LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE JUSTICE OF GOD.
r To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—In your very interesting review of "Letters from Hell" (a needlessly coarse and unpleasant title), you have expressed the profound conviction of many thoughtful minds in words remark- ably clear and vigorous. You say, "We hold that no theory of the final character of future sufferings can be just at all which does not give in the next life a genuine probation to all who have not had it here, and which does not hold open, even for those who have had and have rejected it here, the power of re- penting at any time, if at any time those who have so often refused to repent are willing to turn their back upon themselves, and the evil into which they have been slowly hardening."
It is exactly at these two points that an enlightened Christian faith traverses the stolid obstinacy of popular prejudice, which A, misconceiving the Bible, calls "The Doctrine of Scripture," and which B, misconceiving the Church, calls "The Catholic Faith."
How importantly and tragically the Bible and the Church have been herein misconceived and misrepresented, every one acquainted with the literature of eschatology well knows. It is also exactly at these two points that popular prejudice—and, alas ! too often popular preaching—bars the way, by an utterly hopeless and impassable barrier, against the acceptance of any form of Christianity by unsatisfied and inquiring minds, who as yet know nothing of the logical conclusiveness of Christian evidences or the deeper and tenderer appeals of the love of our dear Lord and God, Jesus Christ, who would nevertheless very thankfully accept the Gospel message in its grand simplicity— and in due course the divine authority of the Church, as an integral part of that message—if they were not required to do violence to their firm conviction that God, if there be a God worthy to be worshipped and to be loved, must be holy, true, and above all things, just.
I do not write this letter for any purpose of starting a con- troversy, but for the sake of expressing through your columns, so widely read by intelligent men, an earnest hope that such "unsatisfied and inquiring minds" as may have come within reach of the Mission now being held in East London, will not be dis- couraged and driven away (as in previous Missions some within my knowledge have been), by the preaching, if unhappily any- where it should be preached, of this foundationless "popular prejudice," added on to, and in effect utterly denying and destroying the great Gospel truth, that hereafter every man shall most assuredly receive the due reward of his deeds.—I am,
Previous page
