THE UNITED PRESBYTERIANS AND THE WEST- MINSTER CONFESSION.
THE United Presbyterians would evidently be still more united than they at present are, if their minds had been formed solely by the Westminster Confession of Faith, instead of also by the very large number of principles just now at work in the universe of God which are not in as close accordance with the Westminster Confession as the old divines who drew up that Confession would have made them, if they could but have had the ordering of the course of Providence since their day. It is very curious to read the speeches of the United Presbyterian ministers on the case of Mr. Macrae, who holds that those who are not saved when death overtakes them, will either be destroyed, instead of living to suffer eternally,—death being, in his view, the natural end of sin,—or if they are not so destroyed, will, sooner or later, be all saved, by the victory of God over sin.
Mr. Macrae is very clear that the teaching as to the natural immortality of human beings is not according to Scripture, though we should, for our own parts, have thought that our Lord did mean specifically and positively to teach, if not their natural, at least their actual immortality, when he stated, after quoting God's description of himself as the God " of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob," and asserting that God "is not the God of the dead, but of the living," "for all live unto him." But Mr. Macrae is still clearer, and clearer on better grounds, that the doctrine of the eternal existence of the sinful in their sins is no part of revelation, and that not a word in the Bible can be quoted which can reasonably be supposed to signify that this is the express teaching of Divine authority. And thus Mr. Macrae, combining this with his previous assertion that
Scripture nowhere treats man as intrinsically immortal, comes to the conclusion we have indicated—that either the evil will die out, as the consequence of their evil, or will be saved by the eventual triumph of supernatural love.
It is with this heresy that the special Committee appointed, "with Presbyterial powers," by the recent Synod of the United Presbyterian Church met last week to deal. And the issue was that, though sentence of suspension was, we believe, unanim- ously pronounced, or at all events pronounced nem. eon., on Mr. Macrae, no speaker appeared to be at all happy in his mind on the matter, or cheerfully confident that the Westminster Confession really represents the Divine Mind on the subject of future punishments, except Dr. Hutton, of Paisley, who seems to be one of the few surviving theologians whose mind has been much more profoundly influenced by what are called the "Subordinate Standards" of the Westminster Divines, than it has by either the spirit of Scripture, or the various movements agitating the spiritual teachers of our own day. Dr. Hutton, of Paisley, is reported to have spoken as follows :—" By the views of the deserts of sin Mr. Macrae pre- sented, they lowered the sense they had from the perusal of Scripture of the greatness of the Atonement. They made a little salvation out of it, by first making a little condemnation. It seemed to him, Scripture laboured to impress upon men the malignity of sin. Such views, he maintained, proceeded from a false sympathy with the finally wicked. The finally wicked would not be followed by a tear or a pang to their place. That was a healthy sentiment." We should ourselves have said that if Dr. Hutton be right, Scripture would have succeeded not only in impressing upon men the malignity of sin, but still better in impressing upon them the malignity of virtue. If it is "a healthy sentiment," to reflect on the unspeakable sinfulness, and consequently the unspeakable suffering, of the "finally wicked" without "a tear or a pang," there must surely have been something not altogether "healthy" in the purpose of divine redemption itself. If it be no matter of grief at all that the "finally wicked" are to continue in their hatred of God and the suffering it causes, surely there must have been something, say, at least of hypersensitiveness in the yearning of our Lord after the salvation of the provisionally wicked. His say- ing, "the son of man is not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," "they that be whole need not the physician, but they that be sick,"—again, his saying that the angels rejoice more "over one sinner that repenteth than over the ninety-and-nine just persons who need no repentance," must have proceeded from a morbid state of mind, for how are they consistent with what Dr. Hutton conceives to be the predominant intention of Scripture," to impress upon us the malignity of sin ?" As far as we can see, Dr. Hutton, of Paisley, is inclined to agree with the elder brother in the parable, who was indignant at the trouble taken to make the prodigal welcome. True, the pro- digal showed that he was not one of the "finally wicked," that he had only been one of the provisionally wicked. Still, to one pro- perly possessed with the idea that the leading object of revelation is to lay a new emphasis on the malignity of sin, it would hardly have seemed decent to go so much out of the way to kill the fatted calf for one who had been far from appreciating this malignity adequately, while not even a kid was given, that he might make merry with his friends, to the brother who had adequately,—not to say even more than adequately,—ap- preciated the malignity of his brother's sin. Perhaps Dr. Hut- ton will say that it is the malignity of our own sins, not those of our brothers, which the Scripture desires to impress upon us ; and doubtless so it is ; but surely, when he regards it as a healthy sentiment to repudiate all notion of sending a sigh or a tear after the "finally wicked," it is not the malignity of his own sins, but of those of his brethren, that he is deeply impressed with. Now, we submit that it is very easy for us all,—even without the help of Revelation,—to be deeply impressed with the malignity of other persons' sins.
However, the Committee appointed, "with Presbyterial powers," by the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church, was, we are bound to say, by no means as proud of the "Subordinate Standards" of the Westminster Confession, as was
Dr. Hutton, of Paisley. Most of the Committee would have been very thankful if only Mr. Macrae would not have assailed those "Subordinate Standards" so very unmistakably and vehemently, —if only he would have asked mildly for liberty to suggest that behind those "Subordinate Standards" there might be un- covenanted mercies of God quite of a different tenor. Here is what Dr. Joseph Brown, of Glasgow, said :—" He did not wonder, however, that Mr. Macrae had felt burdened by think- ing of the punishment of the lost, and if he had come to them and said he felt shaken in his mind on this subject, and greatly disquieted and perplexed, and he claimed liberty on the part of his brethren in that disquieted state of mind, he (Dr. Brown) was not prepared to say he could not bear that man. If he said, —‘ I cherish the conviction that in God's wisdom and goodness sin and suffering may be banished from the universe,' he sup- posed he could bear with him, even differing to so great an extent." And here, again, are the similar expressions of Dr. James Brown, of Paisley, in supporting Dr. Joseph Brown, of Glasgow :—" If, as Dr. Brown had said, Mr. Macrae had stated his difficulties on this great subject,—nay, more, if Mr. Macrae had even said that in his heart he reverently cherished the hope that at some time, he knew not when, and by some means, he knew not how, in the evolution of the divine purpose, all things might yet be restored, and sin and sorrow cease in God's uni- verse, but that in view of the mystery that overhung the future, and in view of what we know here, of our experience of the power of rebellion that is in the human heart against the divine will, he could not dogmatise on that point,—then he, for one would have been heartily willing to declare that that was a reasonable amount of liberty, in relation to their Standards." In other words, as we understand these last and also other speakers, if Mr. Macrae had only stated a confident hope that, after all, the Westminster Divines might turn out to be wrong, and that the warnings of Scripture, solemn and intentionally alarming as they are, are meant rather to make us feel due anxiety as to what the issue of sin may be, than to state dogmatically what that issue will be, they would have been very glad to absolve him from heresy. They were quite willing to relax the strain of the Westminster Confession on any one's mind who was disposed not to indulge any feeling stronger than hope that its doctrine as to the future state of the wicked might prove to be erroneous. But to allow Mr. Macrae, or any one else, to teach dogmatically that the Westminster Confession is all wrong,— that they could not permit. This is saying, in other words, that while the Committee, "with Presbyterial authority," were entirely ready to undermine to any extent the authority of the Westminster Confession on this head, they were not as yet ready absolutely to cast it off. Anything short of this might have been tolerated.
On the whole, the lesson of this curious deliverance of orthodox United Presbyterians, seems to be one which we have often had occasion to urge. Mr. Macrae goes almost as much astray on his side as his opponents do on theirs, when he tries to torture Scripture into suggesting the alternative that either moral evil will come to a natural end in death, or that God will conquer it by his power, and convert it into good. In fact, revelation says
nothing dogmatic on either point, or rather it says at different times and in different contexts, what might possibly suggest either or both; but when you come to examine the matter, you find that what Scripture deals with is the love of God for man, and the hatred of God for sin, and that while
sometimes the one teaching predominates and sometimes the other, there is no intention at all of defining exactly for how much the one principle will or will not count, if it should ever have to be weighed absolutely against the other. For revela- tion never makes the attempt to measure the one againstthe other. It holds out the most indefinite, or rather infinite, hopes, based upon the love of God for man. It holds out the most indefinite, or rather infinite, fears, based upon the hatred of God for sin. And sometimes the two different streams of teaching seem to be in conflict with each other, like a flood with a devouring flame. Clearly, however, it was not intended that man should try to gauge the relative force of each. We were intended to hope everything from God's love, if we could learn to lean upon that love, to care to welcome it. We were intended to fear everything from his righteousness, if we could feel no joy in that righteous- ness, nothing but terror of it. But the great revelations thus made to the spiritual affections of man were not intended to be intellec- tual revelations to his reason of the relative weight of these two diverse principles. We were created to weigh the sun against the planets,—nay, it may be, to weigh the sun against the fixed stars,--but not to weigh one infinite attribute of God's, against another equally infinite attribute of His. The Christian reve- lation was the grafting of a new life in our hearts, not the im- parting of a new calculus of the infinite to our minds. So far as it has been treated in the former light, it has regenerated our spirits ; so far as it has been tortured into the latter capacity, it has turned us into either bigots or doctrinaire optimists. Where divine justice begins and divine mercy ends, is not a question on which finite minds can speculate with any good result. All we are intended to know on this head is that the divine love we crave, we may have without stint,—that the divine purity we dread, we shall not escape from, either in this life or the next. If the Divines of the Westminster Confession had gone no further than this, they would not be spoken of so apologetically by even orthodox divines of the present day ; and if the humanitarians went no further than this now, they would hold very much stronger ground than they do, both in relation to the interpre- tation of Scripture, and also in relation to the infinite dangers to the very edge of which the selfishness of free-will is con- stantly dragging the nature of which it forms so potent and so ominous a part.
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