Part 5 — Chapter III. Sin, Or Man's State Of Apostasy. (continued 7)

The wrath of God is calm and judicial, devoid of all passion or caprice, but it is the expression of eternal and unchangeable righteousness. It is vindicative but not vindictive. Without it there could be no government, and God would not be God. F. W. Robertson: “Does not the element of vengeance exist in all punishment, and does not the feeling exist, not as a sinful, but as an essential, part of human nature? If so, there must be wrath in God.” Lord Bacon: “Revenge is a wild sort of justice.” Stephen: “Criminal law provides legitimate satisfaction of the passions of revenge.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:287. Per contra, see Bib. Sac., Apr. 1881:286-302; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 46, 47; Chitty's ed. of Blackstone's Commentaries, 4:7; Wharton, Criminal Law, vol. 1, bk. 1, chap. 1.

2. The actual penalty of sin.

The one word in Scripture which designates the total penalty of sin is “death.” Death, however, is twofold:

A. Physical death,—or the separation of the soul from the body, including all those temporal evils and sufferings which result from disturbance of the original harmony between body and soul, and which are the working of death in us. That physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, appears:

(a) From Scripture.

This is the most obvious import of the threatening in Gen. 2:17—“thou shalt surely die”; cf. 3:19—“unto dust shalt thou return.” Allusions to this threat in the O. T. confirm this interpretation: Num. 16:29—“visited [pg 657] after the visitation of all men,” where פקד = judicial visitation, or punishment; 27:3 (lxx.—δι᾽ ἁμαρτίαν αὐτοῦ). The prayer of Moses in Ps. 90: 7-9, 11, and the prayer of Hezekiah in Is. 38:17, 18, recognize plainly the penal nature of death. The same doctrine is taught in the N. T., as for example, John 8:44; Rom. 5:12, 14, 16, 17, where the judicial phraseology is to be noted (cf. 1:32); see 6:23 also. In 1 Pet. 4:6, physical death is spoken of as God's judgment against sin. In 1 Cor. 15:21, 22, the bodily resurrection of all believers, in Christ, is contrasted with the bodily death of all men, in Adam. Rom. 4:24, 25; 6:9, 10; 8:3, 10, 11; Gal. 3:13, show that Christ submitted to physical death as the penalty of sin, and by his resurrection from the grave gave proof that the penalty of sin was exhausted and that humanity in him was justified. “As the resurrection of the body is a part of the redemption, so the death of the body is a part of the penalty.”

Ps. 90:7, 9—“we are consumed in thine anger ... all our days are passed away in thy wrath”; Is. 38:17, 18—“thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit ... thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. For Sheol cannot praise thee”; John 8:44—“He [Satan] was a murderer from the beginning”; 11:33—Jesus “groaned in the spirit” = was moved with indignation at what sin had wrought; Rom. 5:12, 14, 16, 17—“death through sin ... death passed unto all men, for that all sinned ... death reigned ... even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression ... the judgment came of one [trespass] unto condemnation ... by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one”; cf. the legal phraseology in 1:32—“who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practise such things are worthy of death.” Rom. 6:23—“the wages of sin is death” = death is sin's just due. 1 Pet. 4:6—“that they might be judged indeed according to men in the flesh” = that they might suffer physical death, which to men in general is the penalty of sin. 1 Cor. 15:21, 22—“as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive”; Rom. 4:24, 25—“raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”; 6:9, 10—“Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God”; 8:3, 10, 11—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh ... the body is dead because of sin” (= a corpse, on account of sin—Meyer; so Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:291) ... “he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies”; Gal. 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”

On the relation between death and sin, see Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 169-185—“They are not antagonistic, but complementary to each other—the one spiritual and the other biological. The natural fact is fitted to a moral use.” Savage, Life after Death, 33—“Men did not at first believe in natural death. If a man died, it was because some one had killed him. No ethical reason was desired or needed. At last however they sought some moral explanation, and came to look upon death as a punishment for human sin.” If this has been the course of human evolution, we should conclude that the later belief represents the truth rather than the earlier. Scripture certainly affirms the doctrine that death itself, and not the mere accompaniments of death, is the consequence and penalty of sin. For this reason we cannot accept the very attractive and plausible theory which we have now to mention:

Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, holds that as the bow in the cloud was appointed for a moral use, so death, which before had been simply the natural law of the creation, was on occasion of man's sin appointed for a moral use. It is this acquiredmoral character of death with which Biblical Genesis has to do. Death becomes a curse, by being a fear and a torment. Animals have not this fear. But in man death stirs up conscience. Redemption takes away the fear, and death drops back into its natural aspect, or even becomes a gateway to life. Death is a curse to no animal but man. The retributive element to death is the effect of sin. When man has become perfected, death will cease to be of use, and will, as the last enemy, be destroyed. Death here is Nature's method of securing always fresh, young, thrifty life, and the greatest possible exuberance and joy of it. It is God's way of securing the greatest possible number and variety of immortal beings. There are many schoolrooms for eternity in God's universe, and a ceaseless succession of scholars through them. There are many folds, but one flock. The reaper Death keeps making room. Four or five generations are as many as we can individually love, and get moral stimulus from.

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Methuselahs too many would hold back the new generations. Bagehot says that civilization needs first to form a cake of custom, and secondly to break it up. Death, says Martineau, Study, 1:372-374, is the provision for taking us abroad, before we have stayed too long at home to lose our receptivity. Death is the liberator of souls. The death of successive generations gives variety to heaven. Death perfects love, reveals it to itself, unites as life could not. As for Christ, so for us, it is expedient that we should go away.

While we welcome this reasoning as showing how God has overruled evil for good, we regard the explanation as unscriptural and unsatisfactory, for the reason that it takes no account of the ethics of natural law. The law of death is an expression of the nature of God, and specially of his holy wrath against sin. Other methods of propagating the race and reinforcing its life could have been adopted than that which involves pain and suffering and death. These do not exist in the future life,—they would not exist here, if it were not for the fact of sin. Dr. Smyth shows how the evil of death has been overruled,—he has not shown the reason for the original existence of the evil. The Scriptures explain this as the penalty and stigma which God has attached to sin: Psalm 90:7, 8 makes this plain: “For we are consumed in thine anger, And in thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.” The whole psalm has for its theme: Death as the wages of sin. And this is the teaching of Paul, in Rom. 5:12—“through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin.”

(b) From reason.

The universal prevalence of suffering and death among rational creatures cannot be reconciled with the divine justice, except upon the supposition that it is a judicial infliction on account of a common sinfulness of nature belonging even to those who have not reached moral consciousness.

The objection that death existed in the animal creation before the Fall may be answered by saying that, but for the fact of man's sin, it would not have existed. We may believe that God arranged even the geologic history to correspond with the foreseen fact of human apostasy (cf. Rom. 8:20-23—where the creation is said to have been made subject to vanity by reason of man's sin).

On Rom. 8:20-23—“the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will”—see Meyer's Com., and Bap. Quar., 1:143; also Gen. 3:17-19—“cursed is the ground for thy sake.” See also note on the Relation of Creation to the Holiness and Benevolence of God, and references, pages 402, 403. As the vertebral structure of the first fish was an “anticipative consequence”of man, so the suffering and death of fish pursued and devoured by other fish were an “anticipative consequence” of man's foreseen war with God and with himself.

The translation of Enoch and Elijah, and of the saints that remain at Christ's second coming, seems intended to teach us that death is not a necessary law of organized being, and to show what would have happened to Adam if he had been obedient. He was created a “natural,” “earthly” body, but might have attained a higher being, the “spiritual,” “heavenly” body, without the intervention of death. Sin, however, has turned the normal condition of things into the rare exception (cf. 1 Cor. 15:42-50). Since Christ endured death as the penalty of sin, death to the Christian becomes the gateway through which he enters into full communion with his Lord (see references below).

Through physical death all Christians will pass, except those few who like Enoch and Elijah were translated, and those many who shall be alive at Christ's second coming. Enoch and Elijah were possible types of those surviving saints. On 1 Cor. 15:51—“We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,” see Edward Irving, Works, 5:135. The apocryphal Assumption of Moses, verse 9, tells us that Joshua, being carried in vision to the spot at the moment of Moses' decease, beheld a double Moses, one dropped into the grave as belonging to the earth, the other mingling with the angels. The belief in Moses' [pg 659]immortality was not conditioned upon any resuscitation of the earthly corpse; see Martineau, Seat of Authority, 364. When Paul was caught up to the third heaven, it may have been a temporary translation of the disembodied spirit. Set free for a brief space from the prison house which confined it, it may have passed within the veil and have seen and heard what mortal tongue could not describe; see Luckock, Intermediate State, 4. So Lazarus probably could not tell what he saw: “He told it not; or something sealed The lips of that Evangelist”; see Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxi.

Nicoll, Life of Christ: “We have every one of us to face the last enemy, death. Ever since the world began, all who have entered it sooner or later have had this struggle, and the battle has always ended in one way. Two indeed escaped, but they did not escape by meeting and mastering their foe; they escaped by being taken away from the battle.” But this physical death, for the Christian, has been turned by Christ into a blessing. A pardoned prisoner may be still kept in prison, as the best possible benefit to an exhausted body; so the external fact of physical death may remain, although it has ceased to be penalty. Macaulay: “The aged prisoner's chains are needed to support him; the darkness that has weakened his sight is necessary to preserve it.” So spiritual death is not wholly removed from the Christian; a part of it, namely, depravity, still remains; yet it has ceased to be punishment,—it is only chastisement. When the finger unties the ligature that bound it, the body which previously had only chastised begins to cure the trouble. There is still pain, but the pain is no longer punitive,—it is now remedial. In the midst of the whipping, when the boy repents, his punishment is changed to chastisement.

John 14:3—“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also”; 1 Cor. 15:54-57—“Death is swallowed up in victory ... O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law”—i. e., the law's condemnation, its penal infliction; 2 Cor. 5:1-9—“For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved we have a building from God ... we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord”; Phil. 1:21, 23—“to die is gain ... having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better.” In Christ and his bearing the penalty of sin, the Christian has broken through the circle of natural race-connection, and is saved from corporate evil so far as it is punishment. The Christian may be chastised, but he is never punished: Rom. 8:1—“There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” At the house of Jairus Jesus said: “Why make ye a tumult, and weep?” and having reproved the doleful clamorists, “he put them all forth” (Mark 5:39, 40). The wakes and requiems and masses and vigils of the churches of Rome and of Russia are all heathen relics, entirely foreign to Christianity.

Palmer, Theological Definition, 57—“Death feared and fought against is terrible; but a welcome to death is the death of death and the way to life.” The idea that punishment yet remains for the Christian is “the bridge to the papal doctrine of purgatorial fires.” Browning's words, in The Ring and the Book, 2:60—“In His face is light, but in his shadow healing too,” are applicable to God's fatherly chastenings, but not to his penal retributions. On Acts 7:60—“he fell asleep”—Arnot remarks: “When death becomes the property of the believer, it receives a new name, and is called sleep.”Another has said: “Christ did not send, but came himself to save; The ransom-price he did not lend, but gave; Christ died, the shepherd for the sheep; We only fall asleep.” Per contra, see Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, 375, and Hengstenberg, Ev. K.-Z., 1864:1065—“All suffering is punishment.”

B. Spiritual death,—or the separation of the soul from God, including all that pain of conscience, loss of peace, and sorrow of spirit, which result from disturbance of the normal relation between the soul and God.

(a) Although physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, it is by no means the chief part. The term “death” is frequently used in Scripture in a moral and spiritual sense, as denoting the absence of that which constitutes the true life of the soul, namely, the presence and favor of God.

Mat. 8:22—“Follow me; and leave the [spiritually] dead to bury their own [physically] dead”; Luke 15:32—“this thy brother was dead, and is alive again”; John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life”; 8:51—“If a man keep my word, he shall never see death”; Rom. 8:13—“if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live”; Eph. 2:1—“when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins”; 5:14—“Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead”; 1 Tim. 5:6—“she that giveth herself to pleasure is dead while [pg 660]she liveth”; James 5:20—“he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death”; 1 John 3:14—“He that loveth not abideth in death”; Rev. 3:1—“thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.”

(b) It cannot be doubted that the penalty denounced in the garden and fallen upon the race is primarily and mainly that death of the soul which consists in its separation from God. In this sense only, death was fully visited upon Adam in the day on which he ate the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:17). In this sense only, death is escaped by the Christian (John 11:26). For this reason, in the parallel between Adam and Christ (Rom. 5:12-21), the apostle passes from the thought of mere physical death in the early part of the passage to that of both physical and spiritual death at its close (verse 21—“as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”—where “eternal life” is more than endless physical existence, and “death” is more than death of the body).

Gen. 2:17—“in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”; John 11:26—“whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die”; Rom. 5:14, 18, 21—“justification of life ... eternal life”; contrast these with “death reigned ... sin reigned in death.”

(c) Eternal death may be regarded as the culmination and completion of spiritual death, and as essentially consisting in the correspondence of the outward condition with the inward state of the evil soul (Acts 1:25). It would seem to be inaugurated by some peculiar repellent energy of the divine holiness (Mat. 25:41; 2 Thess. 1:9), and to involve positive retribution visited by a personal God upon both the body and the soul of the evil-doer (Mat. 10:28; Heb. 10:31; Rev. 14:11).

Acts 1:25—“Judas fell away, that he might go to his own place”; Mat. 25:41—“Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels”; 2 Thess. 1:9—“who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might”; Mat. 10:28—“fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell”; Heb. 10:31—“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”; Rev. 14:11—“the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever.”

Kurtz, Religionslehre, 67—“So long as God is holy, he must maintain the order of the world, and where this is destroyed, restore it. This however can happen in no other way than this: the injury by which the sinner has destroyed the order of the world falls back upon himself,—and this is penalty. Sin is the negation of the law. Penalty is the negation of that negation, that is, the reëstablishment of the law. Sin is a thrust of the sinner against the law. Penalty is the adverse thrust of the elastic because living law, which encounters the sinner.”

Plato, Gorgias, 472 e; 509 b; 511 a; 515 b—“Impunity is a more dreadful curse than any punishment, and nothing so good can befall the criminal as his retribution, the failure of which would make a double disorder in the universe. The offender himself may spend his arts in devices of escape and think himself happy if he is not found out. But all this plotting is but part of the delusion of his sin; and when he comes to himself and sees his transgression as it really is, he will yield himself up the prisoner of eternal justice and know that it is good for him to be afflicted, and so for the first time to be set at one with truth.”

On the general subject of the penalty of sin, see Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:245 sq.; 2:286-397; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 263-279; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 194-219; Krabbe, Lehre von der Sünde und vom Tode; Weisse, in Studien und Kritiken, 1836:371; S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 369-384; Bartlett, in New Englander, Oct. 1871:677, 678.

Section VII.—The Salvation Of Infants.

The views which have been presented with regard to inborn depravity and the reaction of divine holiness against it suggest the question whether [pg 661] infants dying before arriving at moral consciousness are saved, and if so, in what way. To this question we reply as follows:

(a) Infants are in a state of sin, need to be regenerated, and can be saved only through Christ.

Job 14:4—“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one”; Ps. 51:5—“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me”; John 3:6—“That which is born of the flesh is flesh”; Rom. 5:14—“Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression”; Eph. 2:3—“by nature children of wrath”; 1 Cor. 7:14—“else were your children unclean”—clearly intimate the naturally impure state of infants; and Mat. 19:14—“Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me”—is not only consistent with this doctrine, but strongly confirms it; for the meaning is: “forbid them not to come unto me”—whom they need as a Savior. “Coming to Christ” is always the coming of a sinner, to him who is the sacrifice for sin; cf. Mat. 11:28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor.”

(b) Yet as compared with those who have personally transgressed, they are recognized as possessed of a relative innocence, and of a submissiveness and trustfulness, which may serve to illustrate the graces of Christian character.

Deut 1:39—“your little ones ... and your children, that this day have no knowledge of good or evil”; Jonah 4:11—“sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand”; Rom. 9:11—“for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad”; Mat. 18:3, 4—“Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:265. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:50—“Unpretentious receptivity, ... not the reception of the kingdom of God at a childlike age, but in a childlike character ... is the condition of entering; ... not blamelessness, but receptivity itself, on the part of those who do not regard themselves as too good or too bad for the offered gift, but receive it with hearty desire. Children have this unpretentious receptivity for the kingdom of God which is characteristic of them generally, since they have not yet other possessions on which they pride themselves.”

(c) For this reason, they are the objects of special divine compassion and care, and through the grace of Christ are certain of salvation.

Mat. 18:5, 6, 10, 14—“whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me: but whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea.... See that ye 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 who is in heaven.... Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish”; 19:14—“Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven”—not God's kingdom of nature, but his kingdom of grace, the kingdom of saved sinners. “Such”means, not children as children, but childlike believers. Meyer, on Mat. 19:14, refers the passage to spiritual infants only: “Not little children,” he says, “but men of a childlike disposition.” Geikie: “Let the little children come unto me, and do not forbid them, for the kingdom of heaven is given only to such as have a childlike spirit and nature like theirs.” The Savior's words do not intimate that little children are either (1) sinless creatures, or (2) subjects for baptism; but only that their (1) humble teachableness, (2) intense eagerness, and (3) artless trust, illustrate the traits necessary for admission into the divine kingdom. On the passages in Matthew, see Commentaries of Bengel, De Wette, Lange; also Neander, Planting and Training (ed. Robinson), 407.

We therefore substantially agree with Dr. A. C. Kendrick, in his article in the Sunday School Times: “To infants and children, as such, the language cannot apply. It must be taken figuratively, and must refer to those qualities in childhood, its dependence, its trustfulness, its tender affection, its loving obedience, which are typical of the essential Christian graces.... If asked after the logic of our Savior's words—how he could assign, as a reason for allowing literal little children to be brought to him, that spiritual little children have a claim to the kingdom of heaven—I reply: the persons that thus, as a class, typify the subjects of God's spiritual kingdom cannot be in themselves objects of indifference to him, or be regarded otherwise than with intense interest.... The class that in its very nature thus shadows forth the brightest features of Christian excellence must be subjects of God's special concern and care.”

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To these remarks of Dr. Kendrick we would add, that Jesus' words seem to us to intimate more than special concern and care. While these words seem intended to exclude all idea that infants are saved by their natural holiness, or without application to them of the blessings of his atonement, they also seem to us to include infants among the number of those who have the right to these blessings; in other words, Christ's concern and care go so far as to choose infants to eternal life, and to make them subjects of the kingdom of heaven. Cf. Mat. 18:14—“it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of those little ones should perish”—those whom Christ has received here, he will not reject hereafter. Of course this to said to infants, as infants. To those, therefore, who die before coming to moral consciousness, Christ's words assure salvation. Personal transgression, however, involves the necessity, before death, of a personal repentance and faith, in order to achieve salvation.

(d) The descriptions of God's merciful provision as coëxtensive with the ruin of the Fall also lead us to believe that those who die in infancy receive salvation through Christ as certainly as they inherit sin from Adam.

John 3:16—“For God so loved the world”—includes infants. Rom. 5:14—“death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come”—there is an application to infants of the life in Christ, as there was an application to them of the death in Adam; 19-21—“For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous. And the law came in besides, that the trespass might abound; but when sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly: that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”—as without personal act of theirs infants inherited corruption from Adam, so without personal act of theirs salvation is provided for them in Christ.

Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 170, 171—“Though the sacred writers say nothing in respect to the future condition of those who die in infancy, one can scarcely err in deriving from this silence a favorable conclusion. That no prophet or apostle, that no devout father or mother, should have expressed any solicitude as to those who die before they are able to discern good from evil is surprising, unless such solicitude was prevented by the Spirit of God. There are no instances of prayer for children taken away in infancy. The Savior nowhere teaches that they are in danger of being lost. We therefore heartily and confidently believe that they are redeemed by the blood of Christ and sanctified by his Spirit, so that when they enter the unseen world they will be found with the saints.” David ceased to fast and weep when his child died, for he said: “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Sam. 12:23).

(e) The condition of salvation for adults is personal faith. Infants are incapable of fulfilling this condition. Since Christ has died for all, we have reason to believe that provision is made for their reception of Christ in some other way.

2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all”; Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned” (verses 9-20 are of canonical authority, though probably not written by Mark). Dr. G. W. Northrop held that, as death to the Christian has ceased to be penalty, so death to all infants is no longer penalty, Christ having atoned for and removed the guilt of original sin for all men, infants included. But we reply that there is no evidence that there is any guilt taken away except for those who come into vital union with Christ. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 166—“The curse falls alike on every one by birth, but may be alleviated or intensified by every one who comes to years of responsibility, according as his nature which brings the curse rules, or is ruled by, his reason and conscience. So the blessings of salvation are procured for all alike, but may be lost or secured according to the attitude of everyone toward Christ who alone procures them. To infants, as the curse comes without their election, so in like manner comes its removal.”

(f) At the final judgment, personal conduct is made the test of character. But infants are incapable of personal transgression. We have reason, therefore, to believe that they will be among the saved, since this rule of decision will not apply to them.

Mat. 25:45, 46—“Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me. And these shall go away into eternal punishment”; Rom. 2:5, 6—“the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who [pg 663]will render to every man according to his works.” Norman Fox, The Unfolding of Baptist Doctrine, 24—“Not only the Roman Catholics believed in the damnation of infants. The Lutherans, in the Augsburg Confession, condemn the Baptists for affirming that children are saved without baptism—‘damnant Anabaptistas qui ... affirmant pueros sine baptismo salvos fieri’—and the favorite poet of Presbyterian Scotland, in his Tam O'Shanter, names among objects from hell ‘Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns.’The Westminster Confession, in declaring that ‘elect infants dying in infancy’ are saved, implies that non-elect infants dying in infancy are lost. This was certainly taught by some of the framers of that creed.”

Yet John Calvin did not believe in the damnation of infants, as he has been charged with believing. In the Amsterdam edition of his works, 8:522, we read: “I do not doubt that the infants whom the Lord gathers together from this life are regenerated by a secret operation of the Holy Spirit.” In his Institutes, book 4, chap. 16, p. 335, he speaks of the exemption of infants from the grace of salvation “as an idea not free from execrable blasphemy.” The Presb. and Ref. Rev., Oct. 1890:634-651, quotes Calvin as follows: “I everywhere teach that no one can be justly condemned and perish except on account of actual sin; and to say that the countless mortals taken from life while yet infants are precipitated from their mothers' arms into eternal death is a blasphemy to be universally detested.” So also John Owen, Works, 8:522—“There are two ways by which God saveth infants. First, by interesting them in the covenant, if their immediate or remote parents have been believers; ... Secondly, by his grace of election, which is most free and not tied to any conditions; by which I make no doubt but God taketh unto him in Christ many whose parents never knew, or were despisers of, the gospel.”

(g) Since there is no evidence that children dying in infancy are regenerated prior to death, either with or without the use of external means, it seems most probable that the work of regeneration may be performed by the Spirit in connection with the infant soul's first view of Christ in the other world. As the remains of natural depravity in the Christian are eradicated, not by death, but at death, through the sight of Christ and union with him, so the first moment of consciousness for the infant may be coincident with a view of Christ the Savior which accomplishes the entire sanctification of its nature.

2 Cor. 3:18—“But we all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit”; 1 John 3:2—“We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” If asked why more is not said upon the subject in Scripture, we reply: It is according to the analogy of God's general method to hide things that are not of immediate practical value. In some past ages, moreover, knowledge of the fact that all children dying in infancy are saved might have seemed to make infanticide a virtue.

While we agree with the following writers as to the salvation of all infants who die before the age of conscious and wilful transgression, we dissent from the seemingly Arminian tendency of the explanation which they suggest. H. E. Robins, Harmony of Ethics with Theology: “The judicial declaration of acquittal on the ground of the death of Christ which comes upon all men, into the benefits of which they are introduced by natural birth, is inchoate justification, and will become perfected justification through the new birth of the Holy Spirit, unless the working of this divine agent is resisted by the personal moral action of those who are lost.” So William Ashmore, in Christian Review, 26:245-264. F. O. Dickey: “As infants are members of the race, and as they are justified from the penalty against inherited sin by the mediatorial work of Christ, so the race itself is justified from the same penalty and to the same extent as are they, and were the race to die in infancy it would be saved.” The truth in the above utterances seems to us to be that Christ's union with the race secures the objective reconciliation of the race to God. But subjective and personal reconciliation depends upon a moral union with Christ which can be accomplished for the infant only by his own appropriation of Christ at death.

While, in the nature of things and by the express declarations of Scripture, we are precluded from extending this doctrine of regeneration at death [pg 664] to any who have committed personal sins, we are nevertheless warranted in the conclusion that, certain and great as is the guilt of original sin, no human soul is eternally condemned solely for this sin of nature, but that, on the other hand, all who have not consciously and wilfully transgressed are made partakers of Christ's salvation.

The advocates of a second probation, on the other hand, should logically hold that infants in the next world are in a state of sin, and that at death they only enter upon a period of probation in which they may, or may not, accept Christ,—a doctrine much less comforting than that propounded above. See Prentiss, in Presb. Rev., July, 1883: 548-580—“Lyman Beecher and Charles Hodge first made current in this country the doctrine of the salvation of all who die in infancy. If this doctrine be accepted, then it follows: (1) that these partakers of original sin must be saved wholly through divine grace and power; (2) that in the child unborn there is the promise and potency of complete spiritual manhood; (3) that salvation is possible entirely apart from the visible church and the means of grace; (4) that to a full half of the race this life is not in any way a period of probation; (5) that heathen may be saved who have never even heard of the gospel; (6) that the providence of God includes in its scope both infants and heathen.”

“Children exert a redeeming and reclaiming influence upon us, their casual acts and words and simple trust recalling our world-hardened and wayward hearts again to the feet of God. Silas Marner, the old weaver of Raveloe, so pathetically and vividly described in George Eliot's novel, was a hard, desolate, godless old miser, but after little Eppie strayed into his miserable cottage that memorable winter night, he began again to believe. ‘I think now,’ he said at last, ‘I can trusten God until I die.’ An incident in a Southern hospital illustrates the power of children to call men to repentance. A little girl was to undergo a dangerous operation. When she mounted the table, and the doctor was about to etherize her, he said: ‘Before we can make you well, we must put you to sleep.’ ‘Oh then, if you are going to put me to sleep,’ she sweetly said, ‘I must say my prayers first.’ Then, getting down on her knees, and folding her hands, she repeated that lovely prayer learned at every true mother's feet: ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’ Just for a moment there were moist eyes in that group, for deep chords were touched, and the surgeon afterwards said: ‘I prayed that night for the first time in thirty years.’ ” The child that is old enough to sin against God is old enough to trust in Christ as the Savior of sinners. See Van Dyke, Christ and Little Children; Whitsitt and Warfield, Infant Baptism and Infant Salvation; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:26, 27; Ridgeley, Body of Div., 1:422-425; Calvin, Institutes, II, i, 8; Westminster Larger Catechism, x, 3; Krauth, Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System; Candlish on Atonement, part ii, chap. 1; Geo. P. Fisher, in New Englander, Apr. 1868:338; J. F. Clarke, Truths and Errors of Orthodoxy, 360.

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