perversion to which a beneficent interpretation of the universe is—we may almost say, unavoidably—liable. Men easily fail to discriminate. They are prone to overlook conditions and qualifications, and to jump hastily at conclusions. Because we are assured that all things are pervaded with a merciful meaning, and that even sin is to be somehow made, in spite of itself, to subserve ultimate purposes of good, far too many leap straightway to the inference that sin is not, then, so very bad, or, at most, that while a present curse, it is only the negative side of good,—good, like sorrow, with its reverse side towards us. Against this perversion, or any approach to it, all who reach the sublime assurance of the ultimate triumph of good have need carefully to guard; and it is because of a failure duly to guard against this that we have, so widely, the idea of God's complacency, or satisfaction with sin.
Is it asked, how it happens, conceding God's sovereignty, that sin is in the world, if He is not satisfied that it should exist? For myself, I have an answer entirely sufficient for my own thought; but it has no place here. Admit, if the reader pleases, that it is impossible for us to answer the question except by saying that God is satisfied with sin. I hold that answer forbidden by what God is, as well as by the moral consequences which inevitably follow. It is a contradiction in terms, and as such, in the nature of the case, inadmissible—just as much as to say that God can lie. God's intrinsic and invincible antagonism to sin, which is but another name for His unshadowed Holiness, is not to be impeached because of the limitation of our powers. We impugn established human integrity only upon the most direct and indubitable proof, however difficult we may find it to explain unfavorable appearances, because, as we say, what the man is absolutely interdicts suspicion, so long as demonstration fails to warrant it. Shall we count God's character as something to be less carefully considered? ​It is often asked, Why does God permit so much suffering,—i. e., why has He chosen a system into which it so necessarily enters, if He is not pleased to see the suffering? and, however we may say, and find comfort in saying, that He proposes to overrule it, we can give no answer that goes to the bottom of the problem, and absolutely solves it. Do we, therefore, say that God is pleased to see His children suffer? The fact that He is Love forbids. Hence, we say, We cannot answer,—and are content to trust where we cannot see. So with numerous other questions—unanswerable except by impeaching God's character. We say, Any such answer in effect destroys God, and, being thus a self-evident contradiction, becomes, of course, excluded from the case. And this is what we are bound to say concerning the question before us, even granting that it transcends our reply except on the hypothesis named. It is to be held as a fundamental principle that no answer to it can be entertained which, so much as by the remotest implication, impinges on God's essential and irrepressible antagonism to sin, or authorizes us to think it something concerning which any other feeling than loathing and abhorrence is, under any circumstances, or in any sense, possible in Him, or allowable in us. If there be any meaning in the Bible, if any reality in Christ, if any significance in our own moral instincts, if any holiness or truth in God, sin is an evil—in itself, wholly so, an abomination in God's sight, and that should be an abomination in ours,—our curse now and always, the enemy of God and all good. There are no moral facts, if these are not among them; and if they are facts at all, they are facts to which too much emphasis cannot be given. There is no danger that we shall think too seriously of sin, or regard it as more monstrous, or appalling, than it is, if we but remember that God is God, and has told us that it must cease. The danger, as has been intimated, is altogether in the other direction; and for the honor of God and our own moral safety we cannot too scrupulously, or too constantly, watch against it.
To the convictions thus set forth as to the nature and tendency of the hypotheses thus passed in review, it is ​believed, a large majority of our Church has substantially arrived. Differences of statement—possibly differences of conception on some points—there may be; but, in principle and general conclusion, we are fundamentally one. We are agreed in affirming the wrong of sin, and the need of repentance. We stand together on Paul's axiom that sin is 'exceeding sinful.' We unite in saying that, if the doctrine that God is the author of sin, or that He is satisfied with it, or that it is, in His sight,—or may be in ours,—a thing of small moment, were Universalism, we could not be Universalists; and that, if Universalism required or authorized anybody to believe and enforce any one of these predicates, we should be compelled to denounce and oppose it as a most pernicious error. We declare, at every opportunity, that we have no sympathy with any theology which implicates God in sin, and no faith in any philosophy of life which represents it as a seeming evil, but an actual good. We hold sin to be wrong, absolutely, unchangeably. It not only seems wrong, we aver; it is wrong,—wrong not only in man's sight, but even more in God's sight; a violation of principles of rectitude ingrained in the nature of things, and, so long as it lasts, a canker in souls, and a blot upon the otherwise fair face of the universe.
Having, then, reached these convictions, should we not vigorously—more vigorously than ever before—enforce them? If, as we have been circumstanced, in the ardor of our polemics, our attention has—almost unavoidably—been to some extent diverted from them, should we not more assiduously consider how Christ and the apostles dealt with this subject, and, following them as our models, henceforth not only affirm—as we always have affirmed—that sin will surely be punished, but proclaim its reality and heinousness; seek to arouse men to a sense of guilt because of it; call them to repentance; and aim to have them 'pricked in heart,' and moved to prostrate themselves before God, crying, 'God be merciful to me, a sinner'? In a word, should not these convictions more positively and vitally appear in our talk, our appeals, and all our methods of labor? Who, indeed, should deal plainly, closely, pungently, with this subject, if not we? The enormity of an ​offence being always proportionate to the light and the love against which it is committed, to whom, of all Christians, should sin be so sinful and obnoxious as to us? or whose denunciations of it should be so severe? or whose sense of condemnation on account of it should be so poignant and overwhelming? For who show a Love against which it rebels, or from which it departs, or to which it is callously insensible, so vast, so tender, so all-embracing, as we? And, on the other hand, who have sanctions so certain and impressive, or motives so potent, as ours, by which to send home to souls the fact that not only is sin—any sin, all sin—a grievous offence against God, but that it is, and must be, a sure element of darkness, death and woe? Others talk of the pleasures of sin; we, never. Others believe that it may be committed with impunity; we pronounce this impossible. Sin, our message is, is not only a trampling of the commands of a loving Father, but a trifling with all the interests of the moral universe. An offence against God, it is also death and hell to every soul who serves it. Why, then, should we not commit ourselves to the New Departure which alike the letter and spirit of our faith thus demand, emphasizing beyond all others the enormity of sin, and the guilt of those who yield themselves to it, as these things are pressed upon us,—so rendering it henceforth impossible that we shall, in any quarter, be charged with belittling sin, as, with apostolic unction and zeal, we hold it up in the light of Divine realities, summoning to repentance and newness of life?
The glory of Universalism is in the harmony of God's sovereignty and man's accountability, and in the distinctness with which, pointing to the cross of Christ, it proclaims the wrong of sin, and the certainty of God's triumph over it. Be it ours, while abating nothing from the distinctness with which we prophesy this latter fact, to give new stress and power to the former. There is much of good in the world for us to thank God for; but there is much also of evil for us to mourn over and labor against. As in the Apostle's time, despite all that Christianity has accomplished in the enlightenment and salvation of souls, and the creation of a new and higher civilization, it is still true, alas! that ​"the whole world lieth in wickedness." This state of things it is ours, if we have any part or lot with Christ, to help to remedy. As a Church, we have no other final purpose. But how is it to be remedied? By no gentle dalliance with iniquity; by no rose-colored optimism; by no loose theories about moral distinctions, or the nature of moral obligation; by no exaggeration of God's sovereignty, or one-sided talk about His love. It can be remedied only as the truth, the whole truth, is preached, with all its sanctions, in its due relations and its Divine proportions; only as, while men are told that God is sovereign, and are pointed to His boundless, pleading, patient, inextinguishable love, they are pressed also with their own responsibility and obligations, and are thus awakened to see, and, in the quick of their being, to feel, what a thing demanding confession and humiliation, and therefore demanding penitence and self-renunciation, sin is. Only thus can any effectual warfare against the wrong of the world be accomplished, or anything be done to lead souls home to God through the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Shall we heed the lesson, and give ourselves earnestly to the New Departure to which we are thus called?