very often and very confidently appeal, when they accuse us of unfairly describing their peculiar opinions. See Dr Beecher's letter in the "Spirit of the Pilgrims." A sober man needs not to be told that there are different degrees of sinfulness in particular acts. We do not and cannot look upon the very first offence as enough to ruin the character, and deserving of the severest punishment. On the contrary, in the government of the family, in our judgments of other persons' conduct, in the sentences passed by civil magistrates, there is always less guilt imputed for a first offence, and justice is thought to require a less severe punishment. A law which should award capital punishment for the very smallest trespass, would never be deemed just, much less mild. If no notice be taken of any circumstances of alleviation, nor the slightest distinction made between one offence and another, but all regarded as infinite evils, alike meriting the utmost rigor in the sentence to be passed on each, what should we think of such a law? God has so constituted the human mind, that we cannot judge such a law to be equitable and reasonable. It would never be permitted to annoy ourselves. The man who should inflict the severest punishment on his child for a first, or a very slight offence, would be deemed cruel. It may be asked, whether, if the guilt incurred be proportioned to the obligations to obey, and must be measured too by the advantages to know and do what was required, the sin of a being above man, as the angels, would not be greater than any human sin? Certainly an angel has more moral strength, and better advantages for knowing and doing what is right than we have, unless angels be very unlike to what they are supposed to be. But if our sin be an infinite evil, and theirs be greater than ours, theirs must be more than an infinite evil. Yet infinites are not unequal. We do not say, a great infinite and a smaller infinite. Again, if our slightest defect be an infinite evil, and merit an infinite punishment, what is the character and desert of all our sins put together, or of those crimes which exceed in wickedness? The only difference we can imagine to be implied, is merely in the amount of suffering, which is to be eternally endured. But the same infliction is more tolerable to one than to another. And if the misery to be endured be hopeless and eternal, the difference in the degree of it, which at any point of such a duration would be felt, is not proportioned to the difference between a trespass fallen into by weakness and not wilfully committed, and an unbroken series of the blackest crimes. The law which threatens utter and eternal ruin alike to a single defect, the very first which occurs, and to a long life of iniquity, must appear to us, unequal and unjust. There is no discrimination where all sins are infinite evils. The application of such a term as "infinite," in any proper sense of the word, to the acts of a finite agent, is a mere absurdity. As has been observed by some one, we might as well say, that sin is an invisible evil because it is committed against an unseen God, as call it an infinite evil because it is committed in disobedience to an infinite God. Our obligations must be graduated by our powers, and our guilt is to be estimated by considering together, the obligations under which we lie, the power we have to obey, and the circumstances in which the sin was committed. A child is greatly obliged to love and obey a kind parent. But a child is a feeble thing, and is often placed in such circumstances as when known, may palliate its faults. Every parent is more lenient in the notice he takes of the faults of his younger children, than those which he discovers in the eldest, for nature, reason, and duty require the distinction to be made in consideration of the difference of power between extreme youth and riper age. Moral power may be increased, and as it increases, obligations are more felt, and faults are less excusable. That the law of God, even that which was given to the Jews, recognised the value of repentance, and left room for it to be regarded as a proper ground of remission, is abundantly evident. After Moses had recited. the long series of " curses against those who should not continue in the things which were written in the book of the law, to do them, he adds such promises as these: "And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind, among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice, &c,-that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compas. sion upon thee." The prophets uniformly accompany their denunciations with similar assurances. Thus Ezekiel, "When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die; none of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him." See the whole of the 33d chapter. Absolute sinlessness and the most perfect virtue, are the attainments to which God in his law directs us to aspire. VOL. II.-NO. II. 7* But to pretend that he demands this at the outset, as the only condition of his favor, having no regard to our infirmity, no respect to our repentance and return to duty, but leaving us to the alternative of immediate and absolute perfection or endless and hopeless ruin, is most unwarrantable. "He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust. He will not lay upon man more than is right. If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? but there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." We have room for but a single remark more. Jesus Christ knew, better than any mere man can know, the nature and design of the law of God, and what the Creator could consistently do in the way of mercy. He has commanded us to imitate God in this very particular, his manner of treating the evil and unthankful, and forgiving us our trespasses. But he forbids us to seek satisfaction and atonement for injuries received. He gives us this plain rule in all cases of offence. "If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, Forgive and ye shall I repent; thou shalt forgive him. be forgiven. Be ye merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful!" OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD. PSALM CXXXIX. THIS psalm is among those passages of scripture in which Bishop Lowth says, "we find the idea of infinity perfectly expressed, though it be perhaps the most difficult of all ideas to impress upon the mind; for when simply and abstractedly mentioned, without the assistance and illustration of any circumstances whatever, it almost wholly evades the power of the understanding. The sacred writers have, therefore, recourse to description, amplification, and imagery, by which they give substance and solidity to what is in itself a subtile and unsubstantial phantom; and render an ideal shadow the object of our senses. They conduct us through all the dimensions of space, length, breadth and height. These they do not describe in general or indefinite terms; they apply to them an actual line and measure, and that the most extensive which all nature can supply, or which the mind is indeed able to comprehend. When the intellect is carried beyond these limits, there is nothing substantial upon which it can rest; it wanders through every part, and when it has compassed the boundaries of creation, it imperceptibly glides into the void of infinity; whose vast and formless extent, when displayed to the mind of man in the forcible manner so happily attained by the writers of scripture, impresses it with the sublimest and most awful sensations, and fills it with a mixture of admiration and terror." Whither shall I go from thy spirit? And whither shall I flee from thy presence? |