II.

JOSEPH COOK'S THEORY OF PROBATION.

[Sunday Evening, Oct. 19th, 1890.]

I hold in my hand a lecture by Joseph Cook, interspersed with marks of "applause" and "laughter." In that lecture Mr. Cook proved to the satisfaction of a large congregation in the city of Boston, that under the government of a just and loving and all-powerful God, sin and suffering would exist forever; that multitudes of our fellow-beings would continue in rebellion and torment endless; that even were God so disposed, he could do nothing to help them. Their condition must remain immitigable and rayless. In that congregation there were undoubtedly many whose dearest friends or relatives had passed to the other world with what Mr. Cook would call "permanent evil character;" and who consequently will sin and suffer through interminable ages. And yet that congregation greeted those statements with applause!

That was a marvellous spectacle,-that clapping and stamping audience, a marvellous spectacle for modern civilization! It is one of those things. that make us doubt sometimes the superior humanity of our generation. It is true, we have our societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals; but in the latter part of the nineteenth

century, hundreds of professedly Christian people in Boston shout over the prospect of myriads of human beings writhing in torment without remedy and without hope! Let Christian America no longer censure Pagan Rome. The assembly that clap their hands over the hell of Mr. Joseph Cook have forfeited their right to condemn the Roman populace who witnessed with pleasure gladiators hew each other to pieces in the amphitheater! Indeed, the Pagan has the advantage. The sufferings over which he gloated were but momentary. Those over which the Christian rejcices outlast the sun, endure while the throne of the Eternal stands. And still we send out missionaries to convert heathen tribes from their barbarities! Let us trust that the news of this demonstration may never penetrate to the jungles of those savage objects of missionary solicitude.

Last Sunday evening, Mr. Cook repeated some portions of that lecture in this city and was greeted with enthusiasm. The newspaper reports say: "The speaker here arrayed a host of Biblical quotations to prove his case. The Good Book taught from cover to cover that final permanence of character was reached in this world, and all life and nature corroborated it. Reason, conscience and common sense all taught it, and he could have little respect for the intellect of the man who held otherwise."

Nevertheless we venture to hold otherwise! "It is not the best way," says Mr. Cook, "to teach the truth of future punishment, to say that a man is punished forever and ever for the sins of that hand's-breadth of duration we call time. If the soul does not repent of these with contrition, and not merely with attrition, the nature of things forbids its peace. But the Biblical and natural truth is, that prolonged dissimilarity of feeling with God may end in eternal sin. If there is eternal sin, there will be eternal punishment. Final permanence of character under the laws of judicial blindness, and the self-propagating power of sin, is the truth emphasized by both God's word and his works."

This, then, is the gist of that phase of the doctrine of which Mr. Cook is high priest: that character tends to permanence, good or evil; that it becomes so fixed and unchangeable in this world, that after death it cannot be affected in one way or another. The good cannot be modified by evil; the evil character cannot be modified by good, however strong and persistent its appeals. The statue of Memnon, in the classic fable, when touched by the rising sun, gave forth sweet music. But harder than the black marble of that ancient statue, is the heart that the sins of a few brief earthly years have petrified. The light even from Him who is said to be our sun, as

well as our shield, can evoke from that flinty substance no heavenly melody! So teaches Mr. Cook. Immutable and unyielding sin is accompanied by perpetual suffering.

This is the doctrine. What shall we say of it? Let us not say that "we can have little respect for the intellect of those who hold it;" because the fact is there are some elements of truth in this theory; there is truth enough in it to mislead even a great intellect into the belief that it is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The truths in that doctrine, however, are preached from this pulpit. We have never faltered,

In laying emphasis upon the value of the present. "It is with a chill in my inmost spiritual self," said Mr. Cook last Sunday night, "that I hear of a doctrine being preached which encourages men in the delay of repentance." When has any such encouragement ever been held out from this pulpit? When have we ever flung to the breeze a banner inscribed with the legend "Indifference"? When have we ever taught that it mattered not how we treated our privileges or improved our opportunities ? Every sin robs us of some comfort, impairs our usefulness, prolongs our misery, postpones our bliss. "To-day," and not "to-morrow," is our watchword.

This pulpit has never failed to make prominent