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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



repenting; hence it might be argued that the 

 biblical statement on this head, so far from prov- 

 ing that there are no biblical misstatements, adds 

 to their list one misstatement the more. But this 

 difficulty also I will not press. An orthodox per- 

 son would probably meet it by saying that the 

 Divine word, like Nature, half reveals and half 

 conceals the soul within ; we can see God only 

 through a glass darkly, or rather through a 

 pseudoscope — immorlalia mortali sermone no- 

 famus ; hence there is no inconsistency in suppos- 

 ing that God does not really repent, but that to 

 our finite reason he can only be revealed as re- 

 penting. Well, let this explanation stand, only 

 let us observe that in the Hebrew verse — that 

 rime cle pensees, as M. Renan calls it — lying and 

 repenting are coupled together. The Divine in- 

 capacity of misrepresentation is announced in the 

 same breath, and placed in the same category, 

 with the Divine incapacity of repentance. And 

 yet, humanly speaking, God does repent. Is it, 

 then, impious to inquire whether, humanly speak- 

 ing, God may not misrepresent? Nay, further, 

 according to the only notion that we can form of 

 repentance, a repentant man must either err when 

 he repents, or have erred in doing that for which 

 he repents. Surely this reasoning mutatis mutan- 

 dis applies to a repentant Deity. Perhaps an il- 

 lustration will best set forth our meaning. We 

 are told that God repented of the good work of 

 creating man. Therefore, his beneficent decrees 

 do not resemble the laws of the Medes and Per- 

 sians. Why, then, must we assume that his 

 maleficent decrees resemble those laws ? If it 

 repented God of creation, may it not repent him 

 of the intention of damnation ? 



But it is not only out of the Bible that eternal 

 punishment is defended. The burden of proof is 

 attempted to be thrown on the assailants of that 

 doctrine. The doctrine, it is said, is rendered 

 antecedently probable by the analogy of Nature. 

 In Nature the wages of sin accumulate till death ; 

 a sinful act never ceases injuriously to affect the 

 sinner ; but whatever occurs in Nature must be 

 permitted, if not ordained, by God ; and the pre- 

 sumption is that his supernatural government 

 bears some analogy to his natural; and, there- 

 fore, that the punishment of sin, which has no 

 end in this world, will likewise have no end in 

 the next. Now, this reasoning, which is sub- 

 stantially that of Butler, could not be fully ex- 

 amined without discussing the argument of the 

 first chapter of the analogy, and even the funda- 

 mental assumption on which the analogy rests. 

 This is not the place for such a discussion ; so I 



will merely remark that natural forces are in them- 

 selves neither moral nor immoral, but outside mo- 

 rality ; but, when they are personified and judged 

 by a moral standard, they are found to be reck- 

 lessly immoral. Hence, if we start with the as- 

 sumption that the course of Nature is in harmony 

 with God's direct and deliberate action, we may 

 go on to defend the foulest superstition that ever 

 cursed mankind. If whatever exists (including 

 Nero's government ') is " ordained of God," theft 

 and adultery must be so ordained. If, then, God's 

 natural procedure is a sample of his supernatural, 

 what right have Christians to condemn the actions 

 attributed to Jupiter, which were, humanly speak- 

 ing, immoral ? Nor is it only civilized Jupiters, 

 ancient or modern, that may claim the benefit of 

 such a plea. The plea is equally applicable to 

 those " puny godlings of inferior race " 2 whom 

 savages worship, nay, even to Bhowanee, the god- 

 dess of murder. Hence, when Shelley indignantly 

 denied that 



" The God of Nature and benevolence had given 

 A special sanction to the trade of blood," 



his indignation was partly reasonable, partly not. 

 That the god of benevolence should have sanc- 

 tioned such a trade is, of course, impossible; but 

 that the god of Nature, the ordainer of all the 

 abominations that occur in Nature, should have 

 done so, is in no wise impossible, but just what we 

 might have expected. Nor, again, are we left to 

 conjecture as to the employment of the analogical 

 aid to faith in support of religious systems which 

 we now justly condemn. On the contrary, we 

 know that, when pagan orthodoxy was giving 

 way, such pagans as Plutarch and some of Luci- 

 an's interlocutors propped it up with arguments 

 not unlike those wherewith the disciples of But- 

 ler now prop up Christian orthodoxy. So that, 

 after all, Butler's and Mansel's sanctuary is a too 

 catholic Pantheon — a veritable " shrine of all 

 saints and temple of all gods " — where mutually 

 destructive theologies seek a common refuge. It 

 is, however, with such attributes as those of 

 Hermes Dolios, that we are specially concerned. 

 If it was God who hardened Pharaoh's heart, we 

 may assume that it is often, if not always, God who 

 hardens the liar's heart; in every such case Dcus 

 fallil per alium ; analogy, therefore, points to the 

 presumption that sometimes Peus fallit -per sc. 

 But this is net all. That the sun travels from 

 east to west, that the earth is approximately a 

 fiat surface, that the blue sky is a solid vault 



1 Romans xiii. 1. 



2 Dryden's " Persius." 



