ART. VII.-EQUATION OF PROBATIONAL ADVANTAGES.

Or the three great generic difficulties of Arminianism, enumerated by Dr. Hill in his theology, the first is drawn from the fact that a large share of mankind never having heard of Christ are, even by Arminian concession, excluded from the means, and so from the possible attainment of salvation. through him. After all your efforts to maintain the freedom of the human will, (such is in effect his argument,) and your rejection of the justice of condemnation without a previous power to attain salvation, men are, by a sort of historical reprobation, damned without ever having possessed the power of being saved. Anticalvinian writers early appreciated this difficulty and furnished their answers. Perhaps the ablest and fullest discussion, on the Arminian side, is the treatise of Curcellæus, De Necessitate Cognitionis Christi ad Salutem, written in reply to Maresius, who took the high Calvinian ground of the universal damnation of all not possessing actual faith in Christ. Our early Arminian-Wesleyan theologians have given the subject a few clear but incidental touches; but the spirit of our times requires, perhaps, a renewed and more elaborate elucidation.

Other than Arminian theologians have advocated explanatory theories. One class has adopted the theory of restorationism, by which penalty is graduated to the guilt by the length as well as the degree of infliction. Others, as Müller in his Doctrine of Sin, conceiving that our Protestant eschatology is too stern, have preferred a theory, not of purgatory precisely, but of a means of knowledge and repentance in the intermediate state for those who are excluded therefrom during life. A third class embraces the doctrine of annihilationism, according to which, all who fail to fulfill the conditions of a real probation simply relapse into the non-existence from which they were brought by human birth. Could either one of these theories be proved it would obviate the Calvinian argument. It is our present purpose neither to refute their claims nor to adopt their method of solution.

We may in the first place remark that Dr. Hill's argument

is a most dangerous weapon for Calvinism, since it involves a complete admission of the accuracy and justice of one of the strongest objections against that system. His argument clearly avows a reprobation in which there has never been in the subject any power to attain salvation. After all the Calvinian talk of the freedom of the human will, damnation is confessedly accorded without the slightest freedom in the will to escape it. For if men are historically reprobated by absolute exclusion from all knowledge of Christ, how is salvation ever in reach of their free-will?

Arminianism is not required to affirm an absolute and precise equality of privileges and means of salvation to all the race. What she does affirm is, that justice is done in every individual case. We may perhaps express the true ground in the following brief statement:

Although there is not a perfect equation of the means and advantages among all mankind, yet it may be affirmed that no man is ever condemned to everlasting death who has not enjoyed FULL MEANS and OPPORTUNITY for salvation, and has willfully rejected them by persevering in a course of conscious sin. The inequalities of advantage for salvation are in a great degree obviated by the fact that the amount of advantage is an important element in the graduation of penalty and reward. Such may be the proportion of moral demand for higher excellence, and such the liability to deeper penalty for misimprovement, that classes of mankind favored with higher means are perhaps on a wise calculation at a level with the apparently less privileged. Or conversely, the parts of mankind possessed of inferior means may be so compensated by proportionate allowances that they may be on an actual level of advantage with their apparently more favored fellows.

Without the limits of the proper Christian dispensation but two others require consideration, namely, first, what we will call the Infantile Irresponsible, or Undeveloped DISPENSATION, embracing all minds not developed to the conditions of a moral accountability; and second, the Heathen DISPENSATION, embrac ing all excluded from all possible knowledge of Christianity.

I. A large mass, if not a majority of mankind, are said hitherto to have died in INFANCY, including under that description all who do not attain a responsible age. This dis

pensation then is, perhaps, scarce less populous than all the others inclusive. This is a most mysterious point in the divine administration, of which it is no part of our present purpose to attempt an explanation, that in a world of probation, so large a proportion should be abortive as subjects of probation. Nevertheless up to a responsible age the manifestations of sinful nature, the sinful thoughts and actions, subject not the being to penal retribution.

But, irrespective of age, is there not a large class of mankind. whose moral and intellectual nature has never attained a development to the level of responsibility? The reflections of thinkers. on this subject have, it may be, rested too much on the point of mere age. If there are millions who die before arriving at the normal responsible age, there are other millions who never at any age arrive at a more responsible mental development than the infant. Under this head we should not perhaps include idiots alone. But is there not within the bounds and perhaps in the center of Christendom itself a countless class, accurately gauged by the eye of Omniscience alone, whose minds are as little expanded, and as little qualified, intellectually or morally, for the responsibilities of probation, if not as the idiot, certainly as the child? As our minds are liable to be influenced by individual chronology in the matter of responsible development, "so we are apt to limit the heathen dispensation by geographical limits alone. But within the bosom of Christendom there is an immense class adult in years but apparently entitled to the moral immunity of infancy; geographically Christian, but with as little access to a true Christianity as the most distant heathenism-Heathendom in Christendom. Excluded perhaps by invincible barriers from any possible knowledge of the truth as a very idiot, unwarned and unconscious that there is any truth to be sought, they seem incapable of being held to a just penal responsibility. In the dregs of our large cities, it is impossible to say what numbers there are whom we hardly can decide whether they are to be assigned to the infant and idiot dispensation or to Heathendom. To decide this in most living individual cases would require an Omniscient knowledge of their interior man and entire spiritual history. Each single living problem must stand unsolved. Each man is, in a degree, by himself a dispensation. But what is the ultimate destiny?

Precisely the same, we reply, with that of the infant. The creeds which teach infant damnation should make a clean sweep of the whole; while in our view they are all on the same basis of common redemption. The infant is in the kingdom of God with a character perhaps correspondent to regeneration in the adult. The irresponsible adult, however incrusted in irresponsible sins, is redeemed by an unknown Saviour. Both alike may be least in the kingdom of heaven; neither can, by the law of moral equation, be excluded from it.

II. But geographically distant from Christian lands, in a real HEATHEN DOM, there are those who never heard of Christ, in regard to whom the question arises, What are their advantages for attaining eternal life? To attempt deciding this peremptorily in the individual instances as they occur in experience would be assuming the prerogative of Omniscience. But the general principles of a just responsibility may perhaps be proximately ascertained.

We assume the headship of Christ over the human race, placing on the basis of his atonement all mankind under a regimen of just and merciful probation, suited to the present nature and state of our humanity, cognizing all the shades of human life, circumstances, and character, and adjusting with absolute accuracy the retribution of reward or penalty to the case. We assume the universality of the atonement, and that millions may be saved by its means who never heard the name of the Propitiator. We assume the universality of the dispensation of the Spirit. We assume the universal possession of the faculties of reason inferring a Creator from the creation, a conscience furnishing the dictates of right and wrong. The reason may not reveal a Creator in the fullness of his attributes, nor even prevent the worship of a God through finite symbols and images, which the Scriptures, given for the very purpose of maintaining the pure idea of the Deity, prohibit as idolatry, under severest penalty, especially to the chosen race, whose special mission was, the preservation of the pure idea for the development of future ages. The conscience may not furnish an absolutely accurate code of ethics; but it furnishes principles which are relatively to the individual right, and safe in the eye of God for him to follow. If under the guidance of that reason he follows the dictates of that conscience, the

man, though absolutely wrong on many points, will under our gracious dispensation be right so far as responsibility and future destiny are concerned. Such a man will act under many a sad delusion and commit many things intrinsically wrong; but the saving fact is that he acts with a purpose which wants but the light of truth in order to his being truly right. In such a case, though there is not the reality of Christian faith and righteousness, yet there are TWO THINGS, namely, what we will call the SPIRIT OF FAITH and the PURPOSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.. Where these two exist in the man, under any dispensation, he is. justified through the atonement and accepted of God.

The doctrine of the grades of future retribution adjusted to the varieties of probationary character is abundantly taught in Scripture. Scripture rule is, that we are rewarded according to our works. Of the blessed, we are taught that in the resurrection one star differeth from another in glory, (1 Cor. xv, 41;) that there is a greatest and a least in the kingdom of heaven,, (Matt. v, 19;) that some attain an abundant entrance, (2 Peter i, 11;) and some are scarce saved, (1 Peter iv, 18.) Of the con-demned we are told that he that knew his Master's will and did it not shall be beaten with many stripes; while he that knew not his Master's will, and through neglecting the law of conscience showed not the works of the law, shall be beaten with many stripes, (Luke xii, 47.) And once for all the rule is laid down, "Unto whomsoever much is given shall be much required," (Luke xii, 48.) And this rule is illustrated by the fact that in the parable of the talents (Matt. xxv, 14–30) the rewards were adjusted to the amount of improvement, and the amount of improvement proportioned to the capital furnished was completely accepted, while the reward was proportioned to both.

Our Saviour (Matt. xi, 20-24) declares that it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment: than for the cities who had witnessed his preaching and mighty works; since Sodom with such advantages would, like Nineveh,. have "repented in sackcloth and ashes." From this we may infer, 1. That all people have not equal advantages for salvation; 2. That those who receive the highest advantages may nevertheless reject salvation; 3. That God may discern in the minds of those who possess inferior advantages that spirit or FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XV.-9