Four Lectures to the Brahmos

I TEIED to show you, gentlemen, in my first discourse, that Avithout revelation men can never find out pure religion, and that though they do possess a certain kind of knowledge oF divine and religious truths, yet there is some such weakness and some such defect in men's understanding and judgment with regard to those truths, that whenever they attempt to think about theui or to teach them, they are sure to go astray and fall into all sorts of errors; and that Christianity alone does teach men pure religion, and therefore it is proved to be the revelation of God.

At the end of that discourse, however, I said that you do not quite agree with me that Christianity teaches us altogether a pure and perfect religion, for you think that there are some objectionable points in its teaching also. And so you would necessarily disagree with me in my conclusion that Christianity is a revelation of God.

But 1 also said that I was sure that a careful consideration of those points would remove all objections about them, and I expressed a desire of saying something about those points if God would enable me to do so. Well, to-day I wish to make a beginning of it. Now I know that among such things in our Scriptures as appear to you very objectionable are those passages in the Old Testament which ascribe to God such acts as, for instance, commanding the Israelites to extirpate the Canaanites, and not only this, buj^, in some cases, to kill men, women, children, and animals, without discrimination. I have in my possession a letter written to me by a very vehement Brahmo, attacking the Bible and finding much fault with it on account of such statements in it, and using very harsh and violent language towards it. You will perhaps say " very deservedly." Well, we shall presently see, for I purpose in the present discourse, and perhaps in a following one, to consider your objection to such, statements in the Bible.

And I wish to tell you one thing here, and beg you to keep it always in your minds. It is this; that one very easy way of answering many of your objections to the statements of the Bible is to point out to you facts in nature, which you say is your Bible. For it is very easy to show you that if you raise objections to such and such statements or such and such doctrines of the Bible, the very same objections may be raised to the works of God in nature also. If therefore those objections are to prove that the Bible cannot be the Word of God, the same objections would also prove that the God of nature cannot be a just, holy, merciful, and good God.

And I wish you to observe this also. You know that many objections, based upon certain facts in nature, are raised by atheists and sceptics against the doctrines of natural religion, or Theism. And yet they do not prevent you from believing in Theism. Your common sense leads you to believe so firmly in the truths of Theism, namely, the existence of God, His goodness, holiness, justice, and so forth, that though atheists and sceptics bring very formidable objections, based upon certain facts in nature, they appear to you of no force, but you easily persuade yourselves that since man is but a little worm of this earth, and since the wisdom and counsel of Him who has made this universe are so very far beyond the utmost stretch of man^s conception, it must be owing to his own ignorance that certain facts in His creation appear to him to be contrary to wisdom, goodness, and justice, but that they cannot be so in reality. You feel at once that you are not competent to say that there may not be deep reasons fully to justify all the ways of God, and you feel no difficulty in believing that you may be ignorant of those reasons. Now precisely in the same way common sense has led us also to believe, from many internal and external proofs, that the Bible is the revealed word of God, and we therefore do not see any force in those objections which you bring against the statements and doctrines of the Bible.

But, to make plain what I have briefly stated, take those places iu the Bible wliicli appear to you very objectionable, namely, those mentioned above, where God is said to have commanded the Israelites to extirpate the Canaanites. But before applying my remarks to your objections, I will say this in the first place, that many persons are perhaps labouring under a great mistake with regard to this command of God. I think they imagine that God is represented in this matter as a despot who by a capricious will to confer favour upon His favourite ones, namely, the Israelites, commands them, without any regard to justice, to attack lawful possessors of a country, and to destroy them in order to take possession of it. But the Bible says distinctly that it was in order to punish the Canaanites for their own great sins that the Israelites were commanded to go and extirpate them. Listen to what Moses says to the Israelites in the 9th chapter of Deuteronomy, " Speak not thou in thy heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying. For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land, but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land; but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Understand, therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness, for thou art a stifFnecked people; from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt until ye came unto this place ye have been rebellious against the Lord,'' and so forth. Do you see any trace of favouritism or partiality here? Is not this very plain speaking, such as becomes a book of God? There are other places in the Pentateuch where it is shown to what degree of abomination the wickedness of the Canaanites had reached, and that it was for such wickedness that they were punished by God through the instrumentality of the Israelites, and I think you believe that God may use any person or any nation or any thing to accomplish His own purposes. In the 18th chapter of Leviticus we thus read, " And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech. Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with, womankind: it is abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled: Therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.*'

Sodom and Gomorrah were cities of the same country, which had been destroyed by God some four hundred years before the conquest of Canaan, by seuding fire on them on account of their great sins. What sort of sins were these? Listen to the description of them which the Bible gives. " There came two angels to Sodom at even," we read in the 19th chapter of Genesis. No doubt they came in the form of men. " And Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. And Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; And he said. Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early ^ and go on your ways. And they said. Nay; but we will abide in the street all -night. And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter; And they called unto Lot, and said unto him. Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. And they said. Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and ho will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse

with thee than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But th^ men pat forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.'^

Such was the depth of wickedness and abomination into which the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had sunk. And therefore, says the Bible, " The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire out of heaven. And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground."

I do not know whether you will acknowledge or not that such wickedness deserved such a punishment, remembering at the same time that God does not punish men even for great wickedness at once, but after showing patience and forbearance for a long time, and when no hope of amendment is left, and when perhaps sparing such men is calculated to do very great harm to the whole human race at large, I think many persons will acknowledge that such wickedness did deserve such punishment, but I know that there are also persons who would think it too severe and indiscriminate. Now I will say to those who thus think, that I have not given an answer yefc to your objections based upon the supposed severity and apparent indiscriminateness of such punishment. That answer I wish to give you presently.

I only read to you the narrative about the men of Sodom and Gomorrah to show you into what depth of wickedness those men had sunk whom God is said to have destroyed by fire. These two cities belonged to the same country, namely, Canaan. But it seems that the other inhabitants of Canaan, though very wicked, yet had not then filled up the measure of their iniquity in the same way as the men of Sodom and Gomorrah had done, and therefore God was still showing to them His long-suffering and forbearance. This is plain from God's own words to Abraham, for God thus says to Abraham in the 15th chapter of Genesis, '^ In the fourth* generation they, that is, the Israelites,

Bhall oomo hitlier, that is, into the land of Canaan, again, for the iniqidty of the Amorites is not yet full." By four generations here is meant four hundred years. For in the thirteenth verse it is said, " Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years." Now how clear it becomes from this place that it was not without showing to them patience and forbearance for many centuries that God at last punished the Canaanites by the sword of the Israelites as he had _^before punished the men of Sodom and Gomorrah by fii'e.

Now had these words of God to Abraham not been recorded in the Bible, we should not have known the fact that God did bear for a very long time with the inhabitants of Canaan before He punished them so severely. Let us learn therefore not to judge rashly about the acts of God recorded in Holy Scripture, but rather say that had we been informed of all the circumstances connected with them, we should have had more light thrown upon the subject to see the justice and goodness of God in them.

By all these passages of the Bible which I have now quoted (and there are more like these), I wish to impress upon your minds that it was not out of favouritism, or partiality to the Israelites, that God commanded them to extirpate the Canaanites, but in order to punish the latter for their own most horrible sins and abominations, and that also after showing them patience and long- sufiPe ring for many centuries. It is true that God accomplishes many purposes by one means. It was also the purpose of God to establish the Israelites in a separate country and to train them up in the principles of true religion, that among them Christ the enlightener of the whole human race might at last appear. But this arrangement was not for their sakes only, but for the sakes of us all. For what did God say to Abraham when He promised him to give the land of Canaan to his seed? He said to him these remai-kable words, signifying what was the ultimate end of that whole arrangement, " In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth he blessed." But whatever other purposes God had in view in giving the land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham, it was the horrible wickedness of the Canaanites themselves for which they wei'e commanded to be extirpated.

Now you will acknowledge, I presume, that God has a perfect right to punish sinners, especially when after many warnings, and after much patience shown to them for a long time, they continue and even go on increasing in their wickedness, and become the cause of spreading corruption through the whole human race. You will also acknowledge, I suppose, that as the Almighty may use, and does use, fire, or an earthquake, or a plague, or any other of His natural agents of destruction to punish sinners, go He may, with perfect right, command any of His rational subjects too to execute the same purpose, and you will also agree that when they, in obedience to His command, execute that purpose, they cannot incur guilt but do their duty, and would rather incur guilt if they refused to obey.

Men sometimes say that such a command to the Israelites to go and destroy certain nations was calculated to harden their hearts and to teach them cruelty, and therefore was unworthy of God. But such an objection will not stand examination.- We cannot find fault with God's Word for declaring that God has done such and such a thing, when we see God doing the same thing before our eyes in His providence. You will acknowledge that it is according to God's will that there should be governments in this earth, and that they should execute justice. You will agree that it is a duty which God Himself has laid upon governments, and which they would be guilty in nois fulfilling, that for certain crimes they should give to the perpetrators capital punishment, such as hanging, or beheading. And you know that they employ certain men who have to be constantly engaged in the most unpleasant business of hanging or beheading their fellow-men. Again, under the present circumstances of the world. Providence has inade it necessary for kings to keep armies to protect their country and subjects from the invasions of lawless enemies. And when unhappily such enemies do invade the country, it becomes the duty of kings to command their soldiers to fight with the enemy and to cut the throats of hundreds of their fellow-ineu, aud it is the duty of a soldier to obey. Now when we see with our own eyes that God, in His Providence, does place us in circumstances in which it becomes necessary for us to do these things, can we object when we read in the Bible that the same Providence placed the Israelites under the same circumstances? But in those cases, as well as in these, such a duty would be a special trial to good and tender hearted men; but again, you must recollect that trials are the lot of all mortals in this life. But good men will do it as a duty to God, and since God has promised the aid of His grace to those who engage themselves in a trying duty as a duty, He will no doubt so assist those who shall be engaged in this particular duty that their souls will suffer no injury from any bad results of such an engagement. And in the case ofrthe Israelites there was everything to impress upon their minds that in fighting with the nations of Canaan they were simply, as ministers of God, executing His command, for they were directly under Theocratic government. God was their King, and they were His subjects and servants. Not in that general sense in which God is the King of all, and all are His subjects J but in a special sense. He dwelt among them in a special way as their King. His Tabernacle among them was His Royal Palace, in which He signified His presence through the symbol of visible glory. He gave them special laws. He visited them by special punishment when they violated those laws, in a way in which He does not usually visit mankind at large. By His command they marched, and by His command they halted. He told them very plainly, as you have seen in those passages which I have quoted, that He only used them as His ministers to punish those wicked nations for their horrible abominations. So then you see that the Israelites knew, or at least they were clearly and distinctly told, that it was not to satisfy their own lust of possession that they had to fight with the Canaanites. But it was the Lord^s batt]e and they were simply to engage in it as His service. And no doubt God would take care that their souls should not suffer any damage from the work which He Himself gave them^ if they would do it as His work, as He is always ready to help and preserve us all when His Providence compels us to enter into temptations and trials.

But, after all, you will say that you are not quite satisfied. You will perhaps say that however great may have been the sins of the nations of Canaan, such a wholesale destruction of them cannot be justified. How can you justify especially such commands ascribed to God in the Bible as that with regard to the Amalekites, " Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare th.em not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'^ So again, in the thirty-first chapter of the book of Numbers, the Israelites are said not only to have slain all the males of the Midianites indiscriminately by the command of God, but even all the women that had known men, and even all the males among the little ones. Can such an indiscriminate slaughter, you will say, in which the innocent should equally suffer with the guUty, be justified? Could any fault be found with infants, asses, and camels? Such a desci'iption shocks our moral sense, you will say; such things can never be reconciled with even human justice, much less with the perfect justice of God.

Now my answer to these objections is this, that in this matter, namely. Almighty God's causing the innocent to sufier with the guilty, not only we Christians, but all Theists as well, must confess, if they would think, that there is a mystery in it which we cannot comprehend in this life, that there must be reasons which unquestionably must justify the ways of God, but which we do not know. Pious men have tried to conjecture some reasons, and if you will consider them carefully, they will go far to satisfy your minds. And I would beg you to read what they have written on those places of the Bible which have been alluded to above. I would recommend you, for instance. Dr. Wordsworth's remarks on those places. But if those observations of pious men will not satisfy you, my answer to you is this, that if you will find fault with the God of the Bible on account of the statements contained in those places, you will have to find fault with the God of nature also on account of facts in nature far more startling than those in the Bible. The only solutions left to you with regard to some tremendous difficulties connected with many facts in nature, would be — first, to say that there must be most wise and just reasons for them, but we do not know them; and secondly, to say that this world is a place of probation and not of the distribution of rewards and punishments according to the exact measure of merits and demerits of individuals, and that all inequalities in this world will be made up in the next. And the same solution would be applicable to the dealings of God related in the Bible also.

With regard to the works of the Almighty, I beg you ever to bear in mind that it would be a great mistake to call them unjust because similar acts, if done by men, would be considered unjust. It is true that to kill women and infants would be considered a most infamous and unjust thing in men. But do you not see that God Almighty being the Lord of all lives, takes away the lives of women and infants every day?

"Killing, the most criminal act recognized by human laws,^' says John Stuart Mill, '^nature does once to every being that lives; and, in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures, such, as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures. '*

Again, as regards the supposed severity in God's dealings recorded in the Old Testament, and even the charge of cruelty brought upon them, and their apparent indiscriminateness in making the innocent to suffer equally with the guilty, do you not observe what God does, before your very eyes, in nature? And I wish you to remember that though men usually say that Nature does this or that, yet you, Theists, must believe that it is God Himself that does those things. The earth does not quake of its own accord, but God causes it to quake by His ivill; nor does the cyclone move by its own will, but God moves it by His will. So that it is clear that when an earthquake, or a cyclone, or a flood, or any other so-called natural agent, brings destruction and great suffering upon towns or countries, it is really God who commands them to go and to destroy so many towns, or countries, with all its inhabitants, men, women» children, good as well as bad, innocent as well as guilty, the sick, the old, widows and orphans, without any discrimination, precisely in the same way as He- is said in the Bible to have commanded the Israelites to go and destroy the Amalekites or Midianites. Theists are ever wont to say that some acts in the Old Testament ascribed to God, are so horrible and cruel, that they cannot believe that the God of the Bible is the same as the God of nature, in whom they believe. But to me the great want of thought in these men, in uttering such words, appears far more mysterious and inexplicable than those acts of God recorded in the Old Testament. Do they always shut their eyes? Do they never see what takes place before their eyes in this world? Are the acts of God in nature less horrible (to use their own language), or do they appear less cruel than any recorded in the Bible? In my opinion the former ought to appear far more horrible and cruel to such men than the latter. For surely the suffering of a few people, slain by the edge of the sword, as recorded in the Old Testament, is nothing compared with the sufferings of men when God commands the earth to quake terribly, and large towns are overthrown by it, and men die, being buried under fallen roofs and beams, and are tormented and suffocated, or are swallowed up by fissures made in the earth. The following description of the horror of an earthquake is taken from a Cyclopgedia: —

" Nothing makes such an awful impression on the senses as an earthquake. The earth is violently convulsed, heaving up and down in a manner hardly conceivable by those who have not witnessed it. The tottering buildings, the falling of the tiles, and the crashing of the timbers of the roofs, completely distract the senses. Fear drives men from their houses, but they do not always find safety out of doors. No person can stand without support: people cling to one another, to trees, or to posts. Some throw themselves on the ground; but the motion of the earth is so violent that they are obliged to stretch out their arms on each side to prevent themselves from being tossed over. Animals are equally alarmed. They stand with

their legs spread out and their heads down, trembling violently. The air itself seems to participate in the convulsion, for the birds fly about wildly. Meanwhile the sea retires from the shore; but after a few minutes it returns in a high wave, which advances like a watery wall with incredible velocity, and covers all those tracts which are not more than fifty feet above highwater mark. It rushes back with equal velocity. This motion of the sea is repeated as long as the shocks of the earthquake are violent. Vessels sailing along a coast, convulsed by an earthquake, feel also a motion quite different from that produced by gales or currents. The loss of life by earthquakes is sometimes considerable. It is chiefly produced by the falling of the buildings when the shock is so unexpected that the inhabitants have not time to escape. In some cases the overflowing of the sea has been fatal to a great number of persons. People have also been swallowed up by the fissures caused by earthquakes."

I have a long account of earthquakes, taken from the Cyclopaedia of Arts and Sciences, conducted by Charles Knight. I had intended to read the whole of it to you here, but it would make this discourse too long; therefore I wish now to mention only a few instances from it. One earthquake occurred in Europe on the 1st of November in 1755, which is said to have almost destroyed the city of Lisbon. The number of persons that perished by it is stated to have been 30,000. Of course women and children and all sorts of persons must have suffered and perished by it, without discrimination. In February and March 1783 the north-eastern part of Sicily and the southern portion of Calabria were convulsed by repeated and violent shocks, which overthrew the town of Messina and killed many thousands of its inhabitants, as well as many persons in Calabria. One of the last considerable earthquakes in Europe, in the middle of the kingdom of Naples, is said to have been most destructive. The number of persons who perished by it amounted to 3,274, besides 1,615 who were wounded. In 1857, on December 16, two shocks of earthquake were felt in Southern Italy, by the destruction of buildings occasioned by which at least 22,000 human beings were destroyed, and 4,000 wounded. Imagine the sufferings of those who were killed, being buried under fallen roofs; and there must have been among them old persons, sick persons, little children, and women with child. One city in America was destroyed by an earthquake on the 26th of March 1812, when upwards of 12,000 of its inhabitants were buried in the ruins; and the same town experienced in 1826 another earthquake, which was hardly less destructive. On the 4th of February 1797 the town of Quito was greatly damaged, and Riobomba levelled to the ground. Not less than 40,000 persons are stated to have perished by this earthquake. The town of Lima was almost entirely destroyed on the 20th of October 1687, and again on the 28th of October 1746; in this latter catastrophe the port of Callao was inundated by the sea, and the whole population perished.

And earthquakes are not the only agents by whose instrumentality it pleases Almighty God very frequently to send heavy sufferings upon his rational as well as irrational creatures; he has many other ways also. Ton remember how, only about three years ago, many thousand people suffered in Khandesh, being made houseless and being deprived of all their property from the rising of the river. And some two years before that I read in a newspaper that by the rising of the river Gomati at Jaunpore ^'^ten thousand people were made houseless." You have heard of the great destruction caused in Calcutta and its vicinity by two cyclones a few years ago, at the second of which I was myself present in Calcutta. How much suffering they caused to the people there! And what ia more mysterious in these calamities is that the poorest people, who are the objects of greatest pity, suffer most of all. And you know that when God Almighty sent those two cyclones in Bengal upon His creatures, and they suffered most terribly, men had compassion on them, and collected a large sum of money, and relieved them from their distress to a very great extent. Will you venture to say that the God of nature is very cruel, but man is more merciful than He? And yet Theists use such language towards the God of the Bible when they hear some.accounts of His judgments on sinners in the Bible. And you know who are the men who make great efforts and give away much money when great calamities are sent by the God of nature, as those by cyclones iu Bengal or that in Khandesh. They are chiefly Christians. According to your way, then, of judging and passing sentence upon the acts of Almighty God, you ought to say, as John Stuart Mill has actually said, that the God of Christianity is far more merciful than the God of nature.

But I will go still further and say that by following your principle, not only may objections be raised against the goodness and justice of the God of nature by the calamities and miseries brought upon His creatures by natural causes, but even from all those most fearful sufferings which are inflicted upon the most innocent persons by their fellow-men — tyrants, despots, cruel masters, slave-dealers, &c. Because all those acts of injustice, oppression, and cruelty are done under His very eyes. And you would not call a king either merciful or just who takes no notice of an innocent sufferer, and does not deliver him, though he is suSering under his very eyes.

You see, then, gentlemen, from all the foregoing observations, how unjust and unreasonable are the objections brought by Theists against certain acts ascribed to God in the Old Testament from their supposed severity or indiscriminateness or injustice or cruelty. For we see that the acts of God in nature are infinitely more startling, and infinitely more liable to those charges of cruelty, &c., than any recorded in the Old Testament.

And now I want to tell you something which I beseech you to hear very attentively and ever to keep iu your mind, for I want to tell you what is the root of all such objections which Theists feel towards the acts of God related in His Holy Word. That root is want of humility and faith. Do not condemn me hastily for saying this, for I hope to be able to show you that what I say is true. I have said that the acts of God in nature are infinitely more liable to objections than any recorded in the Bible, and yet Theists never raise or feel any objection to them, but on the contrary they profess that they learn all their Theology from nature, and that that Theology teaches them that God is all goodness, mercy, and love. But learned atheists and sceptics feel quite differently: —

Listen to what the great logician John Stuart Mill says on this subject —

" These, then/' he writes, " are the net results of Natural Theology on the question of the divine attributes. A Being of great but limited power, * * of great and perhaps unlimited understanding, but perhaps, also, more narrowly limited than his power, who desires, and pays some regard to, the happiness of his creatures, but who seems to have other motives of action which he cares more for, and who can hardly be supposed to have created the universe for that purpose alone. Such is the Deity whom natural religion points to; and any idea of God more captivating than this comes only from human wishes or from the teaching of either real or imaginanj revelation."*

" Such,^' he says, " are the indications of natural religion in respect to the divine benevolence. If we look for any other of the moral attributes, * * as, for example, justice, we find a total blank."

You see, then, that this great logician thinks that there is no evidence whatever in nature for those moral perfections of God — • His infinite benevolence, love, mercy, justice, &c. — which Theists think they learn from nature. But further, he thinks that the Author of nature might be supposed as possibly a tolerably well-meaning being, only if He be believed to be of a limited power; but if you think Him to be omnipotent, then according to Mr. Mill no more cruel and malicious being can possibly be imagined than the Author of nature. You Theists think that you find abundant proofs of the goodness and love of God in nature. But listen to what Mill says: —

" If a tenth part of the pains," he writes, "which have been expended in finding benevolent adaptations in all nature, had

been employed in collecting evidence to blacken the character of the Creator, what scope for comment would not have been found in the entire existence of the lower animals, divided, with scarcely an exception, into devourers and devoured, and a prey to a thousand ills from which they are denied the faculties necessary for protecting themselves? If we are not obliged to believe the animal creation to be the work of a demon, it is because we need not suppose it to have been made by a being of infinite power. But if imitation of the Creator's will as revealed in nature were applied as a rule of action in this case, the most atrocious enormities of the worst men would be more than justified by the apparent intention of Providence that throughout all animated nature the strong should prey upon the weak.''

You know that Dr. Colenso has been pleased to write the following words, with regard to the action of the Israelites upon the Midianifces by the command of Almighty God, as recorded in the 31st chapter of Numbers: — "The tragedy of Cawnpore," he writes, " where 300 were butchered, would sink into nothing compared with such a massacre." Now here Dr. Colenso compares an act done by the command of Almighty God, recorded in His Holy Word, with an act of most inhuman cruelty perpetrated by most wicked men, and condemns the former as something far worse in cruelty and wickedness than the latter. And in Mr. Mill's judgment the animal creation would have to be believed to be " the work of a demon " if it was necessary to suppose that its author was a being of infinite power!

But both these rash and impious judgments proceed from the same cause, namely, want of humility and faith. Mr. Mill is utterly wanting in humility and faith towards God as he has revealed himself in nature, and Dr. Colenso is utterly wanting, in humility and faith towards the same God as he has revealed himself in His Holy Word.

I will make one more quotation from Mill to show you how rash he was in pronouncing judgment on the work of Almighty God: —

'' If the motive of the Deity," he writes, " for creating sentient beings was the happiness of the beings he created^ His purpose, in our corner of the universe at least, must be pronounced, taking past ages and all countines and races into account, to have been thus far an ignominions failure; and if God had no purpose but our happiness and that of other living creatures, it is not credible that he would have called them into existence with the prospect of being so completely baffled."

Now consider, I beseech you, that while to such men as John Stuart Mill nature is full of facts which prove that the God of nature, if omnipotent and omniscient, is most unjust and cruel, how is it that you never feel so at all, though, as I have shown, the things which occur in nature are infinitely more startling than any you can point out in the Old Testament? It is because you are not wanting in humility and faith towards the God of nature, and you think, and think rightly, that we, little and insignificant worms of the dust as we are, ought not to take upon ourselves to judge the works of Almighty God, and that there may be very good reasons which would reconcile all we see in Providence with the wisdom, goodness, and justice of God, and yet we may not know them. Atheists and sceptics think that it is absolutely impossible to believe that the God who has made such a world as this could be just or good, unless, as Mill says, " we blunt our inquiring intellect by sophistry." And what is the root of such perverse thought? Is it not want of humility and faith towards the Author of nature? If so, tben it is clear that when men find faults with the acts of God recorded in His revelation which are infinitely less startling than those in nature, the root of it must be the same, namely, want of humility and faith in them. If objections to certain things in God's providence arise from want of humility and faith, then objections to similar things in God's Word infinitely less liable to such objections must much move reasonably be believed to proceed from the same cause. John Stuart Mill says that " The Christian Religion is open to no objections, either moral or intellectual, which do not apply at least equally to the common theory of Deism." He may be supposed in this respect to be au unprejudiced judge I think, for he cares as little for the one as for the other. By '* common theory of Deism^^ he of course means the belief of theists that the Author of nature is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and is perfect in goodness, benevolence, justice, wisdom, &c.

But now allow me to say that the difference between you •and men like John Stuart Mill is this, that you are inconsist- •eut but they are consistent. They are proud, and trust theit poor fallible reason and condemn the revelation of Almighty •God, but they equally condemn Theism also, for the same •reasons lead them to do so, and that on infinitely stronger grounds. Do you know that there were some heretics, calling themselves Christians, in the early ages of the Church, called jgnostics? They condemned and rejected the Old Testament, but they also condemned the Author of nature, and said that He was not the Supreme God, and so they too were consistent. If the Brahmos followed this example they would at least be consistent. The old gnostics condemned the God of the Old Testament as well as of nature as a malicious being, and held that the God of the New Testament was the good and supreme God. I say that following their own principles they were consistent, and correct in their logic. And so the great logician John Stuart Mill agrees with them, for he writes, that *' The morality of the gospel is far higher and better than that which shows itself in the order of nature." And again, " The Author of the Sermon on the Mount," he writes, ''is a far more benignant Being than the Author of nature." ''But unfortunately," he says, " the believer in the Christian revelation is obliged to believe that the same Being is the Author of both." Well, so we are obliged to believe, and we do not think " unfortunately.^' And I beseech you. Sirs, to follow our example if you wish to be safe, else there is no knowing into what horrible gtdf of errors you may plunge yourselves and your children!

Allow me, then, good Sirs, to give you this advice. Deal with Christianity as you deal with Theism. But I must stop here this evening, hoping to resume the subject the next time.