THE NEW THEOLOGY. 329 



probability of reformation and growth, for suffering is not a penalty 

 in token of disapproval, but a sign of mercy and an agency of restraint 

 and reformation. The penalty of sin is death — an eternal disability — 

 and the pain that accompanies it is its symptom demanding attention, 

 and the application of curative remedies. As the pain of a burn, the 

 gnawing of hunger, the distress of fever, are symptoms of threatened 

 danger which indicate the localities in jeopardy, the disintegration of 

 the tissues in process, and call for help, and disturb until relieved ; so 

 the fiery darts of sin, the cravings from spiritual inanition, and the 

 restless ferment from corrupt desires and vicious practices, give the 

 alarm of moral dissolution, and cry "with groanings unutterable," 

 until the remedies are applied and the cure is effected. So that suf- 

 fering, physical and spiritual, is the cry for mercy from the depths of 

 transgression, and is the sign of hope and the assurance of a " present 

 help in time of need," unless the desire of sufferers exceeds the meas- 

 ure of the divine and human compassion. If, therefore, life is contin- 

 uous and pain accompanies penalty, the possibility of recovery from 

 the pain of transgression and of a new opportunity in life must be 

 their concomitants, and last as long as "life and thought and being." 

 So that penalty, so long as it is accompanied with pain, is an evidence 

 of probationary being, and there is certainly no philosophic nor scien- 

 tific reason, and probably no biblical teaching, incompatible with these 

 two principles — the continuity of life, and the remedial nature of pain; 

 and, therefore, it may confidently be afiirmed, where there is pain there 

 is hope. 



But probationary life is not hypothecated on continuity of life, nor 

 on any remedial provision in life, but on the essential nature of moral- 

 ity. The phrase ^^ second probation'''' is misleading, so far as it implies 

 a continuity of condition or state. Each moral act — i. e., each delib- 

 erate act for which a moral being is responsible — completes a proba- 

 tionary period, so that a moral life is a succession of periods in which 

 deliberate choice, or the acceptance or rejection of ultimate good, is 

 expressed. Probation is, therefore, of instantaneity and not of continu- 

 ity, except so far as continuity indicates a succession of moral or pro- 

 bationary processes ; character is the tendency evoked by the last 

 determination ; virtuous life is a succession of best choices, and finite 

 moral being and morality terminate with probation. There is a dis- 

 position in the human mind to repeat its acts, and it acquires the 

 facility of habit by its repetitions, so that one virtuous or vicious act 

 heralds another, but each volition determines, as it also indicates, the 

 character, and therefore, if there be virtue in the future, it must be 

 predicated there as here on a probationary existence, and be secured 

 by deliberate choice. And to the objection that this postidatum ren- 

 ders the conditions of the future as uncertain as in the present, it need 

 only be said that the ordinances of Heaven are not regulated by specu- 

 lative philosophers or theologians. But why should the conditions of 



