very fact that such a power is recognized by our theology as requisite to the existence of guilt as lying at the basis of a just divine government, is the very fact that requires our doctrine of a "gracious ability." The doctrine that there can be guilt in an agent who was never capable of right, is a contradiction not only to our theology, but to human intuition. The man who asserts it ought to be ready to affirm that there can be a square without a rightangle in it. The same key-principle is used, with great skill and power, in unlocking the problem of the eternity of human punishment. The damned are those who cannot be made holy without necessitating their holiness; and that is a contradiction, and so not within the range even of Omnipotence. Our author did not originate the principle, nor its application. Archbishop King suggests the ground that the damned prefer their hell to heaven.* Swedenborg has elaborated the same principle into a splendid envisioned system+ Yet nowhere is the principle wrought out in logic, and within the limits of orthodoxy, so clearly, through its many ramifications, as in this volume. So far as we can recollect, this view is unmentioned, and, apparently, unknown, in our earlier Methodist theology. The eternity, both of the bliss and the woe, of future retribution, is founded, in our standards, not on a volitional certainty, but upon an absolute impossibility of change. Yet for long years we have known the eternity of punishment based, in our pulpits, on the eternity of willful sinning. We suspect, too, that this part of this Theodicy has made a serious impression, extensively, upon the mind of our deep thinkers. Will there not, however, arise therefrom a tendency to the adoption of Stier's view of the limitation of eternal misery to those who have sinned against the Holy Ghost? The Appendix, now first added to the present volume, is so ballanced by excellences and drawbacks that we doubt whether the writer's best friends would have very peremptorily advised its insertion. Especially does the contrast in courtesy and dignity *See his "Origin of Evil," p. 309, in which he suggests that "The Damned choose their miserable State, as Lovers, angry, ambitious, envious Persons indulge themselves in those things which increase their Misery." The drunkard strikes us as the best instance. Wilkinson, in his Life of Swedenborg, claims that Swedenborg's solution of Hell is a triumph over all previous conceptions, whether of Homer, Virgil, Dante, or Milton. The damned are inspired with an inverted ambition downward. They aspire deeper and deeper down the bottomless abyss, shooting eternally, with an ever increasing intensity, downward, until the skies are forgotten. man. between the Theodicy and the Appendix suggest that the writer's mind has been embittered in the sad interval of years between the two writings. An objurgatory sub-tone underlying the whole, and sometimes "erupting" volcanically above the surface, tires the reader, and he begins to feel as if he were listening to a testy The writer of a sophistical article against his Theodicy in the "Southern Presbyterian Review," Dr. Bocock, is bountifully scolded, and the following is a specimen of the exclamatory style: "Yet has our most infallible and omnipotent critic set forth the whole of this vindication in one short sentence! Great man! Wonderful genius! Surely he could easily put the ocean in an egg-shell, or construct a palace with a single pebble! Let us see, then, how the poor 'Theodicy' is made to hide its diminished head in a single sentence." Dr. B. seems to aim at a clean field in Arminian Theodicy by annihilating both foes and friends: foes, because he can endure no contradiction from gainsayers; and friends, because he can "bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne." But it is our unchangeable opinion that the challenge contained in the following two sentences cannot be safely accepted: "It is certainly easy to misrepresent and ridicule my 'Theodicy,' if we may judge from the habit of its Calvinistic adversaries. But who, or where, is the adversary by whom its foundations have been shaken ?" Humanity Immortal; or, Man Tried, Fallen, and Redeemed. By LAURENS P. HICKOK, D.D., LL.D. 8vo., pp. 362. Boston: Lee & Shepard. New York: Lee, Shepard, & Dillingham. 1872. Dr. Hickok, in his "Creator and Creation," to which the present volume furnishes a proper complement, announced the purpose, here executed, of tracing the history of man from his beginning, through his trial, fall, redemption, and resurrection, to his eternal state. The guides in the investigation are the speculative reason, Holy Scripture, and the records of past ages, so far as they bear upon the case. The author assumes at the outset the theory of Life propounded in the former work. It lies at the basis of the whole discussion. To the conscious sentient life of the animal kingdom reason is supernaturally added in man, constituting a new and spiritual kingdom. The former lasts only so long as the nervous organism holds together, while in man the rational spirit secures immortality and perpetual intelligence, with a capacity for moral character, and it furthermore immortalizes its own sentient soul and all the essential forces in human individuality. Nature knows nothing higher than the gratification of sense; but the crown of reason gives man control of nature, and points to the subordination of all sense-appetite to spiritual integrity as the condition of virtue. Soon or late the character for virtue must be tested, and that from the necessity of the case, and not from the arbitrary will of the Creator. To this primitive trial of humanity the first chapter is devoted. The two opposite principles of sense and spirit existing in the constitution are certain to come into conflict, and that will be the hour for self-conquest or shame. There is greater danger to man in allowing the occasion of the first trial to fortuitously present itself, than there is if God shall himself arrange it. The principles necessarily directing in the trial Dr. Hickok sums up as follows: "(1.) Integrity of character is in the control of sense by the spirit. (2.) The trial must be imposed at the very outset. (3.) The test must put the sense and spirit squarely in conflict. (4.) The destruction in subjecting the spirit to the flesh should be plainly announced. (5.) The capabilities for an eternal state of bliss can be attained only in passing the hazard of such a trial." The Mosaic account shows these principles to have been applied to the case in hand. The result we know. Man fixed his own disposition in the end of self-gratification instead of the supremacy of the reason. Conscience became subordinate to appetite, spirit to sense, the яνεйμа to the vxn. His sin was wholly of his own origination, and from it there is no self-recovery. The enslaved spirit has not power to burst its bonds. Man's disposition toward God was changed, as was God's toward him. The second chapter describes humanity awaiting redemption. The tri-personality of the Godhead, or, as Dr. Hickok puts it, the "threefold conscious voluntariness in absolute reason," visible in creation and in governmental administration, is equally manifest in the work of redemption. The Logos, who will become incarnate when the fallen and deeply degraded race is prepared to receive and choose the only possible method of recovery, undertakes the task of its discipline and instruction. The history shows the wickedness of man to have been great, but the necessity of forty centuries of such an education as he gave the world exhibits, as nothing else can, the fearful depth of the fall. The flood, the ordination of capital punishment in protection against violence, the confusion of tongues at Babel, and the wonderful shortening of human life, were but successive special disciplinary providences for the curbing of depraved propensities. Then, when the world's religion was becoming one of sensuality, it was found expedient to select one man whose posterity should be carefully trained to become a missionary nation to the race. And even then it was finally necessary to eliminate from the plan ten of the twelve Hebrew tribes, and with the other two pursue the work of preparation. The biblical account supplies the main facts for the hundred and thirty pages devoted to this portion of the history, but in the skillful hand of our author they are set forth with striking power. A fourfold result was attained: one nation was cured of pagan tendencies and brought to worship Jehovah alone; the idolatrous nations were made to recognize him as greater and more powerful than their own gods; the world was brought to expect the coming of One who would bring deliverance to sorrowing men; and many hearts were prepared to receive him and the spiritual truths which he might proclaim. The presentation of the incarnation, work, and doctrine of the Redeemer is for the most part after the orthodox pattern, and vigorous and fresh, withal. The weightiest problems are firmly grasped. Now and then, indeed, the exposition trips, as when, for instance, we read, "So incarnated, Deity can be tempted," and "The devil promptly seized this first offered occasion for tempting Deity." It is bad enough to interpose the Godhead of Jesus as an impenetrable shield for his manhood against the force of temptation, but it is inconceivable that the Godhead should itself be the subject of attack. Full redemption for all having been provided by the Logos according to the eternal ideas in the Father, it remained for the Holy Spirit to apply it in the conviction, conversion, and sanctification of men. The sections discussing the manner of his agency and the work which he accomplishes draw upon the strongest powers of the author, but he is not able to avoid the fearful collapse which befalls every attempt to combine "effectual calling" with universal redemption and human freedom. No amount of repetition and emphasis can obliterate the contradiction. Nor does the Spirit fulfill his office of applying the redemption, if he fails to give sufficient help for repentance to all for whom Christ died. A turning freely that is also a "secured" turning is but the turning of a machine. "Why not turn more? Why not save all?" become thus truly groveling questions. This, however, is the fault of the system, and not of Dr. Hickok. But we have not this apology for his adducing Paul's doctrine "that all, Jews and Gentiles, are under sin," and Solomon's well-worn statement that "There is not a just man on earth that doeth good and sinneth not," to prove the completion of sanctification only at death; and still less for his Scripture argument for unconditional perseverance. We pass by several passages, torn and perverted from their logical connection, to the unscholarly reading of Heb. vi, 4-6: "It is impossible... if they shall fall away.' Dr. Hickok is, or ought to be, sufficiently familiar with his Greek Testament to know that what our version so strangely interprets is aorist and not future, declarative and not conditional, and can only be translated, and have fallen away. Yet upon the false reading he builds a whole paragraph of argument,. which, with the loss of its foundation, falls helpless to the ground. Instead of the "strongest expression of improbability," the passage is a statement of actual occurrence, doubtless within the knowledge of his readers, of Hebrew Christians who had abandoned Christ, and joined with Jews in denouncing him as an impostor. The fifth and final chapter of the work, on last things in redemption, presents many thoughtful views, which we can only outline. In death the animal body drops off and dissolves, leaving the spirit and soul immortal but separated. The soul has its soul-body made up of "the substantial material forces that were the basis of the animal body," and the spirit has also its body, consisting of ethereal forces. Complete individuality is interrupted in death; the spirit, with the spirit-body, goes out in freedom into the ethereal universe, restricted only by its own moral disposition; while the sentient soul, with its soul-body, remains behind, unconscious but indestructible. In the resurrection the rational spirit finds its own sentient soul, the spiritual body unites with the psychical body by virtue of the energy of the spirit, thoroughly eliminating whatever may remain of the material that belongs only to the earthly life, thus making "the identical and individual personality which dwelt on the earth.” The final judgment and the entrance upon the retributions of eternity finish the history proper, but the author takes us on to the end of the Mediatorial reign, when the Son will surrender the kingdom to the Father. Then, he thinks, the ends of the incarnation having been accomplished, the union of the divine and human in the person of Christ will be severed, and his humanity become, like all others, subject to God. The pages elaborating these views will richly compensate the reader, even though they may fail to carry conviction. D. A. W. |