Chapter IV--The Works of God, or the Execution of the Decrees
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CHAPTER IV.
THE WORKS OF GOD; OR THE EXECUTION OF THE DECREES.
SECTION I.—CREATION.
I. Definition Op Creation.
By creation we mean that free act of the triune God by which in the beginning for his own glory he made, without the use of preexisting materials, the whole visible and invisible universe.
Qucnstodt divides the works of God into three classes: (1) works of power, as creation, and preservation; (2) works of cnmiMtmifm, as redemption, calling, regeneration; (3) works of juxtice, as resurrection and final Judgment.
In explanation we notice:
(a) Creation is not "production out of nothing," as if "nothing" were a substance out of which "something" could be formed.
We do not regard the doctrine of creation as bound to the use of the phrase " creation out of nothing," and us standing or falling with it. The phrase is a philosophical one, for which we have no Scriptural warrunt, and it is objectionable as intimating that "nothing " can itself be an object of thought and a source of being. The germ of truth intended to be conveyed in it can better be expressed in the phrase "without use of preexisting materials."
(6) Creation is not a fashioning of preexisting materials, nor an emanation from the substance of Deity, but is a making of that to exist which once did not exist, either in form or substance.
There is nothing divine in creation but the origination of substance. Fashioning is competent to the creature also. Gassendl said to Descartes that God's creation, if he is the author of forms but not of substances, is only that of the tailor who clothes a man with his apparel.
(c) Creation is not an instinctive or necessary process of the divine nature, but is the free act of a rational will, put forth for a definite and sufficient end.
Creation is different in kind from that eternal process of the divine nature in virtue of which we speak of generation and procession. The Son is begotten of the Father, and Is of the same essence; the world is created without preexisting material, is different from God, and is made by God. Ilegetting is a necessary act; creation is the act of God's free grace. Begetting is eternal, out of time; creation is in time, or with time.
(d) Creation is the act of the triune God, in the sense that all the persons of the Trinity, themselves uncreated, have a part in it-—the Father as the originating, the Son as the mediating, the Spirit as the realizing cause.
The work of the Holy Spirit seems to be that of completing, bringing to perfection. On the definition of Creation, see Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1: 11.
II. Pkoof Of The Doctrine Of Creation.
Creation is a truth of which mere science or reason cannot fully assure us. Physical science can observe and record changes, but it knows nothing of origins. Keason cannot absolutely disprove the eternity of matter. For proof of the doctrine of creation, therefore, we rely wholly upon Scripture. Scripture supplements science, and renders its explanation of the universe complete.
Drummond, In his Natural Law in the Spiritual World, chums that atoms, as "manufactured articles," and the dissipation of energy, prove the creation of the visible from the invisible. See the same doctrine propounded in "The Unseen Universe." But Sir Charles Lyell tells us: "Geology is the autobiography of the earth — but like all autobiographies, it does not go back to the iH'ginning." Hopkins, Yale Lectures on the Scriptural View of Man: "There is nothing a priori against the eternity of matter." Wardlaw, Syst. Theol., i : 65—" We cannot form any distinct conception of creation out of nothing. The very idea of it might never have occurred to the mind of man, had it not been traditionally handed down as part of the original revelation to the parents of the race."
Hartmann, the German philosopher, goes back to the orlgiual elements of the universe, and then says that science stands petrified before the question of their origin, as before a Medusa's head. But in the presence of problems, says Dorner, the duty of science? is not petrifaction, but solution. This is peculiarly true, if science is, as Hart mann thinks, a complete explanation of the universe. Since scienoe, by her own acknowledgment, furnishes no such explauatjon of the origin of things, the Scripture revelation with regard to creation meets a demand of human reason, by adding the one fact without which science must forever be devoid of the highest unity and rationality. For advocacy of the eternity of matter, sec Martineau, Essays, 1: 157-169.
1. Direct Scripture statements.
A. Genesis 1 : 1—"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." To this it has been objected that the verb K}3 does not necessarily denote production without the use of preexisting materials (see Gen. 1 : 27 —" God created man in his own image "; cf. 2 : 7—"the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground"; also Ps. 51: 10—"create in me a clean heart").
"In the first two chapters of Genesis t03 is used (1) of the creation of the universe (1:1); (2) of the creation of the great sea monsters (1: 21); (3) of the creation of man (1:27). F.verywhere else we read of God's mulling, as from an already created substance, the firmament (1:7), the sun, moon, and stars (1:16), the brute creation (1: 25); or of his forming the beasts of the field out of the ground (2:19): or, lastly, of his building up into a woman the rib he had taken from man (2 : 22, margin ) "—quoted from Bible Com., 1: 31. Guyot, Creation, 30— "Bam is thus reserved for marking the first introduction of each of the three great spheres of existence-the world of matter, the world of life, and the spiritual world represented by man."
But we reply:
(a) While we acknowledge that the verb 803 "does not necessarily or invariably denote production without the use of preexisting materials, we still maintain that it signifies the production of an effect for .which no natural antecedent existed before, and which can be only the result of divine agency." For this reason, in the Kal species it is used only of God, and is never accompanied by an accusative denoting material.
No accusative denoting material follows born. In the passages indicated, for the reason that all thought of material was absent. See Dlllmann, Genesis, 18; Oehler, Theol. O. T., 1: 177. The quotation in the text above is from Green, Hebrew Chrestomathy, 67.
(6) In the account of the creation, JOS is accurately distinguished from rwy, "to make" either with or without the use of already existing material (nitsr^'S 103, "created in making" or "made by creation," in 2:3; and of the firmament, in 1 : 7), and from "to form" out of such marial. (See of man regarded as a spiritual being, in 1: 27; but of man regarded as a physical being, in 2 : 7).
Sec Conant, Genesis, 1; Bible Com., 1: 37—"'created to make' (in G«n. 2: 3) created out of nothing, in order thut he might make out of it all the works recorded in the six days."
(c) The context shows that the meaning here is a making without the use of preexisting materials. Since the earth in its rude, unformed, chaotic condition is still called "the earth " in Terse 2, the word »03 in verse 1 cannot refer to any shaping or fashioning of the elements, but must signify the calling of them into being.
(d) The fact that SOS may have had an original signification of "cutting," "forming," and that it retains this meaning in the Piel conjugation, need not prejudice the conclusion thus reached, since terms expressive of the most spiritual processes are derived from sensuous roots. If *OS does not signify absolute creation, no word exists in the Hebrew language that can express this idea.
(e) But this idea of production without the use of preexisting materials unquestionably existed among the Hebrews. The later Scriptures show that it had become natural to the Hebrew mind. The possession of this idea can be best explained by supposing that it was derived from this early revelation.
Bib. Com., 1: 31—"Perhaps no other ancient language, however reflned and philosophical, could have so clearly distinguished the different acts of the Maker of all things [as the Hebrew did with its four different words], and that because all heathen philosophy esteemed matter to be eternal and uncreated." Prof. E. I). Burton: "Binhmanism, and the original religion of which Zoroastrianism was a reformation, were eastern and western divisions of a primitive Aryan, and probably monotheistic, religion. The Vedas, which represent the Bruhmanism, leave it a question whence the world came, whether from God by emanation, or by the shaping of material eternally existent. Later Brahmanism Is pantheistic, and Buddhism, the reformation of Brahmanism, Is atheistic."
We are inclined still to hold that the doctrine of absolute creation was known to no other ancient nation besides the Hebrews. Recent investigations, however, render this somewhat more doubtful than It once seemed to be. It is now claimed by some that Zoroastrianism, the Vedas, and the religion of the ancient Egyptians hud the idea of absolute creation. On Creation in the Zoroastrian system, see our treatment of Dualism, page 188. Vedic hymn in Rig Veda, 10 : 9, quoted by J. F. Clarke, Ten Great Religions, 2 : 205—"Originally this universe was soul only; nothing else whatsoever existed, active or Inactive. He thought: 'I will create worlds'; thus he created these various worlds: earth, light, mortal being, and the waters." Rcnouf, Hibbert lectures, 216-222, speaks of a papyrus on the staircase of the British Museum, which reads: "The
great God, the Lord of heaven and earth, who made all things which are the almighty
God, self-existent, who made heaven and earth the heaven was yet uncreated, uncreated was the earth; thou hast put together the earth who made all things, but
was not made."
But the Egyptian religion in Its later development, as well as Brahmanism, was pantheistic, and it is possible that all the expressions we have quoted are to be interpreted, not as indicating a belief in creation out of nothing, but as asserting emanation, or the taking on by deity of new forms and modes of existence. On creation in heathen systems, see Plerret, Mythologie, and answer to it by Maspero; Hymn to Aimn-Hha, iu "Records of the Past"; G. C. MUUer, Literature of Greece, 87.88.
B. Hebrews 11 : 3—" By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hatli not been made out of things which do appear" (Bible Union version) = the world was not made out of sensible and preexisting material, but by the direct fiat of omnipotence (see Alford, and Liiuemann, Meyer's Com. in lo<'o).
Compare Miiccabces 7 :28—«'£ Ovk Ovtuv iirointTtv avra 6 B«6<. This the Vulgate translated by "quia ex nihil" fecit ilia Deus," and from the Vulgate the phrase " creation out of nothing" is derived. Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, points out that Wisdom 11 : 17 has ef anopbov Vatjt, interprets by this the «£ Ovk Oi-twc in Maccnl>ee9, and denies that this last refers to creation out of nothing. But we must rememlter that the later Apocryphal writings were composed under the influence of the Plutonic philosophy; that the passage in Wisdom may be a nitionalistic interpretation of that in Maccabees; and that even if it were independent, we are not to assume a harmony of view in the Apocrypha. Maccabees 7 : 28 must stand by itself as a testimony to Jewish belief in creation without use of preexisting material,—u belief which can be traced to no other source than the Old Testament Scriptures. Compare Ex. 34 : 10—"I will do marvels such as have not been wrought £marg. 1 created '] in all the earth ": Num. 16 : 30—"if the Lord make a new thing." [ marg. "create a creation " ]; Is. 4 : 5—" the Lord will create .... a cloud and smoke "; 41 : 20—" the Holy One of Israel hath created it"; 45 : 7, 8 —"I form the light, and create darkness "; 57:19—"Icrealethe fruit of the lips "; 65 : 17—" I create new heavens and a new earth" ; Jer. 31 : 22—"The Lord hath created a new thing"; Rum. 4 : 17—"God who qluckeneth the dead, and calleth the things that are not as though they were "; 1 Cor. 1 : 28—" things that are not" [did God choose] "that he might bring to naught the things that are.''
2. Indirect evidence from Scripture.
(a) The past duration of the world is limited; (b) before the world began to be, each of the persons of the Godhead already existed; (c) the origin of the universe is ascribed to God, and to each of the persons of the Godhead. These representations of Scripture are not only most consistent with the view that the universe was created by God without use of preexisting material, but they are inexplicable upon any other hypothesis.
(rt) Mark 13 : 19—" from the beginning of the creation which God created until now "; John 17 : 5—" before the world was"; Eph. 1 : 4—"before the foundation of the world." (h) Ps. 90 : 2—"Before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God "; Prov, 8 : 23—" I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was" ; John 1:1—" In the beginning was the Word"; Col. 1:17—"he is before all things"; Eeb. 9 :14—"the eternal Spirit" ( see Tholuck, Com. (n loco), (c) Kpla. 3 :9—"God who created all things" ; Rom. 11 : 36—"of him .... are all things"; 1 Cor. 8: 6— "one God, the Father, of whom are all things .... one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things ": John 1: 3— "all things were made through him "; Col. 1 : 16—" in him were all things created .... all things have been created through him, and unto him "; Heb. 1 : 2—" through whom also he made the worlds "; Gen. 1 : 2—11 and the spirit of God moved [marg. 'was brooding'] upon the face of the waters." See, on this indirect proof of creation, Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2 : 232. Since other views, however, have been held to tie more rational than that of creation out of nothing, we proceed to the examination of
III. Theories Which Oppose Creation. 1. Dualism.
Of dualism there are two forms:
A. That which holds to two self-existent principles, God and matter. These are distinct from and coeternal with each other. Matter, however, is an unconscious, negative, and imperfect substance, which is subordinate to God, and is made the instrument of his will. This was the view of the Alexandrian Gnostics. It was essentially an attempt to combine with Christianity the Platonic conception of the 6Ar/. In this way it thought to account for the existence of evil, aud to escape the difficulty of imagining a production without use of preexisting material. A similar view has been held in modem times by John Stuart Mill, and apparently by Frederick W. Robertson.
Basilidcs (flourished 125) and Valen'tlnu9 (died 160) best represent the Alexandrian Gnost ics. Ijghtfoot, Com. on Colossluns, 70-113, esp. 82, has traced a connection between the Gnostic doctrine, the earlier Colossian heresy, und the still earlier teaching of the Essencs of Palestine. All these were characterized by (1) the spirit of caste or intellectual exelusiveness; (2) peculiar tenets as to creation and as to evil; (3) practical asceticism. Matter is evil and separates man from God; hence intermediate beings between man and God as objects of worship; hence also mortification of the body as a means of purifying man from sin. Paul's antidote for both errors was simply the person of Christ, the true and only Mediator and Sauctifler. See Guerlcke, Church History, 1:161.
The author of "The Unseen Universe" (page 17) wrongly calls John Stuart Mill a Manichiean. Hut Mill disclaims belief in the jx rmmalilu of this principlo that resists and limits God —sec his posthumous Essays on Hcliglon, 176-195. F. W. Robertson, Lectures on Genesis, 4-16: "Before the creation of the world all was chaos .... but with the creation, order began .... Ood did not cease from creation, for creation is going on every day. Nature Is God at work. Only after surprising changes, as in spring-time, do we say figuratively,' God rests.'"
With regard to this view we remark:
(a) The maxim ex nihilo nihil fit, upon which it rests, is true only in so far as it asserts that no event takes place without a cause. It is false, if it mean that nothing can ever lie made except out of material previously existing. The maxim is therefore applicable only to the realm of second causes, and does not bar the creative power of the great first Cause. The doctrine of creation does not dispense with a cause; on the other hand, it assigns to the universe a sufficient cause in God.
Lucretius: "N'ihll posse crearl De nihilo, nequo quod genitum est ad nihil revocari." Persius: "Gigni De nihilo nihil, in uihilum nil posse revert!." Martensen, Dogmatics, 116- "The nothing, out of which God creates the world, is the eternal possibilities of his will, which are the sources of all the actualities of the world." Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 2: 292—" When therefore it is argued that the creation of something from nothing is unthinkable and is therefore peremptorily to be rejected, the argument seems to me to be defective. The process is thinkable but not imaginable, conceivable but not provable." Sec Cudworth, Intellectual System, 3: 81, mj.
(6) Although creation without the use of preexisting material is inconceivable, in the sense of being unpicturable to the imagination, yet the eternity of matter is equally inconceivable. For creation without preexisting material, moreover, we find remote analogies in our own creation of ideas and volitions, a fact as inexplicable as God's bringing of new substances into being.
Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 371, 372—"We have to a certain extent an aid to the thought of absolute creation in our own free volition, which, as absolutely originating and determining, may Ik- taken as the type to us of the creative act." We sjieak of • the creative faculty' of the artist or poet. We cannot give reality to the products of our imaginations, as God can to his. But if thought were only substance, the analogy would be complete.
(c) It is unphilosophical to postulate two eternal substances, when one self-existent Cause of all things will account for the facts.
(d) It contradicts our fundamental notion of God as absolute sovereign to suppose the existence of any other substance to be independent of his will
(e) This second substance with which God must of necessity work, since it is, according to the theory, inherently evil and the source of evil, not only limits God's power, but destroys his blessedness.
(/) This theory does not answer its purpose of accounting for moral evil, unless it be also assumed that spirit is material,—in which case dualism gives place to materialism.
Martensen, Dogmatics, 181: "God becomes a mere deiniurire, tf nature existed before spirit. That spirit only who in a perfect sense is able to commence his work of creation can have power to complete It." If God doeB not create, he must use what material he finds, and this working with intractable material must be his perpetua sorrow. Such limitation in the power of the deity seemed to John Stuart Mill the best explanation of the existing imperfections of the universe.
The other form of dualism is:
B. That which holds to the eternal existence of two antagonistic spirits, one evil and the other good. In this view, matter is not a negative and imperfect substance which nevertheless has self-existence, but is either the work or the instrument of a personal and positively malignant intelligence, who wages war against all good. This was the view of the Manichaeans. Manichceanism is a compound of Christianity and the Persian doctrine of two eternal and opposite intelligences. Zoroaster, however, held matter to be pure, and to be the creation of the good Being. Maui apparently regarded matter as captive to the evil spirit, if not absolutely his creation.
The old story of Maui's travels in Greece is wholly a mistake. Gucrkkc. Church History, 1 :185-187, maintains that Maniciueunlsni contains no mixture of Platonic philosophy, has no connection with Judaism, and as a sect came into no direct relations with the Catholic church. Harnoch, Wegwelscr, 22, calls Maniclueanlsm a compound of Gnosticism and Parsccism. Herzog, Encyclopaedic art.: Mani und die ManlchHer, regards Mauichieanism as the fruit, acme, and completion of Gnosticism. Gnosticism Whs a heresy in the church; Manlchieanism, like New Platonism, was an anti-church. J. P. Langc: "These opposing theories represent various pagan conceptions of the world, which, after the manner of palimpsests, show through Christianity."
On the Religion of Zoroaster, see Hang, Essays on Parsees, 139-101, 302-309; also quotations on pp. 1(17, 169; Mooter Williams, in 19th Century, Jan., 1881: 155-177; Ahura Mazda was the creator of the universe. Matter was created by him, and was neither identified with him nor an emanation from him. In the divine nature there were two opposite, but not opposing, principles or forces, called "twins"—the one constructive, the other destructive ; the one beneficent, the other maleficent. Zoroaster called these "twins '* also by the name of "splritf," and declared that "these two spirits created, the one the reality, the other the non-reality." Williams says that these two principles were conflicting only In name. The only antagonism was between the resulting good and evil brought about by the free agent, man.
We may add that in later times this personification of principles in the deity seems to have become a definite belief in two opposing personal spirits, and that Mani, Manes, or Maniehams adopted tills feature of I'arseeism, with the addition of certain Christian elements. Hagenbach. History of Doctrine, 1:470—"The doctrine of the Manlchieans was that creation was the work of Satan." See also Gieseler, Church History, 1 : 203; Neander, Church History, 1 : 478-505; Blunt, Diet. Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.: Dualism; and especially Baur, Das Manichiiische lleligionssystein.
Of this view we need only say that it is refuted (a) by all the arguments for the unity, omnipotence, sovereignty, and blessedness of God; (6) by the Scripture representations of the prince of evil as the creature of God and as subject to God's control.
Scripture passages showing that Satan is God's creature or subject are the following: Col. i : 16—'• for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers " ; c/. Eph. 6 :12—" our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places " ; 2 Pet. 2 : 4—" God spared not the angels Then they sinned, bnt cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment"; Rev. 20 : 2—" laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan" ; 10—" and the devil which deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone,"
2. Emanation.
This theory holds that the universe is of the same substance with God, and is the product of successive evolutions from his being. This was the view of the Syrian Gnostics. Their system was an attempt to interpret Christianity in the forms of oriental theosophy. A similar doctrine was taught, in the last century, by Swedenborg.
We object to it upon the following grounds: (o) It virtually denies the infinity and transcendence of God,—by applying to him a principle of evolution, growth, and progress which belongs only to the finite and imperfect. (6) It contradicts the divine holiness,—since man, who by the theory is of the substance of God, is nevertheless morally evil, (c) It leads logically to pantheism,—since the claim that human personality is illusory cannot be maintained without also surrendering belief in the personality of God.
Snturninus of Antloch, Bardesancs of Edessa, Tatian of Assyria, Marcion of Sinope, all of the second century, wore representatives of this view. Blunt, Diet, of Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.: Emanation: "The divine operation was symbolized by the image of the rays of light proceeding from the sun, which were most intense when nearest to the luminous substance of the body of which they formed a part, but which decreased in intensity as they receded from their source, until at last they disappeared altogether in darkness. So the spiritual effulgence of the Supreme Mind formed a world of spirit, the intensity of which varied inversely with Its distance from its source, until at length it vanished in matter. Hence there is a chain of ever expanding /Eons which are increasing attenuations of his substance and the sum of which constitutes his fulness, I. e. the complete revelation of his hidden being." Emanation, from e, and manare, to flow forth. Guericke, Church History, 1:160—" many flames from one light.... the direct contrary to the doctrine of creation from nothing." Neander, Church History, 1:372-374.
On the difference between oriental emanation and eternal generation, see Shedd, History Doctrine, 1:11-13, and 318, note—" 1. That which is eternally generated Is infinite, not finite; it is a divine and eternal person who is not the world or any portion of it. In the oriental schemes, emanation is a mode of accounting for the origin of the finite. But eternal generation still leaves the finite to bo originated. The begetting of the Son is the generation of an infinite person who afterwards creates the finite universe tie nihiln. 2. Eternal generation has for its result a subsistence or personal hypostasis totally distinct from the world; but emanation in relation to the deity yields only an Impersonal or at most a personified energy or effluence which is one of the powers or principles of nature—a mere anlma mundl."
Swedenborg held to emanation—see Divine Love and Wisdom, 283, 303, 305: "Every one who thinks from clear reason sees that the universe is not created from nothing .... All things were created out of a substance .... As God alone Is substance in itself and therefore the real esse, it is evidence that the existence of things is from no other source .... Yet the created universe is not God, because God is not in time and space .... There is a creation of the universe, and of all things therein, by continual mediations from the First.... In the substances and matters of which the earths consist, there is nothing of the Divine in itself, but they are deprived of all that is divine in itself .... Still they have brought with them by continuation from the substance of the spiritual sun that which was there from the Divine."
Napoleon asked Goethe what matter was. "Esprit gele—frozen spirit" was the answer Schelling wished Goethe had given him. But neither is matter spirit, nor are matter and spirit together mere natural effluxes from God's substance. A divine Institution of them is requisite (quoted substantially from Dorner, System of Doctrine, 2 : 40. Still another theory which seeks to avoid this pantheistic conclusion is that of
3. Creation from eternity.
This theory regards creation as an act of God in eternity past. It was propounded by Origen, and has been held in recent times by Martensen. The necessity of supposing such creation from eternity has been argued upon the grounds:
(a) That it is a necessary result of God's omnipotence. But we reply that omnipotence does not necessarily imply actual creation; it implies only power to create. Creation, moreover, is in the nature of the case a thing begun. Creation from eternity is a contradiction in terms, and that which is self-contradictory is not an object of power.
(b) That it is impossible to conceive of time as having had a beginning, and since the universe and time are coexistent, creation must have been from eternity. But we reply that the argument confounds time with duration. Time is duration measured by successions, and in this sense time can be conceived of as having had a beginning,—indeed it is impossible to conceive of its not having had a beginning.
(c) That the immutability of God requires creation from eternity. But we reply that God's immutability requires not an eternal creation but only an eternal plan of creation. The opposite principle would compel us to deny the possibility of miracles, incarnation, and regeneration. Like creation, these too must be eternal.
(d) That God's love renders necessary a creation from eternity. But we reply, on the one hand, that a finite creation cannot furnish satisfaction to the infinite love of God; and on the other hand, that God has from eternity an object of love infinitely superior to any possible creation, in the person of his Son.
Although this theory claims that creation is an act, in eternity past, of God's free will, yet its conceptions of God's omnipotence and love, as necessitating creation, are difficult to reconcile with the divine independence or personality. Since God's power and love are infinite, their demands cannot be satisfied without a creation infinite in extent as well as eternal in past duration,—in other words, a creation equal to God. But a God thus dependent upon external creation is neither free nor sovereign. A God existing in necessary relations to the universe, if different in substance from the universe, must be the God of dualism; if of the same substance with the universe, must be the God of pantheism.
Origen held Unit Cod was from eternity the creator of the world of spirits. Martensen, in his Dogmatics, 114, shows favor to the maxims: "Without the world God is not God
God created the world to satisfy a want in himself He cannot but constitute
himself the Father of spirits." A modern German poet (fives the following popular expression to this view:—" Freundlos war dergrosse Weltenmeister; Filhlte Mangel, darum schuf er Gelster; Sel'ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit. Fand das hOcbste Wesen schon kein Gleiches; Aus dem Kelch des gunzen Geisterreiches, Sehaumt ihm die Unendlichkeit."
We must distinguish creation in eternity imsl (= God and the world coBternal, yet God the cause of the world, as he is the begetter of the Son ) from continuous creation (which is an explanation of preservation, but not of creation at all). It is this latter, not the former, to which Rothe holds (see under the doctrine of Preservation). Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 81, 83—"Creation is not from eternity, since past eternity cannot be actually traversed, any more than we can reach the bound of an eternity to come. There was no time before creation, because there was no succession."
Is creation Infinite? No, says Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1: 459, because to a perfect creation unity is as necessary as multiplicity. The universe is an organism, and there can be no organism without a definite number of finite parts. For a similar reason, Dorner denies thut the universe can be eternal. So Julius MUller, Doctrine of Sin, 1: 220-235 —"What has a goal or end must have a beginuing; history, as telcological, implies creation."
4. Spontaneous generation.
This theory holds that creation is but the name for a natural process still going on,—matter itself having in it the power, under proper conditions, of taking on new functions, and of developing into organic forms. This view is held by Owen and Bastian. We object that
(a) It is a pure hypothesis, not only unverified, but contrary to all known facts. No credible instance of the production of living forms from inorganic material has yet been adduced. So far as science can at present teach us, the law of nature is 'omne vivum e vivo,' or 'ex ovo.'
(b) If such instances could be authenticated, they would prove nothing as against a proper doctrine of creation,—for there would still exist an impossibility of accounting for these viviflc properties of matter, except upon the Scriptural view of an intelligent Contriver and Originator of matter and its laws. In short, evolution implies previous involution,—if anything comes out of matter, it must first have been put in.
(c) This theory, therefore, if true, only supplements the doctrine of original, absolute, immediate creation, with another doctrine of mediate and derivative creation, or the development of the materials and forces originated at the beginning. This development, however, cannot proceed to any valuable end without the guidance of the same intelligence which initiated it. The Scriptures, although they do not sanction the doctrine of spontaneous generation, do recognize processes of development as supplementing the divine flat which first called the elements into being.
Owen, Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates, 3: 814-818—on Monogeny or Thaumatogeny: quoted in Argyll, Reign of Law, 281—'* We discern no evidence of a pause or intromission in the creation or coming-to-be of new plants and animals." So Bastian, Modes of Origin of Lowest Organisms. Beginnings of Life, and articles on Heterogeneous Evolution of Living Things, in "Nature," 2: 170, 193, 219, 410, 431. See Huxley^s Address before the British Association, and Reply to Bastian, in "Nature," 2: 400, 473; also Origin of Species, 69-79, and Physical Basis of Life, in Lay Sermons, 132. Answers to this last by Stirling, in Half-hours with Modern Scientists, and by Beale, Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind, 73-75.
In favor of Redi's maxim, Omtic viimm e rim, see Huxley, in Encyc. Britannica, art.: Biology, 689—"At the present moment there is not a shadow of trustworthy direct evidence that abiogenesis does take place or has taken place within the period during which the existence of the earth is recorded "; Flint, Physiology of Man, 1 : 263-265—" As the only true philosophic view to take of the question, we shall assume in common with nearly all the modern writers on physiology that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation—admitting that the exact mode of production of the infusoria lowest in the scale of life is not understood."
IV. The Mosaic Account Of Creation.
1. Its twofold nature,-—as uniting the ideas of creation and of development.
(a) Creation is asserted.—The Mosaic narrative avoids the error of making the universe eternal or the result of an eternal process. The cosmogony •of Genesis, unlike the cosmogonies of the heathen, is prefaced by the originating act of God, and is supplemented by successive manifestations of creative power in the introduction of brute and of human life.
All nature-worship, whether it take the form of ancient polytheism or modern materialism, looks upon the universe only as a birth or a growth. This view has a basis of truth, inasmuch as it regards natural forces as having a real existence. It is false in regarding these forces as needing no originator or upholder. Hesiod taught that in the beginning was formless matter. Genesis does not begin thus. God is not a demiurge, working on eternal matter. God antedates matter. He is the creator of matter at the first (Gen. 1:1—bara ) and he subsequently creates animal life (Gen. 1: 21—" and God created "— bara) and the life of man (Gen. 1: 27—" and God created man "—bara again).
(b) Development is recognized.—The Mosaic account represents the present order of things as the result, not simply of original creation, but also of subsequent arrangement and development. A fashioning of inorganic materials is described, and also a use of these materials in providing the conditions of organized existence. Life is described as reproducing itself, after its first introduction, according to its own laws and by virtue of its own inner energy.
Martensen wrongly asserts that "Judaism represented the world exclusively as cr«i(ura, not natura; as «ri<r«, not *vc«." This Is not true. Creation is represented as the bringing forth, not of something dead, but of something living and capable of self-development. Creation lays the foundation for cosmogony. Not only is there a fashioning and arrangement of the material which the original creative act has brought into being (see Gen. 1: 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 16, 17; 2:6, 7, 8-Spirit brooding: dividing light from darkness, and waters from waters; dry land appearing; setting apart of sun, moon, and stars; mist watering; forming man's body; planting garden), but there is also an imparting and using of the reproductive powers of the things and brings created (Gen. 1:12,22,24,28— earth brought forth grass; trees yielding fruit whose seed was In itself; earth brought forth the living creatures; man commanded to bo fruitful and multiply).
The tendency at present among men of science is to regard the whole history of life upon the planet as the result of evolution, thus excluding creation, both at the beginning of the history and along its course. On the progress from the Orohippus, the lowest member of the equine series, an animal with four toes, to Anchltherium with three, then to Hipparion, and finally to our common horse, see Huxley In " Nature" for May 11,1876 : 33,34. He argues that, if a complicated animal like the horse has arisen by gradual modification of a lower and less specialized form, there Is no reason to think that other animals have arisen in a different way. Clarence King, Address at Yale College, 1877, regards American geology as teaching the doctrine of sudden yet natural modification of species. "When catastrophic change burst in upon the ages of uniformity and sounded in the ear of every living thing the words: 'Change or die 1' plasticity became the sole principle of action." Nature proceeded then by leaps, and corresponding to the leaps of geology we find leaps of biology.
We grant the probability that the great majority of what we call species were produced In some such ways. If science should render It certain that all the present species of living creatures were derived by natural descent from a few original germs, and that these germs were themselves an evolution of Inorganic forces and materials, we should not therefore regard the Mosaic account as proved untrue. We should only be required to revise our Interpretation of the word bara in Gen. 1:21, 27, and to give It there the meaning of mediate creation, or creation by law. Such a meaning might almost seem to be favored by Gen. 1:11—" let the earth put forth gra» "; 20—" let the waters bring forth abundantly the moring creature that hath life "; 2 : 7—" the Lord God formed man of the dust" ; 9—" out of the ground made the Lord God to grow ererj tree."
This derivation, however, of all living creatures by successive modifications from a few original germs, and much more the theory of spontaneous generation already alluded to, are yet so far from being demonstrated, that we see no sufficient reason for -departing from the conclusions previously reached,—that the Mosaic narrative describes the introduction of brute and of human life, as well as the calling into being of the elements at the beginning, as acts of absolute origination. In the creation of the brute and of man, while the physical material was already at hand, as In the dust of which man's body was formed, the principle of life was apparently a new creation of God. See Herzog, Encyclopttdie, art. Schtipf ungr, 20 : 718; Martensen, Dogmatics, 117. For further discussion of man's origin, see section on Man a Creation of God, in our treatment of Anthropology.
2. Its proper interpretation.
We adopt neither (a) the allegorical, or mythical, (6) the hyperliteral, nor (c) the hyperscientific interpretations of the Mosaic narrative; but rather (d) the pictorial-summary interpretation,—which holds that the Account is a rough sketch of the history of creation, true in all its essential features, but presented in a graphic form suited to the common mind and to earlier as well as to later ages. While conveying to primitive man as accurate an idea of God's work as man was able to comprehend, the revelation was yet given in pregnant language, so that it could expand to all the ascertained results of subsequent physical research. This general correspondence of the narrative with the teachings of science, and its power to adapt itself to every advance in human knowledge, differences it from every other cosmogony current among men.
(a) The allegorical, or mythical, interpretation represents the Mosaic account as embodying, like the Indian and Greek cosmogonies, the poetic speculations of an early race as to the origin of the present system. We object to this interpretation upon the ground that the narrative of creation is inseparably connected with the succeeding history, and is therefore most naturally regarded as itself historical. This connection of the narrative of creation with the subsequent history, moreover, prevents us from believing it to be the description of a vision granted to Moses. It is more probably the record of an original revelation to the first man, handed down to Moses' time, and used by Moses as a proper introduction to his history. For comparison of the Biblical with heathen cosmogonies, see Blackie in Theol. Eclectic, 1 : 77-8"; Guyot, Creation, 58-83: Pope, Theology, 1 : 401, 402; Bible Commentary, 1: 36, 48; Mcllvalne, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 1-54; J. F. Clarke, Ten Great Religions, 2 :193-221. For the theory of 'prophetic vision,' see Kurtz, Hist, of Old Covenant, Introd., 1-xxxvii, clv-cxxx; and Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks. 179-210.
(b) The hyperlitcral interpretation would withdraw the narrative from all comparison with the conclusions of science, by putting the ages of geological history between the first and second verses of Gen. i, and by making the remainder of the chapter an account of the fitting up of the earth, or of some limited portion of it, in six days of twenty-four hours each. Among the advocates of this view, now generally discarded, are Chalmers, Natural Theology, Works, 1:228-258, and John Pye Smith, Mosaic Account of Creation, and Scripture and Geology. To this view we object that there is no indication, in the Mosaic narrative, of so vast an interval between the first and the second verses; that there is no indication, in the geological history, of any such break between the ages of preparation and the present time (sec Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks, 141-178); and that there are indications in the Mosaic record itself that the word "day" is not used in its literal sense; while the other Scriptures unquestionably employ it to designate a period of indefinite duration (Gem. 1: 5—"God called the light Day "—a day before there was a sun; 8—"there was evening and there was morning, a second day " ; 2 : 2—God "rested on the seienth day "; cf. Hen. 4 : 3-10—where God's day of rest seems still to continue, and his people are exhorted to enter into it; Gen. 2 : 4—" the day that the Lord God made earth and beaten "—" day " here covers all the seven days; cf. Is. 2 :12—"a day of the Lord of hosts" ; Zech. 14 : 7—"it shall be one day which is known unto the Lord; not day, and not night" ; 2 Pet. 3 : 8—" one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day "). Guyot, Creation, 34, objects also to this interpretation, that the narrative purports to give a history of the making of the heaven as well as of the earth (Gen. 2 : 4—" these are the generations of the heaven and of the earth "), whereas this interpretation confines the history to the earth. On the meaning of the word "day," as a period of indefinite duration, see Dana, Manual of Geology, 744; Le Conte, Religion and Scienoe, 262.
(c) The hyperscientiflc interpretation would find in the narrative a minute and precise correspondence with the geological record. This is not to be expected, since it is foreign to the purpose of revelation to teach science. Although a general concord between the Mosaic and the geological histories may be pointed out, it is a needless embarassment to compel ourselves to find in every detail of the former an accurate statement of some scientific fact. Far more probable we hold to be
(d) The iHc tnrial-Hiimmani interpretation. Ilefore explaining this in detail, we would premise that we do not hold this or any future scheme of reconciling Genesis and geology to be a finality. Such a settlement of all the questions involved would presuppose not only a perfected science of the physical universe, but also a perfected science of hermeneutics. It is enough if we can offer tentative solutions which represent the present state of thought upon the subject. Remembering, then, that any such scheme of reconciliation may speedily be outgrown without prejudice to the truth of the Scripture narrative, we present the following as an approximate account of the coincidenceebetween the Mosaic and the geological records. The scheme here given is a combination of the conclusions of Dana and of Guyot, and assumes the substantial truth of the nebular hypothesis. It is interesting to observe that Augustine, who knew nothing of modern science, should have reached, by simple study of the text, some of the same results. See his Confessions, 12:8—" First God created a chaotic matter, which was next to nothing. This chaotic matter was made from nothing, before all days. Then this chaotic, amorphous matter was subsequently arranged, in the succeeding six days "; De Genes, ad Lit., 4: 27—" The length of these days is not to be determined by the length of our week-days. There is a series in botli eases, and that is all." We proceed now to the scheme:
1. The earth, if originally in the condition of a gaseous fluid, must have been void and formless, as described in Genesis i: 2. Here the earth is not yet separated from the condensing nebula, and its fluid condition is indicated by the term "waters."
2. The beginning of activity in matter would manifest itself by the production of light, since light is a resultant of molecular activity. This corresponds to the statement in Terse 3. As the result of condensation, the nebula becomes luminous, and this process from darkness to light is described as follows: "there was erening and there was morning, one day." Here we have a day without a sun—a feature in the narrative quite consistent with two facts of science: first, that the nebula would naturally be self-luminous, and, secondly, that the earth proper, which reached its present form before the sun, would, when it was thrown off, be itself a self-luminous and molten mass. The day was therefore continuous—day without a night.
3. The development of the earth into an independent sphere and its separation from the fluid around it answers to the dividing of "the waters under the firmament from the waters abore'V in rerae 7. Hero the word "waters" is used to designate the " primordial cosmic material" (Guyot, Creation, 35-37), or the molten mass of earth and sun united, from which the earth is thrown off. The term "waters" is the best which the Hebrew language affords toexpress this idea of a fluid moss. Ps. 148 seems to have this meaning, where it speaks of the "waters that be above the heavens" (Terse 4)—waters which ore distinguished from the "deeps" below (Terse 7), and the "vapor" above (Terse 8).
4. The production of the earth's physical features by the partial condensation of the vapors which enveloped the igneous sphere, and by the consequent outlining of the continents and oceans, is next described in Terse 9 as the gathering of the waters into one place and the appearing of the dry land.
6. The expression of the idea of life in the lowest plants, since it was in type and effect the creation of the vegetable kingdom, is next described in verse II as a bringing into existence of the characteristic forms of that kingdom. This precedes all mention of animal life, since the vegetable kingdom is the natural basis of the animal. If it be said that our earliest fossils are animal, we reply that the earliest vegetable forms, the nlycr, were easily dissolved, and might as easily disappear: that graphite, appearing lower down than any animal remains, is the result of preceding vegetation; that animal forms, whenever and wherever existing, must subsist upon and presuppose the vegetable. The EoJioOn is of necessity preceded by the Eophyte. If it be said that fruit-trees could not have been created on the third day, we reply that since the creation of the vegetablekingdom was to be described at one stroke and no mention of it was to be made subsequently, this is the proper place to introduce it and to mention its main characteristic forms. See Bible Commentary, 1 : 36.
6. The vapors which have hitherto shrouded the planet are now cleared away as preliminary to the introduction of life in its higher animal forms. The consequent appearance of solar light is described in versa 16 and 17 as a making of the sun, moon and stars, and a giving of them as luminaries to the earth. Compare Gen. 9 :13—" I do set my bow in the
eloud." A§ the rainbow had existed In nature before, but was now appointed to serve a peculiar purpose, so in the record of creation sun, moon, and stars, which existed before, were appointed as visible lights for the earth,—and that for the reason that the earth was no longer self-luininous, and the light of the sun struggling through the earth's encompassing clouds was not sufficient for the higher forms of life which were to come.
7. The exhibition of the four grand types of the animal kingdom (radiate, molluscan, articulate, vertebrate), which characterizes the next stage of geological progress, is represented in verses 20 and 21 as a creation of the lower animals—those that swarm in the waters, and the creeping and flying species of the land. Huxley, in his American Addresses, objects to this assigning of the origin of birds to the fifth day, and declares that terrestrial animals exist in lower strata than any form of bird—birds appearing only in the Oolitic, or New Red Sandstone. But we reply that the fifth day is devoted to sea-productions, while land-productions belong to the sixth. Birds, according to the latest science, are sea-productions, not land-productions. They originated from Saurians, and were, at the first, flying lizards. There being but one mention of sea-productions, all these, birds included, are crowded into the fifth day. Thus Genesis anticipates the latest science. On the ancestry of birds, see Pop. Science Monthly, Mar., 18M: 606; Baptist Magazine, 1877: 605.
8. The introduction of mammals—viviparous species, which are eminent above all other vertebrates for a quality prophetic of a high moral purpose, that of suckling their young—is indicated in verses 24 and 25 by the creation, on the sixth day, of cattle and beasts of prey.
9. Man, the first being of moral and intelectual qualities, and the first in whom the unity of the great design has full expression, forms in both the Mosaic and the geologic record the last step of progress in creation (see verses 26-31). With Prof. Dana, we may say that "in this succession we observe not merely an order of events like that deduced from science; there is a system in the arrangement, and a far-reaching prophecy, to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed." See Dana, Manual of Geology, 741-746, and in Bib. Sac, April, 1885 : 201-224. Richard Owen: "Man from the the beginning of organisms was ideally present upon the earth" ; see Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, 3:7Wi; Louis Agasslz: "Man is the purpose toward which the whole animal creation tends from the first appearance of the first palieozoic fish." On the whole subject, see Guyot, Creation; Review of Guyot, in N. Eng., July, 1884 : 591-594: Tayler Lewis, Six Days of Creation; Thompson, Man in Genesis and in Geology; Agasslz, in Atlantic Monthly, Jan., 1874; Dawson, Story of the Earth and Man. 32; Le Conte, Science and Religion, 2B4; Hill, in Bib. Sac, April, 1875; Peirce, Ideality In the Physical Sciences, 38-72; Boardman, The Creative Week; Godet, Bib. Studies of O. T., 65-138: Zockler, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft; Bell, in "Nature," Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 1882; W. E. Gladstone, on Dawn of Creation and of Worship, in Nineteenth Century, Nov., 1885 : 685-707, and reply by Huxley, in Nineteenth Century, Dec, 1885; Schmid, Theories of Darwin; Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 1-35; Cotterill, Does Science Aid Faith in Regard to Creation? Cox, Miracles, 1-39—chapter i, on the Original Miracle —that of Creation. On difficulties of the nebular hypothesis, see Stallo, Modern Physics, 277-293.
V. God's End In Creation.
Infinite wisdom must, in creating, propose to itself the most comprehensive and the most valuable of ends,—the end most worthy of God, and the end most fruitful in good. Only in the light of the end proposed can we properly judge of God's work, or of God's character as revealed therein.
It would seem that Scripture should give us an answer to the question: Why did God create? The great Architect can best tell his own design. Ambrose: "To whom shall I give greater credit concerning God than to God himself?"
In determining this end, we turn first to:
1. The testimony of Scripture.
This may be summed up in four statements. God finds his end (a) in himself; (b) in his own will and pleasure; (c) in his own glory: (d) in the making known of his power, his wisdom, his holy name. All these statemerits may be combined in the following, namely, that God's supreme end in creation is nothing outside of himself, but is his own glory—in the revelation, in and through creatures, of the infinite perfection of his own being.
(a) Rom. 11: 36— "unto him an all tilings"; Col. 1:16— "all things have been created .... onto him" (Christ); compare Is. 48 :11—"for mine own sake, for mine own sake, will I do it.... and my glory will I not giTe to another"; and 1 Cor. 15: 28—"subject all things unto him, that God mar be all in all." Proverbs 16 : 4 =, not "the Lord hath mode all things for himself" (A. V.), but "The lord hath made ererything for its own end " (Rev. Vers.).
(b) Eph. 1: 5, 6, 9—" having foreordained us ... . according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glorj of his grace ... mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him "; Rev. 4 : 11— "thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created."
(c) Is. 43 : 7—"whom I hare created for my glory" ; 60 : 21 and 61:3—the righteousness and blessedness of the redeemed are secured, that "he might be glorified "; luke 2 :14—the angels' song at the birth of Christ expressed the design of the work of salvation: "Glory to God in the highest," and only through, and for its sake, "on earth peace among men in whom be is well pleased."
(d) Ps. 143 :11—" In thy righteousness bring my soul out of trouble " ; Ks. 36 : 21, 22—" I do not this for your sake .... but for mine holy name "; 39 : 7—" my holy name will I make known "; Rom. 9 :17—to Pharaoh: "For this very purpose did I raise thee up, that I might shew in thee my power, and that my name might be published abroad in all the earth "; 22, 23—" riohes of his glory" made known in vessels of wrath, and in vessels of mercy; Eph. 3 : 9,10—" created all things; to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God." See Godet, on Ultimate Design of Man: "God In man and man in God," In Princeton Rev., Nov., 1880; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1: 438, 535, 565, 588. Per contra, see Miller, Fetich in Theology, 19, 39-45, 88-98,143-148.
Since holiness is the fundamental attribute in God, to make himself, his own pleasure, his own glory, his own manifestation, to be his end in creation, is to find his chief end in his own holiness, its maintainance, expression, and communication. To make this his chief end, however, is not to exclude certain subordinate ends, such as the revelation of his wisdom, power, and love, and the consequent happiness of innumerable creatures to whom this revelation is made.
2. 27«e testimony of reason.
That his own glory, in the sense just mentioned, is God's supreme end in creation, is evident from the following considerations:
(a) God's own glory is the only end actually and perfectly attained in the universe. Wisdom and omnipotence cannot choose an end which is destined to be forever unattained; for "what his soul desireth, even that he doeth" (Job 23 :13). God's supreme end cannot be the happiness of creatures, since many are miserable here and will be miserable forever. God's supreme end cannot be the holiness of creatures, for many are unholy here and will be unholy forever. But while neither the holiness nor the happiness of creatures is actually and perfectly attained, God's glory is made known and will be made known in both the saved and the lost. This then must be God's supreme end in creation.
This doctrine teaches us that none can frustrate God's plan. God will get glory out of every human life. Man may glorify God voluntarily by love and obedience, but if he will not do this he will be compelled to glorify God by his rejection and punishment. Better be the molten iron that runs freely Into the mould prepared by the great Designer, than be the hard and cold Iron that must be hammered into shape.
(6) God's glory is the end intrinsically most valuable. The good of creatures is of insignificant importance compared with this. Wisdom dietates that the greater interest should have precedence of the less. Because God can choose no greater end, he must choose for his end himself. But this is to choose his holiness, and his glory in the manifestation of that holiness.
Is. 40 :15,16—"Behold, the nations are as & drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance" —like the drop that falls unobserved from the bucket, like the fine dust of the scales which the tradesman takes no notice of in weighing:, so are all the combined millions of earth and heaven before God. He created, and he can in an Instant destroy. The universe is but a drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment. It is more important that God should be glorified than that the universe should be happy. As we read in Heb. 6 :13 —"since he could svear by none greater, he sware by himself"—so here we may say: Because he could choose no greater end in creating, he chose himself. But to swear by himself is to swear by his holiness (Ps. 89 : 35). We infer that to And his end In himself is to find that end in his holiness.
(c) His own glory is the only end which consists with God's independence and sovereignty. Every being is dependent upon whomsoever or whatsoever he makes his ultimate end. If anything in the creature is the last end of God, God is dependent upon the creature. But since God is dependent only on himself, he must find in himself his end.
To create is not to increase his blessedness, but only to reveal it. There is no need or deficiency which creation supplies. The creatures who derive all from him can add nothing to him. All our worship is only the rendering back to him of that which is his own. He notices us only for his own sake and not because our little rivulets of praise add anything to the ocean-like fulness of his Joy. For his own sake, and not lieeause of our misery or our prayers, he redeems and exalts us. To make our pleasure and welfare his ultimate end would be to abdicate his throne. He creates, therefore, only for his own sake and for the sake of his glory. To this reasoning the London Spectator replies: "The glory of God is the splendor of a manifestation, not the intrinsic splendor manifested. The splendor of a manifestation, however, consists in the effect of the manifestation on those to whom It is given. Precisely because the manifestation of God's goodness can be useful to us and cannot be useful to him, must its manifestation be intended for our sake and not for his sake. We gain everything by it—he nothing, except so far as it is his own will that we should gain what he desires to bestow upon us." In this last clause we find the acknowledgment of weakness in the theory that God's supreme end is the good of his creatures. God does gain the fulfilment of his plan, the doing of his will, the manifestation of himself. The great painter loves his picture less than he loves his ideal. He paints in order to express himself. God loves each soul which he creates, but he loves yet more the expression of his own perfections in it. And this self-expression is his end. Robert Browning, Paracelsus, 54—" God Is the perfect Poet, Who in creation acts his own conceptions."
(d) His own glory is an end which comprehends and secures, as a subordinate end, every interest of the universe. The interests of the universe are bound up in the interests of God. There is no holiness or happiness for creatures except as God is absolute sovereign, and is recognized as such. It is therefore not selfishness, but benevolence, for God to make his own glory the supreme object of creation. Glory is not vain-glory, and in expressing his ideal, that is, in expressing himself, in his creation, he communicates to his creatures the utmost possible good.
This self-expression is not selfishness but benevolence. No true poet writes for money or for fame. God does not manifest himself for the sake of what he can make by it. 8elf-manifestetion Is an end in Itself. But God's self-manifestation comprises all good to his creatures. We are bound to love ourselves and our own interests Just in proportion to the value of those interests. The monarch of a realm or the general of an army must be careful of his life, because the sacrifice of it may involve the loss of thousands of lives of soldiers or subjects. So God is the heart of the great system. Only by being tributary to the heart can the members be supplied with streams of holiness and happiness. And so for only one Being In the universe is it safe to live for himself. Man should not live for himself, because then' is a higher end. Hut there is no higher end for God. "Only one being in the universe is excepted from the duty of subordination. Man must be subject to the 'higher powers' (Rom. 13 :1). But there are no higher powers to God." See Park, Discourses, 181-201*.
(e) God's glory is the end which in a right moral system is proposed to creatures. This must therefore be the end which he in whose image they are niade proposes to himself. He who constitutes the centre and end of all his creatures must rind his centre and end in himself. This principle of moral philosophy, and the conclusion drawn from it, are both explicitly and implicitly taught in Scripture.
The beginning of all religion is the choosing of God's end as our end—the giving up of our preference of happiness, and the entrance! upon a life devoted to God. That happiness is not the ground of moral obligation, is plain from the fact that there is no happiness in seeking happiness. That the holiness of God is the ground of moral obligation, is plain from the fact that the search after holiness is not only successful in itself, but brings happiness also in its train. Archbishop Leightou, Works, IWS—" It is a wonderful instance of wisdom and goodness that God has so connected his own glory with our happiness, that we cannot properly intend the one, but that the other must follow as a matter of course, and our own felicity is at last resolved into his eternal glory." That God will certainly secure the end for which he created, his own glory, and that his end is our end, Is the true source of comfort in affliction, of strength in labor, of encouragement in prayer. See Psalm 25 :11—" For thy name's sake .... Pardon my iniquity for it is great"; 115:1— "Sot unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory "; Mat. 6 : 33—" Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things snail be added unto you "; 1 Cor. 10 : 31—" Whether therefore ye eat, or drink,
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God:" 1 Pet. 2 : 9—" Ye are an elect race that ye may shew forth the
excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" : 4 :11—speaking, ministering, "that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, whose is the glory and the dominion for ever and ever, amen." On the whole subject, see Edwards, Works, 2; 193-257; Janet, Final Causes, 443 455; Princeton Theol. Essays, 2: 15-32; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 358-362.
VI. Relation Of The Doctrine Of Creation To Other Doctrines. 1. To the holiness and benevolence of God.
Creation, as the work of God, manifests of necessity God's moral attributes. But the existence of physical and moral evil in the universe appears, at first sight, to impugn these attributes, and to contradict the Scripture declaration that the work of God's hand was "very good" (Geu. 1 : 31). This difficulty may be in great part removed by considering that:
(a) At its first creation, the world was good in two senses: first, as free from moral evil,—sin being a later addition, the work, not of God, but of created spirits; secondly, as adapted to beneficent ends,—for example, the revelation of God's perfection, and the probation and happiness of intelligent and obedient creatures.
(6) Physical pain and imperfection, so far as they existed before the introduction of moral evil, are to be regarded : first, as congruous parts of a system of which sin was foreseen to be an incident; and secondly, as constituting, in part, the means of future discipline and redemption for the fallen.
Rom. 8 : 20-22—" For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation [ the irrational creation ] groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now "; 23—our mortal body, as a part of nature, participates In the same groaning. 2 Cor. 4 :17—" our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory."
This is not a perfect world. It was not perfect even when originally constituted. Its imperfection is due to sin. God made it with reference to the fall—the stage was arranged for the great drama of sin and redemption which was to be enacted thereon. We accept Bushnell's idea of "anticlpative consequences," and would illustrate it by the building of a hospital-room while yet no member of the family Is sick, and by the salvation of the patriarchs through a Christ yet to come. If the earliest vertebrates of geological history were types of man and preparations for his coming, then pain and death among those same vertebrates may equally have been a type of man's sin and its results of misery. If sin had not been an Incident, foreseen and provided for, the world might have been a Paradise. As a matter of fact, it will become a Paradise only at the completion of the redemptive work of Christ. Kreibig, Versfjhnung, 369—" The death of Christ was accompanied by startling occurrences in the outward world, to show that the effects of his sacrifice reached even into nature." Perowne refers Ps. 96:10—" Tie world also is stablished that it cannot bo moved "—to the restoration of the inanimate creation: of. Hob. 12 : 27—" And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken mar remain "; Rev. 21:1, 5—" a new heaven and a new earth .... Behold, I make all things new."
Hicks, Critique of Design Arguments, 386—" The very badness of the world convinces us that God is good." And Sir Henry Taylor's words: "Pain in man Bears the high mission of the flail and fan: In brutes 'tis surely piteous "—receive their answer: The brute is but an appendage to man, and like inanimate nature it suffers from man's fall —suffers not wholly in vain, for even pain In brutes serves to illustrate the malign Influence of sin and to suggest motives for resisting It. Pascal: "Whatever virtue can be bought with pain is cheaply bought." The pain and imperfection of the world are God's frown upon sin and his warning against it. See Buahnell, chapter on Anticlpative Consequences, in Nature and the Supernatural, 194-219. Also McCosh, Divine Government, 26-35, 249-281; Farrar, Science and Theology, 82-105; Johnson, in Bap. Kev., 6: 141-154.
2. To the tvisdom and free-will of God.
No plan whatever of a finite creation can fully express the infinite perfection of God. Since God, however, is immutable, he must always have had a plan of the universe; since he is perfect, he must have had the best possible plan. As wise, God cannot choose a plan less good, instead of one more good. As rational, he cannot between plans equally good make a merely arbitrary choice. Here is no necessity, but only the certainty that infinite wisdom will act wisely. As no compulsion from without, so no necessity from within, moves God to create the actual universe. Creation is both wise and free.
As God is both rational and wise, his having a plan of the universe must be better than ills not having a plan would be. But the universe once was not; yet without a universe God was blessed and sufficient to himself. God's perfection therefore requires, not that he have a universe, but that he have a plan of the universe. Again, since God is both rational and wise, his actual creation cannot be the worst possible, nor one arbitrarily chosen from two or more equally good. It must be, all things considered, the best possible. We are optimists rather than pessimists.
But we reject that form of optimism which regards evil as the indispensable condition of the good, and sin as the direct product of God's will. We hold that other form of ■optimism which regards sin as naturally destructive, but as made, in spite of itself, by an overruling providence, to contribute to the highest good. For the optimism which makes evil the necessary condition of Unite tielng, see Lcibnite, Opera Phllosophica, 468, 624; Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, 241; and Pope's Essay on Man. For the better form of optimism, see Herzog, Encycloptedie, art.: Schtipfung, 13: 651-653; Chalmers, Works, 5:288; Mark Hopkins, in Andover Kev., March, 1885 : 197-210; Luthardt, Lehre des freien Wiilens, 9,10—"Calvin's Quia mluit is not the last answer. We could have no heart for such a God, for he would himself have no heart. Formal will alone has no heart. In God real freedom controls formal, as in fallen man, formal controls real."
Janet, in his Final Causes, 429 aq. and 490-503, claims that optimism subjects God to fate. We have shown that this objection mistakes the certainty which is consistent with freedom for the necessity which is inconsistent with freedom: The oppositedoctrine attributes an irrational arbitrariness to God. We are warranted in saying that the universe at present existing, considered as a partial realization of God's developing plan, is the best possible for this particular point of time—in short, that all is for the best—see Rom. 8 : 28 -" to them that love God ill thing* work together for good "; 1 Cor. 3 : 21—"ill things are jours."
For denial of optimism in any form, see Watson, Theol. Institutes, 1 :419; Hovcy, God with Us, 206-308; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1 : 419, 433, 666, and 2 : 146; Lipsius, Dogmatik, 234256; Flint, Theism, 227-256; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 397-409, and esp. 405—"A wisdom the resources of which have been so expended that it cannot equal its past achievements is a finite capacity, and not the boundless deptli of the infinite God." But we reply that a wisdom which does not do that which is best is not wisdom. The limit is not in God's abstract power, but in his other attributes of truth, love, and holiness. Hence God can say in I«. 5 : 4—" what could hive been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?"
The perfect antithesis to an ethical and tboistic optimism is found in the non-moral and atheistic pessimism of Schopenhauer (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung) and Hurtmann (Philosophic des Unbewussten). "All life is summed up in effort, and effort Is painful; therefore life is pain. But we might retort: Life is active, and action is always accompanied with pleasure; therefore life is pleasure." See Frances Power CobbePeak of Darien, 95-134, for a graphic account of Schopenhauer's heartlessness, cowardice, and arrogance. Pessimism Is natural to a mind soured by disappointment and forgetful of God: loci. 2 :11—" all was vanity and a attiring after wind." Homer: "There Is nothing whatever more wretched than man." Seneca praises death as the best invention of nature. Byron: "Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free. And know, whatever thou hast been, 'T is something better not to be." But it has been left to Schopenhauer and Hartmann to define will as unsatisfied yearning, to regard life itself as a huge blunder, and to urge upon the human race, as the only measure of permanent relief, a united and universal act of suicide.
On both the optimism of Leibnitz and the pessimism of Schopenhauer, see Bowen, Modern Philosophy; Tulloch, Modern Theories, 169-221; Thomson, on Modern Pessimism, in Present Day Tracts, 6 : no. 34; Wright on Ecclesiastes, 141-216; Barlow, Ultimatum of Pessimism: Culture tends to misery; God is the most miserable of beings; creation is a plaster for the sore. See also Mark Hopkins, in Princeton Review, Sept., 1882:197—" Disorder and misery are so mingled with order and beneficence, that both optimism and pessimism are possible." Yet it is evident that there must be more construction than destruction, or the world would not be existing. Buddhism, with its Nirvana-refuge, is essentially pessimistic. The remedy for pessimism is (1) the recognition of sin, as the free act of the creature, by which all sorrow and misery have been caused; and (2) the recognition of Christ as the personal God who Is manifested, in self-sacrificing love, to deliver men from the manifold evils In which their sins have involved them. Rom. 8 : 32—" He that spared not his own Son, bat delivered him up for as all, how shall he not also with him freely give as all things?"
3. To providence and redemption.
Christianity is essentially a scheme of supernatural love and power. It conceives of God as above the world, as well as in it,—able to manifest himself, and actually manifesting himself, in ways unknown to mere nature.
But this absolute sovereignty and transcendence, which are manifested in providence and in redemption, are inseparable from creatorship. If the world be eternal, like God, it must be an efflux from the substance of God and must be absolutely equal with God. Only a proper doctrine of creation can secure God's absolute distinctness from the world and his sovereignty over it.
The logical alternative of creation is therefore a system of pantheism, in which God is an impersonal and necessary force. Hence the pantheistic dicta of Fichte: "The assumption of a creation is the fundamental error of all false metaphysics and false theology "; of Hegel: "God evolves the world out of himself, in order to take it back into himself again in the Spirit"; and of Strauss: "Trinity and creation, speculatively viewed, are one and the same,—only the one is viewed absolutely, the other empirically."
Lutbardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 97—" Dualism might be called a logical alternative of creation, but for the fact that its notion of two gods is self-contradictory, and leads to the lowering of the idea of the Godhead, so that the impersonal god of pantheism takes its place." Dorner, System of Doctrine, 2: 11—"The world cannot be necessitated in order to satisfy either want or over-fulness in God The doctrine of absolute creation prevents the amfouiulinu of God with the world. The declaration that the Spirit brooded over the formless elements, and that life was developed under the continuous operation of God's laws and presence, prevents the Kvaration of God from the world. Thus pantheism and deism are both avoided." The unusually full treatment of the doctrine of creation in this chapter is due to a conviction that the doctrine constitutes an antidote to most of the false philosophy of our time.
We perceive from this point of view, moreover, the importance and value
of the Sabbath, as commemorating God's act of creation, and thus God's
personality, sovereignty, and transcendence.
The Sabbath is of perpetual obligation as God's appointed memorial of his creating activity (Gen. 2 : 3—"And God blessed the seventh day. and hallowed it: because that in it he rested from all bis work which God had created and made " ). Our rest is to be a miniature representation of God's rest. As God worked six divine days and rested one divine day, so are we In imitation of him to work six human days and to rest one human day. This requisition made at the creation applies to man as man, everywhere and always, and far antedates the decalogue.
The Sabbath is recognized in Assyrian accounts of the Creation; see Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch., 5: 427, 428; Sehrader, Keilinschrif ten, ed. 1883: 18-22. There are indications of an observance of the ordinance long before the Mosaic legislation. Gen. 4 : 3—"and in process of time [ lit. 'at the end of days1 ] it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the lord "; Gen. 8 :10,12—Noah twice waited seven days before sending forth the dove from the nrk: Gen. 29 : 27, 28—" fulfil the week "; cf. Judges 14 :12—" the seven days of the feast"; Ex. 16 : 5— double portion of manna, promised on the sixth day, that none be gathered on the Sabbath (ef. verses 20, 30). This division of days into weeks is best explained by the original institution of the Sabbath at man's creation. Moses in the fourth commandment therefore speaks of it as already known and observed: Ei. 20 :8—" Remember the Sabbath daj to keep it holy."
The Mosaic prescriptions with regard to the methtxl of keeping the Sabbath are abrogated by Christ, but the Sabbath itself is a part of the moral law and is a necessity of human nature. That law binds us to set apart a seventh portion of our time for rest and worship—after every six days of work, one day of rest. The fourth commandment does not enjoin the simultaneous observance of a fixed portion of absolute time, nor can any such exact portion of absolute time be simultaneously observed by men in different longitudes. A seventh-day Sabbatarian who circumnavigated the globe might gain a day and return to his starting point observing the same Sabbath with common Christendom.
The change from the seventh day to the first seems to have been due to the resurrection of Christ upon "the Srst day of the week" ( Mat. 28 :1), to his meeting with the disciples upon that day and upon the succeeding Sunday (John 20 : 26), and to the pouring out of the Spirit upon the Pentecostal Sunday seven weeks after (acts 2 :1—see Bap. Quar. Rev., 1885: 229-232). Thus by Christ's own example and by apostolic sanction the first day became "the Lord's day" (Rev. 1:10), on which believers met regularly each week with their Lord (lets 20 : 7—" the Srst day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread" ) and brought together their benevolent contributions (1 Cor. 16 :12—"How concerning the collection for the sainta .... upon the first day of the week, let each one of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come").
The Christian Sabbath, then, is the day of Christ's resurrection. The Jewish Sabbath commemorated only the original creation of the world; the Christian Sabbath commemorates also the new creation of the world In Christ, in which God's work In humanity first becomes complete. C. H. M. on Gen. 2: "If I celebrate the seventh day it marks me as an earthly man, Inasmuch as that day is clearly the rest of earth—creation-rest; if I intelligently celebrate the first day of the week, I am marked as a heavenly man, believing in the new creation in Christ." (Gal. 4 :10,11—"Ye observe days, and months, and seasons, and
years. I am afraid of you, last by any means I hare bestowed labor upon yon in rain "; Col. 2 :16, 17—" Let no nun therefore judge yon in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day: which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ's" ). Sec Eight Studies on the Lord's Day; Hessey, Bampton Lectures on the Sunday; Gilflllan, The Sabbath: Wood, Sabbath EssayB: Bacon, Sabbath Observance; Hartley, Essays Philological and Critical, 325-345; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3: 321-348; Lotz, QuH-stioncs de Historla Sabbatl; Maurice, Sermons on the Sabbath; Prize Essays on the Sabbath; Crafts, The Sabbath for Man. For the seventhday view, see T. B. Brown, The Subbath; J. N. Andrews, History of the Sabbath. Per contra, see Prof. A. Hauschenbusch, Sollen wir Samstag Oder Sonntag feiern?
SECTION II. — PRESERVATION.
I. Definition Of Preservation.
Preservation is that continuous agency of God by which he maintains in existence the things he has created, together with the properties and powers with which he has endowed them.
In explanation we remark:
(a) Preservation is not creation, for preservation presupposes creation. That which is preserved must already exist, and must have come into existence by the creative act of God.
(6) Preservation is not a mere negation of action, or a refraining to destroy, on the part of God. It is a positive agency by which, at every moment, he sustains the substances and forces of the universe.
(c) Preservation is not the maintenance of merely latent powers and properties in matter and mind. It is the upholding of these properties and powers in their actual exercise as well.
(d) Preservation recognizes the properties and powers of nature as having objective reality. Although matter and mind retain their existence and endowments only by the constant energy of God, second causes are not mere names for the great first Cause.
(e) Preservation, however, implies a natural concurrence of God in all operations of matter and mind. Though God's will is not the sole force, it is still true that, without his concurrence, no being or substance in the universe can continue to exist or act.
Dorner, System of Doctrine, 2 : 40-43—" Creation and preservation cannot be the same thing, for then man would be only the product of natural forces supervised by God— whereas, man is above nature and Is inexplicable from nature. Nature Is not the whole of the universe, but only the preliminary basis of it.... The rf»l of God is not cessation of activity, but is a new exercise of power." Nor is God "the soul of the universe." This phrase is pantheistic, and implies that God is the only agent.
LT. Proof Of The Doctrine Of Preservation. 1. From Scripture.
In a number of Scripture passages, preservation is expressly distinguished from creation. Though God rested from his work of creation and established an order of natural forces, a special and continuous divine activity is declared to be put forth in the upholding of the universe and its powers.
Nehemiah 9 : 6—" Thou art the Lord, even ihou, alone. Thou hast made heaven, the hearen of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all things that are thereon, the seas and all that is in them, and thou preservest them all "; Job 7 : 20—" 0 thou watcher [ marg. 'preserver' ] of men 1" Ps. 36 : 6—" Thou preservest man and beast"; 104 : 29, 30 —" Thon takest awaj their breath, they die, And return to their dust Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the ground." Sec Perowno on Ps. 104—" A psalm to the God who is In and with nature for good." Humboldt, Cosmos, 2: 413—" Psalm 104 presents an Image of the whole Cosmos."
lets 17 : 28—" in him we live, and move, and have our being "; Col. 1:17—14 in him all things consist"; Heb. 1: 2, 3—"upholding all things by the word of his power." John 5 :17—"My Father worketh even until now, and I work "—refers most naturally to preservation, since creation Is a work completed; compare Gen. 2 : 2—"on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made."
2. From Reason.
We may argue the preserving agency of God from the following considerations:
(a) Matter and mind are not self-existent. Since they have not the cause of their being in themselves, their continuance as well as their origin must be due to a superior power.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre: "Were the world self-existent, it would be God, not world,
and no religion would be possible The world has receptivity for new creations; but
these, once Introduced, are subject, like the rest, to the law of preservation "—I. e. are dependent for their continued existence upon God.
(6) Force implies a will of which it is the direct or indirect expression. While we cannot identify the forces of the universe with the will of God, or regard God as the sole agent in the universe, what we know of force as exerted by our own wills leads us to believe that force and will are correlative terms: in other words, that force has a continuous existence only by virtue of the continuous sustaining agency of the divine will.
For modern theories identifying: force with divine will, see Herschel, Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, 460; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 13-15, 29-36, 42-52; Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law, 121-L27; Wallace, Natural Selection, 363-371; Martincau, Essays, 1 : 63, 265; Uowen, Metaphysics and Ethics, 146-162. We cannot thus identify force with will, because in many cases the effort of our will is fruitless for the reason that nervous and muscular force is lacking. We are thus compelled to distinguish between the two, even while we grant that all force is ultimately due to will, and that we learn of will only upon occasion of our using force.
See Porter, Human Intellect, 582-588, on Maine de Blran's theory that causation pertains only to spirit: "This Implies, first, that the conception of a material cause is selfcontradictory. But the mind recognizes in itself spiritual energies that are not voluntary; because we derive our notion of cause from will, it does not follow that the causal relation always involves will; it would follow that the universe, so far as it is not intelligent, is impossible. It implies, secondly, that there is but one agent in the universe, and that the phenomena of matter and mind are but manifestations of one single force —the Creator's."
Hodge, 8yst. Theol., 1:506—" Because we get our own idea of force from mind, it does not follow that mind is the only force. That mind is a cause is no proof that electricity may not be a cause. If matter is force and nothing but force, then matter is nothing, and the external world Is simply God. In spite of such argument, men will believe that the external world is a reality—that matter is, nnd that it is the cause of the effects we attribute to its agency." New Englander, Sept., 1883 :582—" Man In early times used second causes, 1. e. machines, very little to accomplish his purposes. His usual mode of action was by the direct use of his hands, orliis voice, and he naturally ascribed to the gods the same method as his own. His own use of second causes has led man to higher conceptions of the divine action." Dorner: "If the world had no independence, it would not reflect God, nor would creation mean anything." But this Independence Is not absolute.
(c) God's sovereignty requires a belief in his special preserving agency; since this sovereignty would not be absolute, if anything occurred or existed independent of his will.
The doctrine of preservation holds n middle ground between two extremes. On the one hand, as we have seen, it holds that the substances of the universe have a real existence and a relative independence. On t he other hand, it holds that these substances retain their being and their powers only as they are upheld by God. As the human will has a certain independence, while yet we live and move and have our being: in God, so the forces of nature are at the same time independent and dependent. If God can disjoin from himself a certain portion of force which we call man's will, while yet that will is dependent upon God for its continued existence, then God can also disjoin from himself a certain inferior portion of force which we cull magnetism, while yet that magnetism is dependent upon him for its continued existence. The same principle which leads to the confounding of natural forces with divine will would logically require the confounding of human will with divine will.
And yet there Is no force which does not in its very nature testify to the will of God which originated it and which continually sustains it. Diuian, Theistic Argument, 367— "The dynamical theory of nature as a plastic organism, pervaded by a system of correlated forces uniting at last in one supreme force, is altogether more in harmony with the spirit and teaching of the gospel than the mechanical conceptions which prevailed a century ago, which insisted on viewing nature as an intricate machine, fashioned by a great artificer who stood wholly apnrt from it." On the persistency of force, taper cuneta, suiter cuncta, see Bib. Sac, Jan., 1881 :1-24; Cocker, Theistic Conception of the World, 173-243, esp. 238. The doctrine of preservation therefore holds to a God both in nature and beyond nature. According as the one or the other of these elements is exclusively regarded, we have the error of Deism, or the error of Continuous Creation— theories which we now proceed to consider.
III. Theories Which Virtually Dent The Doctrine Of Preservation. 1. Deism.
This view represents the universe as a self-sustained mechanism, from which God withdrew as soon as he had created it, and which he left to a process of self-development. It was held in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the English Herbert, Collins, Tindal, and Bolingbroke.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury was one of the first who formed deism into a system. His book De VertUUe was published in 1624. He argues against the probability of God's revealing his will to only a portion of the earth. This he calls " particular religion." Yet he sought, and according to his own account lie received, a revelation from heaven to encourage the publication of his work in disproof of revelation. Ho il asked for a sign," and was answered by a " loud though gentle noise from the heavens." He had the vanity to think his book of such importance to the cause of truth as to extort a declaration of the divine will, when the interests of half mankind could not secure any revelation at all; what God would not do for a nation, he would do for an individual. See Leslie and Leland, Method with the Deists. Deism is the exaggeration of the truth of God's transcendence. See Christlleb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, 190-209. Melancthon illustrates by the shipbuilder: "Ut faber discedit a navi exstructa et relinquit earn nautis." God is the maker, not the keeper, of the watch. Carlyle: "An absentee God, sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath at the outside of the universe, and seeing it go." Blunt, Diet. Doct. and Hist. Theology, art.: Deism.
We object to this view that:
(a) It rests upon a false analogy.—Man is able to construct a self-moving watch only because he employs preexisting forces, such as gravity, elasticity, cohesion. But in a theory which likens the universe to a machine, these forces are the very things to be accounted for.
This theory regards the universe as a "perpetual motion." Modern views of the dissipation of energy have served to discredit it. See Woods, Works, 2 : 40.
(6) It is a system of anthropomorphism, while it professes to exclude anthropomorphism.—Because the upholding of all things would involve a multiplicity of minute cares if man were the agent, it copceives of the upholding of the universe as involving such burdens in the case of God. Thus it saves the dignity of God by virtually denying his omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence.
The Infinity of God turns into sources of delight all that would seem care to man. To God's inexhaustible fulness of life there are no burdens Involved In the upholding of the universe he has created. Since God, moreover, is a perpetual observer, we may alter the poet's verse and say: "There's not a flower that's born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air." See Chalmers, Astronomical Discourses, In Works, 7:68; Kurtz, The Bible and Astronomy, in Introd. to Hist, of Old Covenant, lxxxii-xcviii.
(c) It cannot be maintained without denying all providential interference, in the history of creation and the subsequent history of the world.— But the introduction of life, the creation of man, incarnation, regeneration, the communion of intelligent creatures with a present God, and interpositions of God in secular history, are matters of fact.
Deism therefore continually tends to atheism. Sec Pearson, Infidelity, 97; Hanne, Idee der absoluten Perstinlichkelt, 76.
2. Continuous creation.
This view regards the universe as from moment to moment the result of a new creation. It was held by the New England theologians Edwards, Hopkins, and Emmons, and more recently in Germany by Rothe.
Edwards, Works, 2: 486-490, quotes and defends Dr. Taylor's utterance: "God Is the original of all being, and the only cause of all natural effects." Edwards himself says: "God's upholding created substance, or causing its existence in each successive moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing at each moment." He argues that the past existence of a thing cannot be the cause of Its present existence, because a thing cannot act at a time and place where it is not. "This is equivalent to saying that God cannot produce an effect which shall last for one moment beyond the direct exercise of his creative power. What man can do, God, it seems, cannot" (A. S.
Carman). Hopkins, Works, 1: 164-167—Preservation "is really continued creation
The law or course of nature is nothing but divine power and wisdom. All power Is in God. This is the proper efficient cause of every event. All creatures which act or move, exist and move, or are moved, by and in him." Emmons, Works, 4 : 363-389, esp. 381—" We cannot conceive that even omnipotence is able to form independent agents, because this would be to endow them with divinity. And since all men are dependent agents, all these motions, exercises, or actions must originate in a divine efficiency." God therefore creates all the volitions of the soul, and effects by his almighty power all changes in the material world. See Rothe, Dogmatik, 1: 126-160, esp. 150, and Theol. Ethik, 1: 186-190. For statement of Rothe's view, see also Bib. Sue, Jan., 1875: 144.
To this view we object, upon the following grounds:
(a) It contradicts our intuitive beliefs in substance and causality,—by denying the existence and efficiency of second causes and declaring these to be merely occasions for the exercise of divine energy. It removes all basis for our knowledge of an external world, and involves all the difficulties of idealism.
According to this view, the contact of Are with the finger, the stroke of the axe on the tree, are only the occasions—divine omnipotence is the cause—of the tree's falling and the finger's burning. All causal connections between the different objects of the universe are nt an end. No such things as physical forces exist. Nature becomes a mere phantom, and Uod is the only cause in the universe.
(6) It exaggerates God's power only by sacrificing his truth, love, and holiness ;—for if the substances and powers of nature are not what they seem—namely, objective existences—God's veracity is impugned; if the human soul have no real freedom and life, God's love has made no selfcommunication to creatures; if God's will is the only force in the universe, God's holiness can no longer be asserted, for the divine will must in that case be regarded as the author of human sin.
Upon tills view personal Identity Is inexplicable. Edwards bases identity upon the arbitrary decree of God. God can therefore, by so decreeing, make Adam's posterity one with their first father and responsible for his sin. Edwards's theory of continuous creation, indeed, was devised as an explanation of the problem of original gin. The divinely appointed union of acts and exercises with Adam was held sufficient, without union of substance, or natural generation from him, to explain our being born corrupt and guilty. This view would have been impossible, if Edwards had not been an idealist, making far too much of acts and exercises and far too little of substance.
See Noah Porter's Discourse on "Bishop George Berkeley," 71, and quotations from Edwards, in Journ. Spec. Philos., Oct., 1883:401-420—" Not hiug else has a proper being but spirits, and bodies are but the shadow of being. ... Seeing the brain exists only mentally, I therefore acknowledge that I speak improperly when I say that the soul is in the brain only, as to its operations. For, to speak yet more strictly and abstractedly, 'tis nothing but the connection of the soul with these and those modes of its own ideas, or those mental acts of the Deity, seeing the brain exists only in idea.... That which truly is the substance of all bodies is the infinitely exact and precise and perfectly stable Idea in God's mind, together with his stable will t hat the same shall be gradually communicated to us and to other minds according to certain fixed and established methods and laws; or, in somewhat different language, the infinitely exact and precise divine idea, together with an answerable, perfectly exact, precise, and stable will, with respect to correspondent communications to created minds and effects on those minds." It is easy to see how, from this view of Edwards, the "Exercise-system" of Hopkins and Emmons naturally developed itself. On personal identity, see Bp. Butler, Works ( Bonn's ed.), 327-334.
(c) As deism tends to atheism, so the doctrine of continuous creation tends to pantheism.—Arguing that, because we get our notion of force from the action of our own wills, therefore all force must be will, and divine will, it is compelled to merge the human will in this all-comprehending will of God. Mind and matter alike become phenomena of one force, which has the attributes of both; and, with the distinct existence and personality of the human soul, we lose the distinct existence and personality of God, as well as the freedom and accountability of man.
Such a scheme makes supernatural religion impossible, for the reason that nature Is denied, and everything—that is to say, nothing—becomes supernatural. Dorner well remarks that "Preservation is empowering of the creature and maintenance of its activity, not new bringing it into being." On the whole subject, see Julius Muller, Doctrine of Sin, 1 : 220-225; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2 : 258-272; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 50; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1 : 577-581, and 595; Dabney, Theology, 338, 339.
IV. Remarks Upon The Divine Concurrence.
(a) The divine efficiency interpenetrates that of nature and that of man without destroying or absorbing them. The influx of God's sustaining energy is such that all things retain their natural properties and powers. God does not work all, but all in all.
Preservation, then, is midway between the two errors of denying the first cause (deism or atheism) and denying the second causes (continuous creation or pantheism). 1 Cor. 12 : 6—" there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all"; cf. Kph. 1: 23— the church, "which is his body, the fulness of him that fiileth all in all." God's action is no actio in distant*, or action where he is not. It is rather action in and through second causes. Yet his action in second causes docs not supersede these second causes. We cannot see the line between the two —the action of the first cause and the action of second causes; yet both are real, and each is distinct from the other, though the method of God's concurrence is inscrutable. As the pen and the hand together produce the writing, so God's working: causes natural powers to work with him. The natural growth indicated by the words "wherein is the seed thereof" (Gen. 1:11) has its counterpart in the spiritual growth described in the words "his teed abideth in him" (1 John 3:9). Paul considers himself a reproductive agency in the hands of God: he begets children in the gospel (1 Cor. 4: 15); yet the New Testament speaks of this begetting as the work of God (1 Pet 1:3).
(6) Though God preserves mind and body in their working, we are ever to remember tbat God concurs with the evil acts of his creatures only as they are natural acts, and not as they are evil.
In holy action God gives the natural powers, and by his word and Spirit influences the soul to use these powers aright. But in evil action God gives only the natural powers; the evil direction of these powers is caused only by man. Jer. 44 : 4—" Oh do not this abominable thing that I hate "; Hab. 1:13—" Thou that art of purer ejes than to behold enl, and that canst not look on perrerseness, wherefore lookest thou upon them tbat deal treaeherouslj, and holdest thy peace when the wicked swalloweth up the man that is more righteous than he?" James 1:13,14—"Let no man say when he is tempted. I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man: but each man is tempted, when he is drawn awaj by his own lust, and enticed." On the importance of the idea of preservation in Christian doctrine, see Calvin, Institutes, 1: 182 (chapter 16).
SECTION III.—PROVIDENCE.
L Definition Of Providence.
Providence is that continuous agency of God by which he makes all the events of the physical and moral universe fulfil the original design with which he created it.
In explanation notice:
(a) Providence is not to be taken merely in its etymological sense of fore seeing. It is /orseeing also, or a positive agency in connection with all the events of history.
(6) Providence is to be distinguished from preservation. While preservation is a maintenance of the existence and powers of created things, providence is an actual care and control of them.
(c) Since the original plan of God is all comprehending, the providence which executes the plan is all-comprehending also, embracing within its scope things small and great, and exercising care over individuals as well as over classes.
(d) In respect to the good acts of men, providence embraces all those natural influences of birth and surroundings which prepare men for the operation of God's word and Spirit, and which constitute motives to obedience.
(e) 111 respect to the evil acts of men, providence is never the efficient cause of sin, but is by turns preventive, permissive, directive, and determinative.
The Germans havo the word Fttrachung, forseelng, looking out for, as well as the word Vonrhuno, foreseeing, seeing beforehand. Our word 'providence' embraces the meanings of both these words. On the general subject of providence, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre. 2 : 273-284; Calvin, Institutes, 1: 182-219; Dick, Theology, 1: 416-446; Hodge, Syst. Theology, 1: 581-616; Bib. Sac, 12: 179; 21: 584; 26: 315; 30: 593; N. W. Taylor, Moral Government, 2: 294-328.
II. Proof Of The Doctrine Of Providence.
1. Scriptural proof.
The Scripture witnesses to
A. A general providential government and control (a) over the universe at large; (6) over the physical world; (c) over the brute creation; (d) over the affairs of nations; (e) over man's birth and lot in life; (/) over the outward successes and failures of men's lives; (g) over things seemingly accidental or insignificant; (h) in the protection of the righteous; (i) in the supply of the wants of God's people; (j) in the arrangement of answers to prayer; [k) in the exposure and punishment of the wicked.
(a) Pi 103 :19—" his kingdom ruleth orer all"; Dan. 4 : 35-—" doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth"; Eph. 1:11—" vorketh all things after the counsel of his will."
(6) Job 37 : 5, 10—"Sod thnndereth By the breath of God ios is giien"; Ps. 104 : 14—"oanseth the grass to
grow for the cattle '; 135 : 6, 7—" Whatsoever the lord pleased, that hath be done, In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps ... vapors ... lightnings ... wind"; Mat 5 : 45—"maketh his son to rise .... sendeth rain."
(c) Ps. 104 : 21, 28—"young lions roar ... seek their meat from God ... That thou givest them they gather"; Hat. 6 : 26—" birds of the heaven ... your heavenly father feedeth them "; 10 : 29—" two sparrows ... not one of them shall fall on the ground without your father."
(d) Job 12 : 23—" He increaseth the nations and destroyeth them; He spreadeth the nations abroad and bringeth them in "; Ps. 22: 28—" the kingdom is the Lord's: And be is the ruler orer the nations "; 66 : 7—" He ruleth by his might for ever; His eyes observe the nations"; Ida 17 : 26—"made of one every nation of men for to dwell on ail the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation" (instance Palestine, Greece, England).
(f) 1 Sam. 16 :1—" Fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemito: for I have provided me a king among bis sons"; Ps, 139 :16—"Thine eyes did see mine unperfeot substance, And in thy book were all my members written "; Is. 45 : 5—" I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me "; Jer. 1: 5—" Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee .. . sanctified thee ... appointed thee"; Gal. 1:15—" God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles."
(/) Ps. 75 : 6, 7—" neither from the east, nor from the west, Nor yet from the south oometh lining up. But God is the judge: He putteth down one, and lifteth up another "; Luke 1: 52—"He hath put down princes from their thrones. And hath exalted them of low degree."
(y) Prov. 16 : 33—" The lot is cast into the lap; But the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord "; Mat 10 : 30—" the very hairs of your head are all numbered."
(/i) Ps. 4 : 8—" In peace will I both lay me down and sleep: for thou. Lord, alone makest me dwell in safety "; 5 :12—"thou wilt compass him with favor as with a shield"; 63: 8—"Thy right hand upholdeth me"; 121: 3— "He that keepeth thee will not slumber "; Rom. 8 : 28—" to them that love God all things work together for good."
(i) Gen. 22 : 8, 14—" God will provide himself the iamb Jehovah-jireh" (marg. that is, 'The Lord will
see,' or, 'provide'); Deut 8:3—" man doth not live by bread only, but by every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live "; Phil. 4:19—" my God shall fulfil every need of yours."
(j) Ps. 68 :10—"Thou, 0 God. didst prepare of thy goodness for the poor"; Is. 64 : 4—"neither hath the eye seen a God beside thee, which worketh for him that waiteth for him "; Mat 6:8—" your father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him "; 32, 33—" all these things shall be added unto you."
(It) Ps. 7 :12,13—" If a man turn not he will whet his sword; He hath bent his bow and made it ready; He hath, also prepared for him the instruments of death; He maketh his arrows fiery shafts "; 11: 6—" Upon the wicked he shall rain snares; Fire and brimstone, and burning wind shall be the portion of their cup."
B. A government and control extending to the free actions of men— (a) to men's free acts in general; (b) to the sinful acts of men also.
(a) Ex. 12 : 36—" the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that thej let them have what they asked, lad they spoiled the Egyptians"; 1 Sam. 24 :18—" the lord had delivered me np into thy hand" (Saul to David); Pa. 33 :14,15—" he looketh forth Upon all the inhabitants of the earth; He that faihionetb the hurts of them all" ((. e. equally, one as well as another); Prov. 16 :1—" The preparations of the heart belong to man: Bnt the answer of the tongue is from the Lord "; 19 : 21 There are many devices in a man's heart; Bat the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand "; 20 : 24—" A man's goings are of the Lord; How then can man understand his vay?" 21:1—" The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the watercourses: He tumeth it whithersoever he will" ({. e. as easily as the rivulets of the eastern fields are turned by the slightest motion of the hand or the foot of the husbandman); Jer. 10 : 23—" 0 Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps"; Phil. 2 :13—" it is God which worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure "; Eph. 2 :10—" we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them"; James 4 :13-15—"If the Lord will, we shall both live, and do this or that."
(M 2 Sam. 16 :10—" because the Lord hath said unto him [ Shimei]: Curse David "; 24 :1—" the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them, saying, Go, number Israel andJudah"; Rom. 11: 32 --"God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all"; 2 Thes. 2:11 -"God sendeth them a working of error, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
God's providence with respect to men's evil acts is described in Scripture 418 of four sorts:
(a) Preventive,—God by his providence prevents sin which would otherwise be committed. That he thus prevents sin is to be regarded as matter, not of obligation, but of grace.
Gen. 20 : 6—Of Ablmelech: "I also withheld thee from sinning against me "; 31: 24—"and God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream of the night, and said unto him, Take heed to thyself that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad "; Psalm 19 :13—" Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins: let them not have dominion over me "; Hosea 2:6—" Behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and I will make a fence against her that she shall not find her paths "—here the " thorns" and the " fence" may represent the restraints and sufferings by which God mercifully cheeks the fatal pursuit of sin (see Annotated Par. Bible in loco).
Man sometimes finds himself on the brink of a precipice of sin, and strong temptation hurries him on to make the fatal leap. Suddenly every nerve relaxes, all desire for the evil thing is gone, and he recoils from the fearful brink over which he was just now going to plunge. God has Interfered by the voice of conscience and the Spirit. This Is a part of his preventive providence.
(6) Permissive,—God permits men to cherish and to manifest the evil dispositions of their hearts. God's permissive providence is simply the negative act of withholding impediments from the path of the sinner, instead of preventing his sin by the exercise of divine power. It implies no ignorance, passivity, or indulgence, but consists with hatred of the sin and determination to punish it.
Ps. 81:12. 13—" So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart, That they might walk in their own counsels. Oh that my people would hearken unto me!" Hosea 4 :17—" Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone "; Acts 14 : 16— "who in the generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways "; Rom. 1: 24, 28—" God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness .... God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting "; 3 : 25—" to show his righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God."
To this head of permissive providence Is possibly to be referred 1 Sam. 18:10—"an evil spirit from God came mightily noon Saul." As the Hebrew writers saw in second causes the operation of the great first Cause, and said: "The God of glory thundereth" (Ps. 29:3 ), so, because even the acts of the wicked entered Into God's plan, the Hebrew writers sometimes represented God as doing what he merely permitted Unite spirits to do. In 2 Sam. 24 :1 God moves David to number Israel, but In 1 Chron. 21:1 the same thing Is referred to Satan. ■God's providence In these cases, however, may be directive as well as permissive.
(c) Directive,—God directs the evil acts of men to ends unforeseen and unintended by the agents. When evil is in the heart and will certainly come out, God orders its flow in one direction rather than in another, so that its course can be best controlled and least harm may result. This issometimes called overruling providence.
Gen. 50 : 20—"is for you. ye meant evil against me; but God meant it far good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to sa?e much people ali?e "; Pa. 76:10—" the wrath of man shall praise thee: The residue of wrath shall thou gird upon thee" — put on us Iui onmuient—clothe thyself with it for thine own glory ; Is. 10 : 5—"Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine auger, and the staff in whose hand is mine indignation "; Acts 4 : 27, 28—" Against thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were, gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel foreordained to come to pass."
To this head of directive providence should probably bo referred the pastures with regard to Pharaoh in Ex. 4 : 21—"I will harden his heart, and he will not let the people go "; 7:13—"and Pharaoh s heart was hardened"; 8 :15— "he hardened his heart f. *. Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Here the controlling agency of God did not interfere with the liberty of Pharaoh or oblige him to sin; but in judgment for his previous cruelty and impiety God withdrew the external restraints which had hitherto kept his sin within bounds, and placed him in circumstances which would have influenced to right action a well-disposed mind, but which God foresaw would lead a disposition like Pharaoh's to the peculiar course of wickedness which he actually pursued.
God hardened Pharaoh's heart then, first, by judicially forsaking him, and, secondly, by so directing his surroundings that his sin manifested itself in one way rather than in another. Sin Is like the lava of the volcano, which will certainly come out, but which God directs in its course down the mountain-side so that It will do least harm. The gravitation downward is due to man's evil will; the direction to this side or to that is due to God's providence. See Rom. 9 : 17—"For this very purpose did I raise thee up, that I might show in thee my power, and that my name might he published abroad in all the earth. So then he hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth."
(d) Determinative,—God determines the bounds reached by the evil passions of his creatures, and the measure of their effects. Since moral evil is a germ capable of indefinite expansion, God's determining the measure of its growth does not alter its character or involve God's complicity with the perverse wills which cherish it.
Job 1 : 12—" And the Lord said unto Satan. Behold all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself pat not forth thy hand "; 2 : 6—" Behold he is in thy hand: only spare his life"; Ps. 124 : 2 —" If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, When men ros^ up against us: Th?n had they swallowed us up alive " ; 1 Cor. 10 :13—" will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it" ; 2 Thess. 2 ; 7—" For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only there is one that restrained now. until he be taken out of the way "; Rev. 20 : 2, 3—" And he laid hold of the dragon, and the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years."
Pepper, Outlines of Syst. Theol., 76: The union of God's will and man's will is "such that, while in one view all can be ascribed to God, in another all can be ascribed to the creature. Hut how God and the creature are united in operation is doubtless known and knowable only to God. A very dim una logy is furnished in the union of the soul and body in men. The bund retains its own physical laws, yet is obedient to the human will. This theory recognizes the veracity of consciousness in its witness to personal freedom, and yet the completeness of God's control of both the bad and the good. Free beings are ruled, but are ruled as free and in their freedom. The freedom is not sacrificed to the control. The two coexist, each in its integrity. Any doctrine which does not allow this is false to Scripture and destructive of religion."
2. liational proof.
A. Arguments a priori from the divine attributes, (a) From the immutability of God. This makes it certain that he will execute his eternal plan of the universe and its history. But the execution of this plan involves not only creation and preservation, but also providence. (6) From the benevolence of God. This renders it certain that he will care for the
intelligent universe he has created. What it was worth liis while to create, it is worth his while to care for. But this care is providence, (c) From the justice of God. As the source of moral law, God must assure the vindication of law by administering justice in the universe and punishing the rebellious. But this administration of justice is providence.
For heathen Idea* of providence, see Cicero, De Nature Deorum, 11: 30, where lialbus speaks of the existence of the (rods as that, "quo concesso, contltcndum est eorura consilio mundum administrari." Epictetus, sec. 11—"The principal and most important duty in religion is to possess your mind with just and becoming notions of the gods—to believe that there arc such supreme beings, and that they govern and dispose all the affairs of the world with a just and good providence." Marcus Antoninus: "If there are no gods, or if they have no regard to human affairs, why should 1 desire to live In a world without gods and without a providence? But gods undoubtedly there are, and the}' regard human affairs." See also Bib. Sac., 1H: 3T4. As we shall see, however, many of the heathen writers believed in a general, rather than in a particular, providence.
On the argument for providence derived from God's benevolence, see Appleton, Works, 1: 146— "Is indolenw more consistent wltti God's majesty than action would be? The happiness of creatures is a good. Does It honor God to say that he is indifferent to that which he knows to be good and valuable? Even if the world had come into existence without his agency, it would become God's morel character to pay some attention to creatures so numerous and so susceptible to pleasure and pain, especially when he might have so great and favorable an Influence on their moral condition." John 5 :17— "Mj father worketh even until now, ud I work "—is as applicable to providence as to preservation.
B. Arguments a posteriori from the facts of nature and of history, (a) The outward lot of individuals and nations is not wholly in their own hands, but is in many acknowledged respects subject to the disposal of a higher power. (6) The observed moral order of the world, although imperfect, cannot be accounted for without recognition of a divine providence. Vice is discouraged and virtue rewarded, in ways which are beyond the power of mere nature. There must be a governing mind and will, and this mind and will must be the mind and will of God.
The birthplace of individuals and of nations, the natural powers with which they are endowed, the opportunities and immunities they enjoy, are beyond their own control. A man's destiny for time and for eternity may practically be decided for him by his birth in a Christian home, rather than in a tenement-house at the Five Points, or in a kraal of the Hottentots. Progress largely depends upon "variety of environment" ( H. Spencer). But this variety of environment is in great part independent of our own efforts.
"There's a Divinity that shapes our ends. Rough hew them how we will." Shakespeare here expounds human consciousness. "Man proposes and God disposes" has become a proverb. Experience teaches that success and failure are not wholly due to us. Men often labor and lose; they consult and nothing ensues; they "embattle and are broken. '• Providence is not always on the side of the heaviest battalions. Not arms but ideas have decided the fate of the world—as Xerxes found at Thermopylae, and Napoleon at Waterloo. See sermon on Providence in Political Revolutions, in Farrar's Science and Theology, 238. On the moral order of the world, notwithstanding its imperfections, see Butler, Analogy, Bonn's cd., 98; King, in Bap. Rev., 1884: 202-222.
III. Theories Opposing The Doctrine Of Providence. 1. Fatalism.
Fatalism maintains the certainty, but denies the freedom, of human selfdetermination,—thus substituting fate for providence.
To this view we object that (a) it contradicts consciousness, which testifies that we are free; (6) it exalts the divine power at the expense of God's truth, wisdom, holiness, love; (c) it destroys all evidence of the personality and freedom of God; (d) it practically makes necessity the only God, and leaves the imperatives of our moral nature without present validity or future vindication.
The Mohammedans have frequently been called fatalists, and the practical effect of the teachings of the Koran upon the masses is to make them so. The ordinars' Mohammedan will have no physician or medicine, because everything: happens as God has before appointed. Smith, however, in his Mohammed and Mohammedanism, denies that fatalism is essential to the system. Wain - "submission," and the participle Miislrm = "submitted," i. t. to God.
Calvinists can assert freedom, since man's will finds its highest freedom only in submission to God. Islam also cultivates submission, but it is the submission not of love but of fear. The essential difference between Mohammedanism and Christianity is found in the revelation which the latter gives of the love of God in Christ—a revelation which secures from free moral agents the submission of love. On fatalism, see McCosh, Intuitions, 286; Kant, Metaphysie of Ethics, 52-74, 93-108; Mill, Autobiography, 188-170, and System of Logic, 521-520; Hamilton, Metaphysics, (W2; Stewart, Active and Moral Powers of Man, ed. Walker, 288-324.
2. Casualism.
Casualism transfers the freedom of mind to nature, as fatalism transfers the fixity of nature to mind. It thus exchanges providence for chance. Upon this view we remark:
(a) If chance be only another name for human ignorance, a name for the fact that there are trivial occurrences in life which have no meaning or relation to us,—we may acknowledge this, and still hold that providence arranges every so-called chance, for purposes beyond our knowledge. Chance, in this sense, is providential coincidence which we cannot understand, and do not need to trouble ourselves about.
Not all chances are of equal importance. The casual meeting of a stranger in the street need not bring God's providence before me, although I know that God arranges It. Yet I can conceive of that meeting as leading to religious conversation and to the stranger's conversion. When we are prepared for them, we shall see many opportunities which are now as unmeaning to us as the gold in the river-beds was to the early Indians of California. I should be an ingrate, if I escaped a lightning-stroke, and did not thank God; yet Dr. Arnold's saying that every school-boy should put on his hat for God's glory, and with a high moral purpose", seems morbid. There Is a certain room for the play of arbitrariness. We must not afflict ourselves or the church of God by requiring a Pharisaic punctiliousness in mlnutiie. Life is too short to debate the question which shoe we shall put on first. "Love God and do what you will" said Augustine; that is. Love God, and act out that love in a simple and natural way. He free in your service, yet be always on the watch for indications of God's will.
(b) If chance be taken in the sense of utter absence of all causal connections in the phenomena of matter and mind,—we oppose to this notion the fact that the causal judgment is formed in accordance with a fundamental and necessary law of human thought, and that no science or knowledge is possible without the assumption of its validity.
Janet: "Chance is not a cause, but a coincidence of causes."
(c) If chance be used in the sense of undesigning cause,—it is evidently insufficient to explain the regular and uniform sequences of nature, or the moral progress of the human race. These things argue a superintending and designing mind—in other words, a providence. Since reason demands not only a cause, but a sufficient cause, for the order of the physical and moral world, cosualism must be ruled out.
Our intuition of design compels us to get- mind and purpose in individual and national history, as truly as in the physical universe. The same argument which proves the existence of God proves also the existence of a Providence. See Farrar, Life of Christ, 1 : 155, note.
3. Theory of a merely general providence.
Many who acknowledge God's control over the movements of planets and the destinies of nations deny any divine arrangement of particular events. Most of the arguments against deism are equally valid against the theory of a merely general providence. This view is indeed only a form of deism, which holds that God has not wholly withdrawn himself from the universe, but that his activity within it is limited to the maintenance of general laws.
This appears to have been the view of most of the heathen philosophers. Cicero: "Magna dii curunt; parvn negligunt." "Even in kingdoms among men," Cicero says, "kings do not trouble themselves with insignificant alfuirs." So Jerome, the church Father, thought it absurd that God should know just how many gnat.s und cockroaches there were in the world. See Blunt, Diet. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Deism; Baden Powell, Order of Nature; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2 : 7, 68.
In addition to the arguments above alluded to, we may urge against this theory that:
(a) General control over the course of nature and of history is impossible without control over the smallest particulars which affect the course of nature and of history. Incidents so slight as well-nigh to escape observation at the time of their occurrence are frequently found to determine the whole future of a human life, and through that life the fortunes of a whole empire and of a whole age.
"Nothing great has great beginnings." "Take tare of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves." "Care for the chain is care for the links of tho chain.' Instances in point arc the sleeplessness of King Ahasuerup (Esther 6 : i). and tin? seeming chance that led to the reading of t he record of Mordecni's service and to the salvation of the Jews in Persia; the spider's web spun across the entrance to the cave in which Mohammed had taken refuge, and which so deceived his pursuers that they passed on in a bootless chaw, leaving to the world the religion and the empire of the Moslems; the preaching of Peter the Hermit, which occasioned the tlrst crusade; the chance shot of an archer, which pierced the right eye of Harold, the last of the purely English kings, gained the battle of Hastings for William the Conqueror, and secured the throne of England for the Normans; the flight of pigeons to the south-west, which changed the course of Columbus, hitherto directed towards Virginia, to the West Indies, and so prevented the dominion of Spain over North America; the storm that dispersed the Spanish Armada and saved England from the Papacy, and the storm that dispersed the French fleet gathered for the conquest of New England—the latter on a day of fasting and prayer appointed by the Puritans to avert the calamity; the settling of New England by the Puritans, rather than by French Jesuits; the order of Council restraining Cromwell and his friends from sailing to America; Major Andre's lack of self-possession in presence of his captors, which led him to ask an improper question Instead of showing his passport, and which saved the American cause; the unusually early commencement of cold weather, which frustrated the plans of Napoleon and destroyed his army in Russia; the fatal shot at Fart Sumter, which precipitated the war of secession and resulted in the abolition of American slavery. Nature is linked to history: the breeze warps the course of the bullet; the insect perforates the plank of the ship. God must care for the least, or he cannot care for the greatest. Sec Applcton, Works, 149 sr/.
(6) The love of God which prompts a general care for the universe must also prompt a particular care for the smallest events which affect the happiness of his creatures. It belongs to love to regard uotliiug as trifling or beneath its notice which has to Jo with the interests of the object of its affection. Infinite love may therefore be expected to provide for all, even the minutest things in the creation. Without belief in this particular care, men cannot long believe in God's general care. Faith in a particular providence is indispensable to the very existence of practical religion; for men will not worship or recognize a God who has no direct relation to them.
Man's care for his own body Involves care for the least important members of it. A lover's devotion is known by his interest in the. minutest concerns of his beloved. So all our affairs are matters of interest to God. Pope's Essay on Man: "All nature is but art unknown to thoo; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal (food." If harvests inny be labored for and lost without any agency of God; if rain or sun may act like fate, sweeping: away the results of years, and God have no hand in it all; if wind and storm may wreck the ship and drown our dearest friends, and God not care for us or for our loss, then all possibility of general trust in God would disappear also.
(':) Iu times of personal danger, and in remarkable conjunctures of public affairs, men instinctively attribute to God a control of the events which take place around them. The prayers which such startling emergencies force from men's lips are proof that God is present and active iu human affairs. This testimony of our mental constitution must be regarded as virtually the testimony of him who framed this constitution.
No advance of science can rid us of this conviction, since it comes from a deeper source than mere reasoning. The intuition of design is awakened by the connection of events In our daily life, as much as by the useful adaptations which we see in nature. Ps. 107 : 23-28—" They thai go down to the wa in ships . . . mount ap to the heaven ... go down again to the depths . . . And are at their wits end . . . Then they cry un'.o the Lord in their trouble." A narrow escape from death shows us a present God and Deliverer. Instance the general feeling throughout the land, expressed by the press as well as by the pulpit, at the breaking out of our rebellion and at the President's subsequent proclamation of emancipation.
(d) Christian experience confirms the declarations of Scripture that particular events are brought about by God with special reference to the good or ill of the individual. Such events occur at times in such direct connection with the Christian's prayers that no doubt remains with regard to the providential arrangement of them. The possibility of such divine agency in natural events caunot be questioned by oue who, like the Christian, has had experience of the greater wonders of regeneration and daily intercourse with God, and who believes in the reality of creation, incarnation, and miracles.
Providence prepares the way for men's conversion, sometimes by their own partial reformation, sometimes by the sudden death of others near them. Instance Luther and Judsou. The Christian learns that the same Providence that led him before his conversion is busy after his conversion in directing his steps and in supplying his wants. Daniel Defoe: "I have been fed more by miracle than Elijah when the angels were his purveyors." In Psalm 32, David celebrates not only God's pardoning mercy but his subsequent providential leading: "I will counsel thee with mine eye upon thee" (verse 8). It may be objected that we often mistake the meaning of events. We answer that, as in nature, so in providence, we are compelled to believe, not that we know the design, but that there is u design. Instance Shelley's drowning, and Jacob Knapp's prayer that his opponent might be stricken dumb.
TV. Relations Of The Doctkine Of Providence.
1. To miracles and works of grace.
Particular providence is the agency of God in what seein to us the minor affairs of nature and of human life. Special providence is only an instance of God's particular providence which has special relation to us or makes peculiar impression upon us. It is special, not as respects the means which God makes use of, but as respects the effect produced upon us. In both particular and special providence, God apparently makes use of ordinary laws of nature to accomplish his purposes. In special providences we have only more impressive manifestations of the control which God always exercises over nature's laws.
But while providence, both general and special, works in the realm of nature and through the natural laws of matter and of mind, miracles and works of grace like regeneration are supernatural acts, not to be explained from antecedent natural causes. While God can use natural forces for the accomplishment of his will, he is not, as man is, confined to these, but by his simple volition he can accomplish results far beyond the power of mere nature. Miracles and special providences are therefore not to be confounded with each other, since the latter belong to nature, the former to the realm above nature. Certain of the wonders of Scripture, however, such as the destruction of Sennacherib's army and the dividing of the Red Sea, may possibly belong to the class of special providences, rather than to the class of miracles.
The falling of snow from a roof Is iin example of ordinary (or particular) providence. But if a man is killed by it, it becomes a special providence to him and to others who are thereby taught the insecurity of life. So the providing of coal for fuel in the geologic axes may be regarded by different persons in the light either of a general or of a special providence. Trench gives the name of "providential miracles" to those Scripture wonders which may be explained as wrought through the agency of natural laws (see Trench, Miracles, ID). Mozley also (Miracles, 117-130) calls these wonders miracles, because of the predictive word of (iod which accompanied them. He says that the difference in effect between miracles and special providences is that the latter give Mtmt. warrant, while the former give.full warrant, for believing that they are wrought by (iod. For the naturalistic view, see Tyndall on Miracles and Special Providences, in Fragments of Science, 4ft, 418. Per contra, see Farrar, on Divine Providence and General Laws, in Science and Theology. M-80: Row, Bampton Lect. on Christian Evidences, 109-115; Godet, Defence of Christian Faith, chap. 2.
2. To prayer and its answer.
What has been said with regard to God's connection with nature suggests the question, how God can answer prayer consistently with the fixity of natural law.
Tyndall (see reference above), while repelling the charge of denying that God can answer prayer at all, yet does deny that he can atiswer it without a miracle. He gays expressly "that without a disturbance of natural law unite ns serious as the stoppage of an eclipse, or the rolling of the St. Lawrence up the falls of Niagara, no act of humiliation, Individual or national, could call one shower from heaven or deflect toward «8 a single beam of the sun." In reply we would remark:
A. Negatively, that the true solution is not to be reached:
(a) By making the sole effect of prayer to be its reflex influence upon the petitioner.— Prayer presupposes a God who hears and answers. It will not be offered, unless it is believed to accomplish objective as well a» subjective results.
According- to the first view mentioned above, prayer Is a mere spiritual irymnastics— an effort to lift ourselves from the ground by tugg inn at our own boot-straps. David Hume said well, after bearing a sermon by Dr. Lcechman: "We can make use of no expression or even thought In prayers and entreaties which does not imply that these prayers have an influence." See Tyndall on Prayer and Natural Law, in Fragments of Science, 35.
(o) Nor by holding that God answers prayer simply by spiritual means, such as the action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit of man.—The realm of spirit is no less subject to law than the realm of matter. Scripture and experience, moreover, alike testify that in answer to prayer events take place in the outward world which would not have taken place if prayer had not gone before.
According to this seeond theory, God feeds the starving widow by moving some of her rich neighbors to help her. But the pouring rain that followed Elijah's prayer (1 L 18 : 42-45) cannot be thus explained as a subjective spiritual phenomenon. Diman, Theistle Argument, 268—" Our charts map out not only the solid shore but the windings of the ocean currents, and we look into the morning papers to ascertain the gathering of storms on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains." But law rules in the realm of spirit aswell ns in the realm of nature. See Baden Powell, in Essays and Reviews, 106-163.
(e) Nor by maintaining that God suspends or breaks in upon the order of nature, in answering every prayer that is offered.—This view does not take account of natural laws as having objective existence, and as revealing the order of God's being. Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law,, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.
This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the allworking will of God. But there are properties and powers of matter, and the human will has a relative independence in the universe.
(d) Nor by considering prayer as a physical force, linked in each case to its answer, as physical cause is linked to physical effect.—Prayer is not a force acting directly upon nature; else there would be no discretion as toits answer. It can accomplish results in nature, only as it influences God.
We educate our children in two ways: first, by training them to do for themselveswhat they can do; and, secondly, by encouraging them to seek our help In matters beyond their power. So God educates us, first, by Impersonal law, and, secondly, by personal dependence. He teaches us both to work and to ask. Notice the " perfect unwisdom of modern scientists who place themselves under the training of impersonal law, to the exclusion of that higher and better training which Is under personality" (Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge, 16).
It seems more in accordance with both Scripture and reason to say that i B. God may answer prayer, even when that answer involves changes in the sequences of nature,
(a) By new combinations of natural forces, in regions withdrawn from our observation, so that effects are produced which these same forces left tothemselves would never have accomplished. As man combines the laws of chemical attraction and of combustion, to Are the gunpowder and split the rock asunder, so God may combine the laws of nature to bring about answer* to prayer. In all this there may be no suspension or violation of law, but a use of law unknown to us.
Since prayer is nothing more nor less than appeal to a personal and present God, whose granting or withholding of the requested blessing is believed to be determined by the prayer itself, we must conclude that prayer moves God, or, in other words, induces the putting forth on his part of an imperative volition.
The view that in answering- prayer God combines natural forces is elaborated by Chalmers. Works, 2:31*. and 7 : 234. See Dlman.Theistfc Argument, 111—" When laws are conceived of, not as single, but as combined, instead of being immutable in their operation, they are the agencies of ceaseless change. Phenomena are governed, not by invariable forces, but by eiullemly varying combination* of invariable forces." Diman seems to have followed Argyll, Keign of Law, 100.
Janet, Final Causes, 219—"I kindle a Are in my grate. I only intervene to produce and combine together the different agents whose natural action behooves to produce the effect I have need of; but the first step once taken, all the phenomena constituting combustion engender each other, conformably to their laws, without a new intervention of the agent; so that an observer who should study the series of these phenomena, without perceiving the first hand that had prepared all, could not seize that hand In any especial act, and yet there is a preconceived plan and combination."
Hopkins, Sermon on Prayer-gauge: Man, by sprinkling plaster on his field, may cause the corn to grow more luxuriantly; by kindling great fires and by firing cannon, he may cause rain; and God can surely, in answer to prayer, do as much as man can. Lewes says that the fundamental character of all theological philosophy is conceiving of phenomena as subject to supernatural volition, and consequently as eminently and irregularly variable. This notion, he says, is refuted, first, by exact and rational prevision of phenomena, and, secondly, by the possibility of our modifying these phenomena so as to promote our own advantage. But we ask in reply: 1 f we can modify them, cannot God? But lest this should seem to imply mutability in God or inconsistency in nature, wc remark, in addition, that:
(6) God may have so prearranged the laws of the material universe and the events of history that, while the answer to prayer is an expression of his will, it is granted through the working of natural agencies, and in perfect accordance with the general principle that results, both temporal and spiritual, are to be attained by intelligent creatures through the use of the appropriate and appointed means.
Since God is immanent in nature, an answer to prayer, coming about through the intervention of natural law, may be as real a revelation of God's personal care as if. the laws of nature were suspended, and God interposed by an exercise of his creative power. Prayer and its answer, though having God's immediate volition as their connecting bond, may yet be provided for in the original plan of the universe.
The universe does not exist for Itself, but for moral ends and moral beings, to reveal God and to furnish facilities of intercourse between God and Intelligent creatures. Bishop Berkeley: "The universe is God's ceaseless conversation with his creatures." The universe certainly subserves moral ends—the discouragement of vice and the reward of virtue; why not spiritual ends also V When we remember that there is no true prayer which God does not inspire; that every true prayer is part of the plan of the universe, linked in with all the rest and provided for at the beginning; that God is in nature and In mind, supervising all their movements and making all fulfil his will and reveal his personal care; that God can adjust the forces of nature to each other far more skilfully than can man when man produces effects which nature of herself could never accomplish; that God is not confined to nature or her forces, but can work by his creative and omnipotent will where other means are not sufficient—we need have no fear, either that natural law will bar God's answers to prayer.or thatthese answers will cause a shock or Jar in the system of the universe.
Sec Calderwood, Science and Religion, 299-309; McCosh, Divine Government, 215; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 178-203; Hamilton, Autology, 090-894. See also Jellett. Donnellan Lectures on the Efficacy of Prayer; Butterworth, Story of Notable Prayers; Pattern, Prayer and its Answers; Monad, World of Prayer; Prime, Power of Prayer: Phelps, The Still Hour: Haven, and Bickcrsteth, on Prayer; Prayer for Colleges; Cox, in Expositor, 1877 : chop. 3.
C. If asked whether this relation between prayer and its providential answer can be scientifically tested, we reply that it may be tested just as a father's love may be tested by a dutiful sou.
(a) There is a general proof of it in the past experience of the Christian and in the past history of the church.
Ps. 116 :1-8—" I lore the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications." Luther prays for the dying Melancthon, und he recovers. George Mllller trusts to prayer, and builds his great orphan-houses. For a multitude of instances, see Prime, Answers to Prayer.
(6) In condescension to human blindness, God may sometimes submit to a formal test of his faithfulness and power,—as in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal.
Is. 7 :10-13—Ahaz is rebuked for not asking a sign—in him it indicated unbelief. 11. 18 : 36-38—Elijah said, "let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel .... Then the Ire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt offering." Romanic speaks of "a year famous for believing."
(c) When proof sufficient to convince the candid inquirer has been already given, it may not consist with the divine majesty to abide a test imposed by mere curiosity or scepticism,—as in the case of the Jews who sought a sign from heaven.
Hat. 12 : 39—" in evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign: and there shtll no sign be given it but the sign of Jonah the prophet." Tyndall's prayer-gauge would ensure a conflict of prayers.
(d) Since God's will is the link between prayer and its answer, there can be no such thing as a physical demonstration of its efficacy in any proposed case. Physical tests have no application to things into which free will enters as a constitutive element. But there are moral teste, and moral teste are as scientific as physical tests can be.
Diman, Theistio Argument, 278, alludes to Goldwin Smith's denial that any scientific method can be applied to history because it would make man a necessary link in a chain of cause and effect and so would deny his free will. Rut Diman says this is no more impossible than the development of the individual according to a fixed law of growth, while yet free will is sedulously respected. Froude says history is riot a science, because no science could foretell Mohammedanism or Buddhism; and Goldwin Smith says that *' prediction is the crown of all science." But, as Diman remarks: "geometry, geology, physiology, are sciences, yet they do not predict." Buckle brought history into contempt by asserting that it could be analyzed and referred solely to intellectual laws and forces. To all this we reply that there may be scientific tests which are not physical, or even Intellectual, but only moral. Such a test God urges his people to use, in Hal. 3 :10— "Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse . .. and prove me now herewith .... if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."
But the test of prayer proposed by Tyndall is not applicable to the thing to be tested by it. Hopkins, Prayer and the Prayer-gauge, 22 «;.—" We cannot measure wheat by the yard, or the weight of a discourse with a pair of scales. .. God's wisdom might see that it was not best for the petitioners, nor for the objects of their petition, to grant their request. Christians therefore could not, without special divine authorization, rest their faith upon the results of such a test. . . Why may we not ask for great changes in nature? For the same reason that a well-informed child does not ask for the moon as a plaything .. . There are two limitations upon prayer. First, except by 8[>eeial direction of God, we cannot ask for a miracle, for the same reason that a child could not nsk his father to burn the house down. Nature is the house we live In. Secondly, we cannot ask for anything under the laws of nature which would contravene the object of those laws. Whatever we can do for ourselves under these laws, God expects us to do. If the child is cold, let him go near the tire—uot beg his father to carry him." See Upham, Interior Life, 3.K; Thornton, Old-fashioned Ethics, 286-297. Per confrn, see Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 277-294.
3. To Christian activity.
Here the truth lies between the two extremes of quietism and naturalism.
(a) In opposition to the false abnegation of human reason and will which quietism demands, we hold that God guides us, not by continual miracle, but by his natural providence and the energizing of our faculties by his Spirit, so that we rationally and freely do our owu work, and work out our own salvation.
Upham, Interior Life, 330, defines quietism as "cessation of wandering thoughts and discursive imaginations, rest from irregular desires und affections, und perfect submission of the will." Its advocates, however, have often spoken of it as a giving up of our will and reason, and a swallowing up of these in the wisdom and will of God. This phraseology is misleading, and savors of a pantheistic merging of man in (iod. Dorner: "Quietism makes God a monarch without living subjects." Certain English quictists. like the Mohammedans, will not employ physicians in sickness. They quote 2 Chron. 16:12— Asa "sought not to the lord, but to the physicians, ind Asa slept with his fathers." They forget that the "physicians" alluded to in Chronicles were probably heathen necromancers.
We must not confound rational piety with false enthusiasm. See Isaac Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm. "Not quiescence, but acquiescence, is demanded of us." As God feeds "the birds of the heaven" (Mat. 6 : 26), not by dropping food from heaven into their mouths, but by stimulating them to seek food for themselves, so God provides for his rational creatures by giving them a sanctified common sense and by leading them to use it. Tn a true sense Christianity gives us more will than ever. The Holy Spirit emancipates the will, sots it upon proper objects, and fills it with new energy. We arc therefore not to surrender ourselves passively to whatever professes to be a divine suggestion : 1 John 4 : I—" Believe net every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they be of God." The test is the revealed word of God: Is. 8 : 20—"To the law and to the testimony! if they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them."
(6) In opposition to naturalism, we hold that God is continually near the human spirit by his providential working, and that this providential working is so adjusted to the Christian's nature and necessities as to furnish instruction with regard to duty, discipline of religious character, and needed help and comfort in trial.
In interpreting God's providences, as in interpreting Scripture, we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit is, indeed, in great part an application of Scripture truth to present circumstances. While we never allow ourselves to act blindly and irrationally, but accustom ourselves to weigh evidence with regard to duty, we are to expect, as the gift of the Spirit, an understanding of circumstances—a fine sense of God's providential purposes with regard to us, which shall make our true course plain to ourselves, although we may not always be able to explain it to others.
The Christian may have a continual divine guidance. Unlike the unfaithful and unbelieving, of whom it is said, in Ps. 106 :13, "they waited not for his counsel," the tme believer has wisdom given him from above. Ps. 32 : 8—"I will instruct thee and toach thee in the way which thou Shalt go "; Prov. 3 : 6— " In all thy ways acknowledge him, And he shall direct thy paths "; Phil. 1:9—" and this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment" (aici»>jt7fi = spiritual discernment): James 1: 5- "if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth (tou &<&6vtos Stov) to all liberally and upbraidoth not"; John 15 :15—" No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends "; Col. 1 : 9—" that ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing."
God's Spirit makes Providence as well as the Bible personal to us. From every page of nature, as well as of the Bible, the living God speaks to us. Tholuck: "The more wc recognize in every dally occurrence God's secret inspiration, guiding and controlling us, the more will alljwhich to others wears a common and every-day aspect prove to us a sign and a wondrous work." Hutton, Essays: "Animals that are blind slaves of impulse, driven about by forces from within, have so to say fewer valves in their moral constitution for the entrance of divine guidance. But minds alive to every word of God give constant opportunity for his interference with suggestions that may alter the course of their lives. The higher the mind, the more it glides into the region of providential control. God turns the good by the slightest breath of thought." So the Christian hymn, "Guide me, O thou great Jehovah I" likens God's leading of the believer to that of Israel by the pillar of Are and cloud; and Paul in his dungeon calls himself " the prisoner of Christ Jesus" (Iph. 3 :1). Affliction is the discipline of God's providence. Greek proverb: "Ho who does not get thrashed, does not got educated."
4. To the evil acts of free agents.
(a) Here we must distinguish between the natural agency and the moral agency of God, or between acts of permissive providence and acts of efficient causation. We are ever to remember that God neither works evil, nor causes his creatures to work evil. All sin is chargeable to the self-will and perversity of the creature; to declare God the author of it is the greatest of blasphemies.
Bp. Wordsworth: "God forenees evil deeds, but never forcet them." "God doos not cause sin, any more than the rider of a limping horse causes the limping."
(6) But while man makes up his evil decision independently of God, God does, by his natural agency, order the method in which this inward evil shall express itself, by limiting it in time, place, and measure, or by guiding it to the end which his wisdom and love, and not man's intent, has set. In all this, however, God only allows sin to develop itself after its own nature, so that it may be known, abhorred, and if possible overcome and forsaken.
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2 :272-384—" Judas's treachery works the reconciliation of
the world, and Israel's apostasy the salvation of the Gentiles God smooths the path
of the sinner, and gives him chance for the outbreak of the evil, like a wise physician who draws to tho surface of the body the disease that has teen raging within, in order that it may be cured, if possible, by mild means, or, if not, may be removed by the knife."
(<*) In cases of persistent iniquity, God's providence still compels the sinner to accomplish the design with which he and all things have been created, namely, the manifestation of God's holiness. Even though he struggle against God's plan, yet he must by his very resistance serve it. His sin is made its own detector, judge, and tormentor. His character and doom are made a warning to others. Kefusing to glorify God in his salvation, he is made to glorify God in his destruction.
Is. 10 : 5, 7—" lo Assyrian, the rod of mine uger, the staff in Those hud is mine indignation I.. . . Howbeit, he metneth not so." Pharaoh's ordering the destruction of the Israelltish children (Ex. 1:16) was made the means of putting Moses under royal protection, of trainiug him for his future work, and finally of rescuing the whole nation whose sons Pharaoh sought to destroy. Emerson: "My will fulfilled shall be, For in daylight as in dark My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to the mark." See also Edwards, Works, * : 300-312.
SECTION IV.—GOOD AND EVIL ANGELS.
As ministers of divine providence there is a class of finite beings, greater* in intelligence and power than man in his present state, some of whom positively serve God's purpose by holiness and voluntary exeution of his will, some negatively, by giving examples to the universe of defeated and punished rebellion, and by illustrating God's distinguishing grace in man's salvation.
The scholastic subtleties which encumbered this doctrine in the middle ages, and the exaggerated representations of the power of evil spirits which then prevailed, have led, by a natural reaction, to an undue depreciation of it in more recent times.
For scholastic discussions, see Thomas Aquinas, Summn (ed. Mlgnc), 1: 833-983. The scholastics debated the questions, how many angels could stand at once on the point of a needle (relation of angels to space); whether an angel could be in two places at the same time; how great was the interval l>etween the creation of angels and their fall; whether the sin of the first angel caused the sin of the rest; whether as many retained their integrity as fell; whether our atmosphere is the place of punishment for fallen angels; whether guardian-angels have charge of children from baptism, from birth, or while the infant is yet in the womb of its mother.
Dante makes the creation of angels simultaneous with that of the universe at large. "The fall of the rebel angels he considers to have taken place within twenty seconds of their creation, and to have originated in the pride which made Lucifer unwilling to await the time prefixed by his Muker for enlightening him with perfect knowledge "— see Rossetti, Shadow of Dante, 14,15.
But there is certainly a possibility that the ascending scale of created intelligences does not reach its topmost point in man. As the distance between man and the lowest forms of life is filled in with numberless gradations of being, so it is possible that between man and God there exist creatures of higher than human intelligence. This possibility is turned to certainty by the express declarations of Scripture. The doctrine is interwoven with the later as well as with the earlier books of revelation.
Quenstedt (Theol., 1 : 629) regards the existence of angels as antecedently probable, because there are no gaps in creation; nature does not proceed per mltum. As we have (1) beings purely corporeal, as stones; (2) beings partly corporeal and partly spiritual, as men: so we should expect in creation (3) beings wholly spiritual, as angels. Codetta his Biblical Studies of the 0. T., l-2(t, suggests another series of gradations. As we have (1) vegetables = species without individuality: (2) animals = individuality in bondage to species; and (3) men —species overpowered by Individuality: so we may expect (4) angels ■-individuality without species.
The doctrine of angels affords a barrier against the falsi! conception of this world as including the whole spiritual universe. Earth Is only part of a larger orgauism. As Christianity has united Jew and Gentile, so hereafter will it blend our own and other orders of creation: Col. 2 :10—" who is the head of all prin.cipi.litj and power" = ('hrist is the head of angels as well as of men; Eph. 1:10—"to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth." On the general subject of angels, see also Whately, Good and Evil Angels; Twesten, transl. in Bib. Sac, 1 : 788, and 2 : 108; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2 : 287337, and 3:251-354; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 78 »</.; Scott, Existence of Evil Spirits: Herzog, EncyclopHdle, arts.: Engel, Teufel.
I. Scrottjre Statements And Intimations.
1. As to the nature and attributes of angels,
(a) They are created beings.
Pb. 148 : 2-5—" Praise ye him, all his angels for he commanded, and they wore created " ; Col. 1:16—" for in him were all things created .... whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers "; cf. 1 Pet. 3 : 22—" angels and authorities and powers."
"(£>) They are incorporeal beings.
In Heb. 1 :14, where a single word is used to designate angels, they are described as "spirits"—"are they not all ministering spirits?" Men, with their twofold nature, material as well as Immaterial, could not well be designated as " spirits. That this being characteristically "spirits" forbids lis to regard angels as having a bodily organism, seems implied in Eph. 6 :12—'* for our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against.... the spiritual hosts [or 'things' ] of wickedness in the heavenly places." In Gen. 6 : 2, "sons of God " ^, not angels, but descendants of Seth and worshipers of the true (iod (see Murphy, Com. fn htctt). In Ps. 78 : 25 (A. V.) "angels' food" = manna coming from heaven where angels dwell; better, however, read with Rev. Vers.: "bread of the mighty "— probably meaning angels, though the word "mighty" is nowhere else applied to them; possibly — " bread of princes or nobles," i. e. the finest, most delicate bread. Mat 22 : 30—" neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven "— and Luke 20 : 36—" neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels"—imply only that angels are without distinctions of sex. Saints are to be like angels, not as being incorporeal, but as not having the same sexual relations which they have here. Angels, therefore* since they have no bodies, know nothing of growth, age, or death.
(c) They are personal—that is, intelligent and voluntary—agents.
2 Sam. 14 : 20—" wise according to the wisdom of an angel of God " ; Luke 4 : 34—"I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God "; 2 Tim. 2 : 26—"snare of the devil.. . taken captive by him unto his will " (Am. Revisers); Rev. 22 : 9—" See thou do it not" — exercise of will.
(d) They are possessed of superhuman intelligence and power, yet an intelligence and power that has its fixed limits.
Mat. 24 : 36—"of that day and hour knoweth no one. not even the angels of heaven" - their knowledge, though superhuman, is yet finite. 1 Pet. 1:12—" which things angels desire to look into "; Ps. 103 : 20—
"angels .... mighty in strength "; 2 Thess. 1: 7—" the angels of his power "; 2 Pet, 2 : 11—" angels though greater [than men] m might and power"; Rev. 20 : 2, 10—"laid bold of the dragon ... and bound him . .. cast into the
ake of Ire." Compare Ps. 72 :18—" God who only doeth wondrous things " = only God can perform miracles.
(e) They are an order of intelligences distinct from man and older than man.
Angels are distinct from man. 1 Cor. 0 : 3—"wo shall judge angels "; Heb. 1 :14—"ire they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?" They are not glorified human spirits: see Heb. 2 :16—"for verily not to angels doth be give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham" (Am. Kevisers); also 12 : 22, 23, where "the innumerable hosts of angels" are distinguished from "the church of the first-born " and " the spirits of just men made perfect." In Rev. 22 : 9— "I am a fellow-servant with thee "—"fellow-servant " intimates likeness to men, not in nature, but in service and subordination to God, the proper object of worship.
Angels are an order of intelligences older than man. The Fathers made the creation of angels simultaneous with the original calling into being of the elements, perhaps basing their opinion on the apocryphal Eeelesiasticus 18:1—"he that iiveth eternally created all things together." In Job. 38 : 8. the Hebrew parallelism makes "morning stars" = "sons of God," so that angels are spoken of as present at certain stages of God's creative work. The mention of "the serpent "in Gen. 3 :1 implies the fall of Satan before the fall of man. We may infer that the creation of angels took place before the creation of man— the lower before the higher. In Gen. 2:1, "all the host of them," which God had created, may be intended to include angels.
The constant representation of angels as personal beings in Scripture, cannot be explained as a personification of abstract good and evil, in accommodation to Jewish superstitions, without wresting many narrative passages from their obvious sense; implying on the part of Christ either dissimulation or ignorance as to an important point of doctrine; and surrendering belief in the inspiration of the Old Testament from which these Jewish views of angelic beings were derived.
Eph. 3 :10—" to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenly places might he made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God "—excludes the hypothesis that angels are simply abstract conceptions of (rood or evil. We apeak of " moon-struck" people (lunatics) only when we know that nfbody supposes us to believe in the power of the moon to cause madness. Hut Christ's contemporaries ilUl suppose him to believe In angelic spirits, (food and evil. If this belief was an error, it was by no means a harmless one, and the benevolence as well as the voracity of Christ would have led him to correct it. So too, if Paul had known that there were no such beings as angels, ho could not honestly have contented himself with forbidding the Colossians to worship them (Col. 2 :18), but would have denied their existence, as he denied the existence of heathen gods (1 Cor. 8:4).
We cannot deny the personality of Satan except upon principles which would compel us to deny the existence of good angels, the personality of the Holy Spirit, and the personality of God the Father. Says Nigel Penruddock in Lord Beaeonslield's " Endymlon ": "Give me a single argument against* his [Satan's] personality, which is not applicable to the personality of the Deity." One of the most ingenious devices of Satan is that of persuading men that he has no existence.
The same remark applies to the view which regards Satan as but a collective term for all evil beings, human or superhuman. The Scripture representations of the progressive rage of the great adversary, from his first assault ou human virtue in Genesis to his final overthrow in Revelation, join with the testimony of Christ just mentioned, to forbid any other conclusion than this, that there is a personal being of great power, who carries on organized opposition to the divine government.
For the view that Satan is merely a collective term for all evil beings, see Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 134-137. Per contra, see Smith's Bible Dictionary, arts.: Angels, Demons, Demoniacs, Satan; Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 1A-26. For a comparison of Satan in the Book of .lob, with Milton's Satan in " Paradise Lost," and Goethe's MephlstopheUs in "Faust," see Masson, The Three Devils. We may add to this list Byron's Lucifer in "Cain," and Mrs. Browning's Lucifer in her " Drama of Exile "; see Gregory, Christian Ethics, 219.
2. As to their number and organization.
(a) They are of great multitude.
Deut 33 : 2—"The Lord .... came from the ten thousands of holy ones"; Ps. 68 :17—"The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands upon thousands": Dan. 7 :10—"thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him "; Rev. 5 :11—" I heard the voice of many angels.... and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands." Anselm thought that the number of lost angels was filled up by the number of elect men.
(6) They constitute a company, as distinguished from a race.
Mat. 22 : 30 —" they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven "; Luke 20 : 36— "neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God." We are called "sons of men," but angels are never called "sons of angels," but only "sons of God." They are not developed from one original stock, and no such common nature binds them together as binds together the race of man. Each was created separately, and each apostate angel fell by himself. Humanity fell all at once in its first father. Cut down a tree, and you cut down Its branches. But angels were so many separate trees. See Godet, 1Mb. Studies O. T., 1-29. This may be one reason why salvation was provided for fallen man, but not for fallen angels. Christ could join himself to humanity by taking the common nature of us all. There was no common nature of angels which ho could take.
(c) They are of various ranks and endowments.
Col. 1 :16— "thrones or dominions or principalities or powers"; 1 Thess. 4:16—"the voice of the archangel"; Jude 9—"Michael the archangel." Michael ( - who is like God*) is the only one expressly called an archangel In Scripture, although Gabriel (= God's hero) has been called an archangel by Milton. In Scripture, Michael seems the messenger of law and judgment; Gabriel, the messenger of merey and promise. Tlie Tact that Scripture has but one archangel la proof that Its doctrine of angels was not, as has sometimes been charged, derived from Babylonian and Persian sources; for there we And seven archangels instead of one. There, moreover, we And the evil spirit enthroned as a <fod, while in Scripture he is represented as a trembling slave.
(d) They have on organization.
1 Sam. 1 :11—" Jehovah of boats "; 1 L 22 :19—" the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the boat of heaTen standing by him on his right hand and on his left"; Hat. 26 : 53—" twelve legions of angels '*—suggests the organization of the Roman army: 25 : 41—" the devil and his angels"; Sph. 2 : 2—"the prince of the powers of the air" (Am. Revisers); Rev. 2 : 13—"Satan's throne" ( not "seat" ); 16 :10—"throne of the beast"— "a hellish parody of the heavenly kingdom" (Trench). The phrase "host of heaven," In Dent 4 :19; 17 : 3; Acts 7 : 42, probably = the stars; but in Gen. 32 : 2, "God's host" = angels, for when Jacob saw the angels he said "This is God's host." In general the phrases "God of hosts,'' •' Lord of hosts" seem to mean " God of angels ", "Lord of angels ": compare 2 Chron. 18 :16 ■ Lake 2 :13; Rev. 19 : 14—"the armies which are in heaven." Yet In Neb. 9: 6 and Pa. 33 : 6 the word "host" seems to include both angels and stars.
With regard to the 'cherubim' of Genesis, Exodus, and Ezekiel,—with which the 'seraphim' of Isaiah and the 'living creatures' of the book of Revelation are to be identified,—the most probable interpretation is that which regards them not as actual beings of higher rank than man, but as symbolic appearances, intended to illustrate truths pertaining to the divine government either in nature or in the church. The view that the cherubim are symbols of nature, as prevaded by the divine energy and subordinated to the divine purposes, is not so satisfactory as the view that they represent redeemed humanity, endowed with all the creature perfections lost by the fall, and made to Vie the dwelling place of God.
The doctrine of the cherubim embraces the following points: 1. The cherubim are not personal beings, but are artificial, temporary, symbolic figures. 2. While they are not themselves personal existences, they are symbols of personal existence—symbols not of divine or angelic perfections but of human nature ( Es. 1: 5—" thej had the likeness of a man": Rev. 5:9 (A. V.)—"thou hast redeemed us to God bj thy blood "—so read X, B, and Tregelles; the Eng. Rev. Vers., however, follows A and Tlschendorf, and omits the word "us"). 3. They are emblems of human nature, not in its present stage of development, but possessed of all its original perfections; for this reason the most perfect animal forms —the kinglike courage of the lion, the patient service of the ox, the soaring Insight of the eagle—are combined with that of man (Is. 1 and 10; Rot. 4:6-8). 4. These cherubic forms represent, not merely material or earthly perfections, but human nature spiritualized and sanctified. They are "living creatures" and their life is a holy life of obedience to the divine will (Es. 1 :12—" whither the spirit was to go, they went "). 5. They symbolize a human nature exalted to be the dwelling-place of God. Hence the inner curtains of the tabernacle were inwoven with cherubic figures, and God's glory was manifested on the mercy-seat between the cherubim (Ix. 37 : 6-9). While the flaming sword at the gates of Eden was the symbol of justice, the cherubim were symbols of mercy—keeping the "way of the tree of life" for man, until by sacrifice and renewal paradise should be regained (Gen. 3 : 24).
In corroboration of this general view, note that angels and cherubim never go together; and that in the closing visions of the book of Revelation these symbolic forms are seen no longer. When redeemed humanity has entered heaven, the figures which typified that humanity, having served their purpose, finally disappear. For fuller elaboration, see Fairbairn, Typology, 1:185-208; Elliott, Hone Apocalypticoe, 1 :87; Bib. Sac, 1870 : 32-51; Bib. Com., 1 :49-52—" The winged lions, eagles, and bulls, that guard the entrances of tho palaces of Nineveh, are worshippers rather than divinities." On animal characteristics in man, see Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 105. For the view that the cherubim are symbols of the divine attributes, or of God's government over nature, see Smith's Bible Dictionary, art: Cherub; Alford, Com. on Rev. * : 0-8, and Hulsean Lectures for 1841, vol. 1, lect. 2; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:278.
3. As to their moral character.
(a) They were all created holy.
Gen. 1: 31—" God saw every thing that be had made, and, behold, it was very good."
(6) They had a probation.
This we infer from 1 Tim. 5 : 21—" the elect angels "; cf. 1 Pet 1:1, 2—" elect onto obedience." If
certain angels, like certain men, are "elect.... unto obedience," It would seem to follow that there was a period of probation, during which their obedience or disobedience determined their future destiny.
(c) Some preserved their integrity.
Ps. 89 : 7—"the council of the holy ones"—a designation of angels; Hark 8 : 38—"the holy angels." (<2) Some fell from their estate of innocence.
John 8 :44—" He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because then is no truth in him"; 2 Pet 2 : 4—" angels when they sinned "; Jude 6—"angels which kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation."
(e) The good are confirmed in good.
Hat 6 :19—" Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth "; 18 :10—" in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven"; 2 Cor. 11:14—"an angel of light"
(/) The evil are confirmed in evil.
Vat 13 :19—" the evil one "; 1 John 5 :18,19—" the evil one toucbeth him not.... the whole world lieth in the evil one "; cf. John 8 : 44—" Te are of your father the devil.... When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof"; Mat. 6 :13—"deliver us from the evil one."
From these Scriptural statements we Infer that all free creatures pass through a period of probation; that probation does not necessarily involve a fall; that there is possible a sinless development of moral beings. Other Scriptures seem to intimate that the revelation of God in Christ is an object of interest and wonder to other orders of intelligence than our own; that they are drawn in Christ more closely to God and to us; in short, that they are confirmed in their integrity by the cross. See 1 Pet. 1:12—" which things angels desire to look into "; Eph. 3 :10—" that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God "; Col. 1: 20—" through him to reconcile all things unto himself.... whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens"; Eph. 1:10—"to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth " = " the unification of the whole universe in Christ as the divine centre The great system is a harp all whose strings
are in tune but one, and that one jarring string makes discord throughout the whole. The whole universe shall feel the influence, and shall be reduced to harmony, when that one string, the world in which we live, shall be put in tune by the hand of love and mercy "—freely quoted from Leitch, God's Glory in the Heavens, 327-330.
4. As to their employments.
A. The employments of good angels.
(a) They stand in the presence of God and worship him.
Ps. 29 :1, 2—" Give to Jehovah, 0 ye sons of the mighty, Give to Jehovah glory and strength. Give to Jehovah the glory due unto his name. Worship Jehovah in holy vestments "—Perowne: "Heaven being thought of as one great temple, and all the worshipers therein as clothed in priestly vestments." Ps. 89 : 7—" a God very terrible in the council of the holy ones," t. e. angels—Perowne: "Angels are called an assembly or congregation, as the church above, which, like the church below, worships and praises God." Hat 18 :10—"in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."
(6) They rejoice in God's works.
Job 38 : 7—" all the sons of God shouted for joy "; luke 15 :10—" there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth "; cf. 2 Tim. 2 : 25—" if peradveature God may give them repentance."
(c) They execute God's will,—by working in nature;
Ps. 103 : 20— "ye angels of his that fulfil his word, hearkening onto the Toioe of his word"; 104:4,
marg.—" Who maketh his angels winds; his ministers a flaming fire," i. e. lightnings. See Alford on Hob. 1: 7—" The order of the Hebrew words here [in Ps. 104 : 4] is not the same as in the former verses (see especially T. 3), where we have: 'Who maketh the clouds his chariot.' For this transposition, those who insist that the passage means ' he maketh winds his messengers * can give no reason."
(d) by guiding the affairs of nations;
Dan. 10 :12,13, 21—" I am come for thy words' sake. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me .... Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me ... . Michael your prince "; 11 : 1—" And as for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him "; 12 :1—" at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people."
(e) by watching over the interests of particular churches;
1 Cor. 11:10—"for this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority [(. e. a veil] on her head, because of the angels —who watch over the church and have care for its order. Col. 2 :18—" let no nun rob you of your prise by a voluntary humility and worshipping of the angels "—a false worship which would be very natural if angels were present to guard the meetings of the saints. 1 Tim. 5 : 21—" I charge thee in the sight of God, and Christ Jesus, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things "—the public duties of the Christian minister.
Alford regards "the angels of the seven churches" (Rev. 11 20) as superhuman beings appointed to represent and guard the churches, and that upon the grounds: (1) that the word is used elsewhere in the book of Revelation only in this sense; and (2) that nothing in the book is addressed to a teacher Individually, but all to some one who reflects the oomplexion and fortunes of the church as no human person could. We prefer, however, to regard "the angels of the seven churches" as meaning simply the pastors of the seven churches. The word "angel" means simply "messenger," and may be used of human as well as of superhuman beings—see Hag. 1:13—"Haggai, the Lord's messenger "—literally, "the angel of Jehovah." The use of the word in this figurative sense would not be incongruous with the mystical character of the Book of Revelation (see Bib. Sac, 12 : 339).
(/) by assisting and protecting individual believers;
II. 19 : 5—" an angel touched him [Elijah], and said unto him, Arise and eat"; Ps. 91:11—" He shall give his angels charge over thee, To keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone " ; Dan. 6 : 22 —"My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, and they have not hurt me "; Mat. 4 : II—" angels came and ministered unto him "—Jesus was the type of all believers; 18 :10— "Despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father "; compare verse 6—" one of these little ones which believe on me "; see Meyer, Com. in loco, who regards these passages as proving the doctrine of guardian-angels. Luke 16:22—" the beggar died, and .... was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom "; Heb. 1:14—" Ire they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?" Compare Acts 12 :15— "And they said, It is his angel "—of Peter standing knocking; see Hackett, Com. in loco: The utterance "expresses a popular belief prevalent among the Jews, which Is neither affirmed nor denied."
(ff) by punishing God's enemies.
2 1.19 : 35—" it came to pass that night, that the angel of the lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand"; Acts 12 :23—"And immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory; and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost."
A general survey of this Scripture testimony as to the employments of good angels leads us to the following conclusions:
First,—that good angels are not to be considered as the mediating agents of God's regular and common providence, but as the ministers of his special providence in the affairs of his church. He 'maketh his angels winds' and 'a flaming fire,' not in his ordinary procedure, but in connection with special displays of his power for moral ends (Deut. 33 : 2; Acts 7 : 53; Gal. 3 : 19; Heb. 2:2). Their intervention is apparently occasional and exceptional—not at their own option, but only as it is permitted or commanded by God. Hence we are not to conceive of angels as coming between us and God, nor are we, without special revelation of the fact, to attribute to them in any particular case the effects which the Scriptures generally ascribe to divine providence. Like miracles, therefore, angelic appearances generally mark God's entrance upon new epochs in the unfolding of his plans. Hence we read of angels at the completion of creation (Job 38 : 7); at the giving of the law (Gal. 3 : 19); at the birth of Christ (Luke 2 : 13); at the two temptations in the wilderness and in Gethsemane (Mat. 4 : 11, Luke 22 : 43) ; at the resurrection (Mat. 28 : 2) ; at the ascension (Acts 1 : 10); at the final judgment (Mat. 25 : 31).
The Bubstance of these remarks may be found In Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:637645. Milton tells us that "Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." Whether this bo true or not, it is a question of interest why such angelic beings as hare to do with human affairs are not at present seen by men. Paul's admonition against the 11 worshipping of the angels" (Col. 2:18) seems to suggest the reason. If men have not abstained from worshipping their fellow-men, when these latter have been priests or media of divine communications, the danger of idolatry would be much greater if we came into close and constant contact with angels; see Rev. 22 : 8, 9—" I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things, ind he saith onto me. See thou do it not."
Secondly,—that their power, as being in its nature dependent and derived, is exercised in accordance with the laws of the spiritual and natural world. They cannot, like God, create, perform miracles, act without means, search the heart. Unlike the Holy Spirit, who can influence the human mind directly, they can influence men only in ways analogous to those by which men influence each other. As evil angels may tempt men to sin, so it is probable that good angels may attract men to holiness.
As intimated above, there is no reason to believe that even the invisible presence of angels is a constant one. Doddridge's dream of accident prevented by angelic interposition seems to embody the essential truth. We append the passages referred to in the text. Job 38 : 7—" When the morning stars sang together. And all the sons of God shouted for joy "; Dent. 33 : 2— "The Lord came from Sinai... he came from the ten thousands of holy ones: it his right hand was a fiery law unto them"; Gal. 3:19—"It [the law] was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator"; Heb. 2:2— "the word spoken through angels "; acta 7 : 53—" who received the law as it was ordained by angels "; Luke 2 : 13 —" suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host"; Mat 4 :11—"Then the devil leaveth him; and behold, angels came and ministered unto him"; Luke 22:43—"ind there appeared unto him an angel from heaven, strengthening him "; Mat 28 : 2—" an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it"; lets 1:10—"and while they were looking steadfastly into heaven as he went behold, two men stood by them in white apparel"; Mat. 25 : 31—" when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory."
B. The employments of evil angels.
(a) They oppose God and strive to defeat his will. This is indicated in the names applied to their chief. The word "Satan " means "adversary" —primarily to God, secondarily to men; the term "devil" signifies "slanderer "—of God to men, and of men to God. It is indicated also in the description of the "man of sin" as "he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God."
Job 1: 8—Satan appears among "the sons of God "; Zeoh. 3 :1—" Joshua the high priest.. . and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary "; Mat 13:39—" the enemy that sowed them is the devil"; 1 Pet 5:8— "your adversary the devil." Satan slanders God to men, in Gen. 3 :1, 4—" Tea, hath God said ?... T« shall not surely die "; men to God, in Job 1: 9,11—" Doth Job fear God for nought ? ... put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face "; 2:4, 5— "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath Till he give for bis life. Bat pat forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face "; Rev. 12 :10 —" the accuser of oar brethren is cast down, which accuseth them before oar God night and day."
Notice how, over against the evil spirit who thus accuses God to man and man to God, stands the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who pleads God's cause with man and man's cause with God: John 16 : 8— "he, when he is come, will conrict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment"; Rom. 8 : 26—" the Spirit also helpeth oar infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; hut the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with greasings which cannot be uttered." Hence Balaam can say, Hum. 23 : 21, "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, Neither hath he seen perverse ness in Israel"; and the Lord can say to Satan as he resists Joshua: "The Lord rebuke thee, 0 Satan; yea, the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee" (Zeeh. 3:2;. "Thus he puts himself between his people and every tongue that would accuse them" (C. H. M.). For the description of the "man of sin," see 2 Thess. 2 : 4—"he thai opposeth"; cf. verse 9—" whose coming is according to the working of Satan."
(6) They hinder man's temporal and eternal welfare,—sometimes by exercising a certain control over natural phenomena, but more commonly by subjecting man's soul to temptation. Possession of man's being, either physical or spiritual, by demons, is also recognized in Scripture.
Control of natural phenomena Is ascribed to evil spirits In Job 1:12,16,19 and 2: 7—"all that he hath is in thy power "—and Satan uses lightning, whirlwind, disease, for his purposes; Luke 13 :11,16—" a woman which had a spirit of infirmity .... whom Satan had bound, lo. these eighteen years "; ids 10 : 38—"healing all that were oppressed of the devil"; 2 Cor. 12 : 7—"a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me "; 1 Thess. 2 :18—" we would fain have come unto you, I Paul onoe and again; and Satan hindered us"; fleb. 2 : 14—"him that had the power of death, that is. the devil." Temptation is ascribed to evil spirits in Gen. 3 :1 *).—" Sow the serpent was more subtle"; cf. Rev. 20 : 2—" the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan "; Hat 4 : 3—" the tempter came "; John 13 : 27—"after the sop, then entered Satan into him "; acts 5 : 3 —" why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost 1" Eph. 2 : 2—" the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience"; 1 Thess. 3 : 5—"lest by any means the tempter had tempted you"; 1 Pet. 5 : 8—"your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is but one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.
Satan's negative agency is shown In Nark 4 :15—" when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them "; his positive agency In Mat 13 : 38, 39—" the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil." One devil, but many angels: see Mat 25 : 41—" the devil and his angels "; Mark 5 : 9—" My name is Legion, for we are many "; Bph. 2 : 2—" the prince of the powers of the air" (so Am. Revisers); 6 :12—" principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness... spiritual hosts of wickedness." The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he may produce subtle signs of thought and so reach the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish desire, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat 4 : 3. 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for Independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—"ye shall be as God" (Gen. 3:5).
Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.
Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the "maid having a spirit of divination" (lets 16 :16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It Is distinguished from bodily disease: see Mat 17 :15,18—"epileptic.... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured "; Mark 9 : 25 —" Thou dumb and deaf spirit"; 3 :11,12—" the unclean spirits .... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. and he charged them much that thej should not make him known "; lake 8 : 30—" And Jems asked him, What is thy name? .And he said, legion; for many demons were entered into him. And they entreated him that he wonid not command them to depart into the abyss"; 10 :17,18—" And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven."
These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical. 14 In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ was atxire its delusions; the brutes were below them." Farrar (Life of Christ, 1: 337-341, and 2: excursus vtt), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena In their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power: and, finally, in the Influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-138; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1 :586—" Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne."
(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.
Punishing the ungodly: ft. 78 : 49—" He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, Wrath, and indignation, and trouble, A band of angels of evil"; 1 I. 22 : 23—" the lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets; and the lord hath spoken evil concerning thee."
Chastening the good: see Job, chapters 1 and 2; 1 Cor. 5 :5— "deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus "; cf. 1 Tim. 1: 20—" Hymeneeus and Alexander; whom I delivered unto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme." This delivering to Satan for the destruction of the flesh seems to have involved four things: (1) excommunication from the church; (2) authoritative infliction of bodily disease or death; (3) loss of all protection from good angels, who minister only to saints; (4) subjection to the buffetings and tormentings of the great accuser.
Evil spirits illustrate the nature and fate of moral evil: see Mat. 8:29— "art thou come hither to torment us before the time?" 25 : 41—"eternal lire which is prepared for the devil and his angels"; 2 Thess. 2 : 8—" then shall be revealed the lawless one "; James 2 :19—" the demons also believe, and shudder "; Rev. 12 : 9, 12—" the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world ... the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time "; 20 :10—" cast into the lake of Are ... tormented day and night, for ever and aver."
It is an Interesting question whether Scripture recognizes any special connections of evil spirits with the systems of Idolatry, witchcraft, and spiritualism which burden the world. 1 Cor. 10 : 20—" the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God "; 2 Thess. 2 : 9—" the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders"—would seem to favor an affirmative answer. But 1 Cor. 8 : 4—" concerning therefore the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that no idol is anything in the world "—seems to favor a negative answer. This last may, however, mean that "the beings whom the idols are designed to represent have no existence, although it is afterwards shown (10 : 20) that there are other beings connected with false worship" (Ann. Par. Bible, In loco). "Heathenism is the reign of the devil" (Meyer), and while the heathen think themselves to be sacrificing to Jupiter or Venus, they are really "sacrificing to demons," and are thus furthering the plans of a malignant spirit who uses these forms of false religion as a means of enslaving their souls. In like manner, the network of influences which support the papacy, spiritualism, modern unbelief. Is difficult of explanation, unless we believe in a superhuman intelligence which organizes these forces against God. In these, as well as In heathen religions, there arc facts inexplicable upon merely natural principles of disease and delusion.
A survey of the Scripture testimony with regard to the employments of evil spirits leads to the following general conclusions:
First,—the power of evil spirits over men is not independent of the human will. This power cannot be exercised without at least the original consent of the human will, and may be resisted and shaken off through prayer and faith in God.
Luke 22 : 31, 40—" Satan asked to hare you, that he might sift you as wheat. .. Prat that j> enter not into temptation "; Eph. 6 :11—" Pat on the Thole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the detil"; 16—"the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the etil one "; James 4 : 7— "resist the detil, and he will lee from yon "; 1 Pet 5 : 9—" whom withstand steadfast in your faith." The coals are already in the human heart, In the shape of corrupt inclinations; Satan only blows them into flame.
Secondly,—their power is limited, both in time and in extent, by the permissive will of God. Evil spirits are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent. We are to attribute disease and natural calamity to their agency, only when this is matter of special revelation. Opposed to God as evil spirits are, God compels them to serve his purposes. Their power for harm lasts but for a season, and ultimate judgment and punishment will vindicate God's permissiou of their evil agency.
1 Cor. 10 :13—" God is faithful, who will not suffer yon to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it"; Jude 6—" angels which kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in eterlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day."
Luther saw Satan nearer to man than his coat, or his shirt, or even his skin. In all misfortune he saw the devil's work. Was there a conflagration In the town? By looking- closely you might see a demon blowing- upon the name. Pestilence and storm he attributed to Satan. All this was a relic of the inedlu'val exaggerations of Satan's power. It was then supposed that men mlg-ht make covenants with the evil one, in which supernatural power was purchased at tho price of final perdition (see Goethe's Faust).
Scripture furnishes no warrant for such representations. There seems to have been permitted a special activity of Satan in temptation and possession during- our Savior's ministry, in order that Christ's power mlg-ht bo demonstrated. By his death Jesus brought " to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the detil" 1 Heb. 2 :14) and "hating despoiled the principalities and the powers, he made a show of thorn openly, triumphing oter them in it," C f. in the cross (Col. 2 :15—Am. Revisers). 1 John 3: 8—" To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the detil." Evil spirits now exist and act only upon sufferance. McLeod, Temptation of our Lord. 24—" Satan's power is limited, (1) by the fact that he is a creature; (2) by the fact of God's prov idence; (3) by the fact of his own wickedness."
IL Objections To The Doctrine Of Angels.
1. To the doctrine of angels in general. It is objected:
(a) That it is opposed to the modern scientific view of the world, as a system of definite forces and laws.—We reply that whatever truth there may be in this modern view, it does not exclude the play of divine or human free agency. It does not therefore exclude the possibility of angelic agency.
(6) That it is opposed to the modern doctrine of infinite space above and beneath us—a space peopled with worlds. With the surrender of the old conception of the firmament, as a boundary separating this world from the regions beyond, it is claimed that we must give up all belief in a heaven of the angels.—We reply that the notions of an infinite universe, of heaven as a definite place, and of spirits as confined to fixed locality are without certain warrant either in reason or in Scripture. We know nothing of the modes of existence of pure spirits.
What we know of the universe Is certainly finite. Angels are apparently Incorporeal beings, and as such aro free from all laws of matter and space. Heaven and hell are essentially conditions, corresponding to character—conditions in which the body and the surroundings of the soul express and reflect its inward state. The main thing to be insisted on is therefore the state; place is merely incidental. The fact that Christ ascended to heaven with a human body, and that the saints are to possess glorified bodies, would seem to imply that heaven is a place. Christ's declaration with regard to him who is "able to destroy both soul and body in hell'' (Mat. 10:28) affords some reason for believing that hell is also a place.
Where heaven and hell are, is not revealed to us. But it Is not necessary to suppose that they are in some remote part of the universe; for aught we know, they may be right about us, so that if our eyes were opened, like those of the prophet's servant < 2 Kings 6 :17), we ourselves should behold them. Upon ground of Eph. 2 : 2—" prince of the powers of the air "—and 3:10—11 the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places "—some have assigned the atmosphere of the earth as the abode of angelic spirits, both good and evil. But the expressions "air" and "hearenlj places" may be merely metaphorical designations of their spiritual method of existence.
We prefer therefore to leave the question of place undecided, and to accept the existence and working of angels both good and evil as a matter of faith, without professing to understand their relations to space. For the rationalistic view, see Strauss, Glaubensiehre, 1:670-875. Per contra, see Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 1:308-317; Martenscn, Christian Dogmatics, 127-136.
2. To the doctrine of evil angels in particular. It is objected that: (a) The idea of the fall of angels is self-contradictory, since a fall determined by pride presupposes pride—that is, a fall before the fall.—We reply that the objection confounds the occasion of sin with the sin itself. The outward motive to disobedience is not disobedience. The fall took place only when that outward motive was chosen by free will. When the motive of independence was selfishly adopted, only then did the innocent desire for knowledge and power become pride and sin. How an evil volition could originate in spirits created pure is an insoluble problem. Our faith in Ood's holiness, however, compels us to attribute the origin of this evil volition, not to the Creator, but to the creature.
There can bo no sinful propensity before there is sin. The reason of the fint sin can not be sin itself. This would be to make sin a necessary development; to deny the holiness of God the Creator; to leave the ground of theism for pantheism.
(6) It is irrational to suppose that Satan should have been able to change
his whole nature by a single act, so that he thenceforth willed only evil.
—But we reply that the circumstances of that decision are unknown to us;
while the power of single acts permanently to change character is matter of
observation among men.
Instance the effect, upon character and life, of a single act of falsehood or embezzlement
(c) It is impossible that so wise a being should enter upon a hopeless rebellion.—We answer that no amount of mere knowledge ensures right moral action. If men gratify present passion, in spite of their knowledge that the sin involves present misery and future perdition, it is not impossible that Satan may have done the same.
Understanding is the servant of will, and is darkened by will. Many clever men fall to see what belongs to their peace. It is the very madness of sin, that it persists in Iniquity, even when it sees and fears the approaching Judgment of God.
(d) It is inconsistent with the benevolence of God to create and uphold spirits, whom he knows will be and do evil;—We reply that this is no more inconsistent with God's benevolence than the creation and preservation of men, whose action God overrules for the furtherance of his purposes, and 'whose iniquity he Anally brings to light and punishes.
8eductton of the pure by the Impure, piracy, slavery, and war, have all been permitted among- men. It is no more inconsistent with God's benevolence to permit them among angelic spirits.
(e) The notion of organization among evil spirits is self-contradictory, since the nature of evil is to sunder and divide.—We reply that such organization of evil spirits is no more impossible than the organization of wicked men, for the purpose of furthering their selfish ends. Common hatred to God may constitute a principle of union among them, as among men.
Wloked men succeed in their plans only by adhering in some way to the good. Even a robber-horde must have laws, and there is a sort of " honor among thieves." Else the world would be a Pandemonium, and socioty would be what Hobbes called it: "bellum omnium contra omnes."
(/) The doctrine is morally pernicious, as transferring the blame of human sin to the being or beings who tempt men thereto.—We reply that neither conscience nor Scripture allow temptation to be an excuse for sin, or regard Satan as having power to compel the human will. The objection, moreover, contradicts our observation,—for only where the personal existence of Satan is recognized, do we find sin recognized in its true nature.
The diabolic character of sin makes it more guilty and abhorred. The Immorality lies, not in the maintenance, but in the denial, of the doctrine. Giving up the doctrine of Satan is connected with laxity in the administration of criminal Justice. Penalty comes to be regarded as only deterrent or reformatory.
(g) The doctrine degrades man, by representing him as the tool and slave of Satan.—We reply that it does indeed show his actual state to be degraded, but only with the result of exalting our idea of his original dignity, and of his possible glory in Christ. The fact that man's sin was suggested from without, and not from within, may be the one mitigating circumstance which renders possible his redemption.
It is not worth while to attribute to man a dignity he does not possess, If thereby we deprive him of the dignity that may be his. Satan's sin was. in its essence, sin against the Holy Ghost, for which there can be no " Father, forgm them, for they know not what thej do" (Luke 23 :34), since it was choosing evil with the mala oawlia mentis, or the clearest intuition that it was evil. If there be no devil, then man himself is devil. It has been said of Voltaire, that without believing in a devil, he saw him everywhere—even where he was not. Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, takes comfort when he finds that the blasphemous suggestions which came to him in the dark valley were suggestions from the fiend that pursued him. If all temptation is from within, our case would seem hopeless. But if "an enemy hath done this" (Hat 13 : 28), then there is hope. And so we may accept the maxim: Nullu* <i(a/xiltis, rmfftui Rtdemptor. See Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 17; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 78-100; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1 :201-293. Many of the objections and answers mentioned above have been taken from Phillppi, Glaubenslehre, 3 : 251-284, where a fuller statement of them may be found.
III. PRACTICAL USES OF THE DOCTRINE OF ANGELS.
A. Uses of the doctrine of good angels.
(a) It gives us a new sense of the greatness of the divine resources, and of God's grace in our creation, to think of the multitude of unfallen intelligences who executed the divine purposes before man appeared.
(b) It strengthens our faith in God's providential care, to know that spirits of so high rank are deputed to minister to creatures who are environed with temptations and are conscious of sin.
(c) It teaches us humility, that beings of so much greater knowledge and power than ours should gladly perform these unnoticed services, in behalf of those whose only claim upon them is that they are children of the same common Father.
(cf) It helps us in the struggle against sin, to learn that these messengers of God are near, to mark our wrong doing if we fall, and to sustain us if we resist temptation.
(e) It enlarges our conceptions of the dignity of our own being, and of the boundless possibilities of our future existence, to remember these forms of typical innocence and love, that praise and serve God unceasingly in heaven.
Instance the appearance of angels in Jacob's life at Bethel (Ota. 28:12—Jacob's conversion?) and at Mabanaitn (Gen. 32 :1, 2—two camps, of angels, on the right hand and on the left; cf. Pi 34 : 7—" The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them "); so too the Angel at Penuel that struggled with Jacob at his entering the promised land (Gen. 32 : 24; cf. Hob. 12 : 3, 4—"in his manhood he had power with God: yea, he had power over the angel, and prerailed "), and "the angel which hath redeemed me from all evil" (Gen. 48 :16) to whom Jacob refers on his dying bed. "And is there care in heaven? and is there love In heavenly spirits to these creatures bnse That may compassion of their evils move? There is; else much more wretched were the case Of men than beasts. But O, th' exceeding grace Of highest God that loves his creatures so. And all his works with mercy doth embrace. That blessed angels he sends to and fro To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe!"
B. Uses of the doctrine of evil angels.
(a) It illustrates the real nature of sin, and the depth of the ruin to which it may bring the soul, to reflect upon the present moral condition and eternal wretchedness to which these spirits, so highly endowed, have brought themselves by their rebellion against God.
(6) It inspires a salutary fear and hatred of the first subtle approaches of evil from within or from without, to remember that these may be the covert advances of a personal and malignant being, who seeks to overcome our virtue and to involve us in his own apostasy and destruction.
(c) It shuts us up to Christ, as the only Being who is able to deliver us or others from the enemy of all good.
(d) It teaches us that our salvation is wholly of grace, since for such multitudes of rebellious spirits no atonement and no renewal were provided —simple justice having its way, with no mercy to interpose or save.
Philippl, in his Glaubenslehre, 3 : 251-284, suggests the following relations of the doctrine of Satan to the doctrine of sin: 1. Since Satan is a fallen angel, who once was pure, evil is not self-existent or necessary. Sin does not belong to the substance which God created, but is a later addition. 2. Since Satan is a purely spiritual creature, sin cannot have its origin in mere sensuousness, or in the mere possession of a physical nature. 8. Since Satan is not a weak and poor!)/ endmvetl creature, sin is not a necessary result of weakness and limitation. 4. Since Satan is confirmed in evil, sin is not necessarily a transient or remediable act of will. 5. Since in Satan sin does not come to an end, sin is not a step of creaturely development, or a stage of progress to something higher and better. On the uses of the doctrine, see also Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 1: 316; Robert Hall, Works, 3 : 35-51; Brooks, Satan and his Devices.