same moral purpose which this law of cause and effect manifests in Providence lies also at the heart of the Old Testament judgments, only under different conditions of human life.

We turn then to the "days of old" to question what ideas ruled the minds of men, and we discover that the idea of justice prevalent in ancient times gives the explanation we need.

Now we do not think of the child as partaking of the father's sin because it receives the father's evil. Nor do we assign a judicial significance to the physical law which transmits evil to others. The whole tendency of modern ideas is, thank the Spirit of God, against confounding the innocent with the guilty.

But not so in those ancient days. Then a man's wife and children were judicially included in the man's sin. That idea ruled the judgment of the times; and so that was done then as justice which we, from our higher moral standpoint, call injustice. Whence then arises the difference? Here. We hold a different view of life than those ancient peoples did. The sense of personal right is strongly developed amongst

us.

Almost instinctively now we think of people as belonging to themselves, as having each ownership over his own being. The very babe just born, nay, even unborn, has sacred rights in life.

LECT. IV.

Ruling

ideas in

early ages.

The child

included

in the

parent.

Human

life as such

of no value.

LECT. IV. Therefore to-day in all questions of justice we individualize persons, and distribute responsibility and guilt.

Individuals merged in the mass.

Moral teaching must go down to moral ideas.

But to this sense of individuality the ancient mind was quite a stranger. Men were regarded not separately but collectively, not in themselves but as belonging to others, the child to the father, the father to the tribe, the tribe to the chief. The chief incurred guilt for all, because he represented and included all. And hence. justice included the individual in the mass, or in his tribal representative, or in the king, and that which is revolting to us seemed the right and natural thing to those times.

But when such ideas ruled the minds of men, the only way in which God could assert Divine justice upon human sin so as to be understood, was to accommodate His dealings to their ideas. Our moral sense they had not, it was not developed; refinements, and discriminating power, they had not. Their sense of justice was mostly an unregulated passion, a wild excess of resentment which expressed itself in rude methods of destruction. And God had to take this undeveloped sense as the basis of His action, and as the background on which to display His moral judgments. That is, He had to accommodate Himself to the conceptions and conditions of those He

wished to instruct. Just as now the teacher LECT. IV. must teach the child as a child, since it is vain from the nature of the case to teach him as a

man.

The two only necessary ques

tions.

moral

Observe therefore, that from this point of view, when we are thinking of such judgments as befell the Canaanites and Amalekites, we have only to ask two questions. The first is, as to the moral Is there purpose of the judgment-does it express moral purpose? law? And it is enough when, as in the above instances, the moral sense can answer, it was a judgment not only on idolatry but on iniquity; not only for the past sins of the fathers, but for that present generation's sins also. Had the children repented they had not been punished for the fathers' sins.

The second question is, "Has God the right to take away life if he chooses ?" To this there can only be one answer. It is impossible to think otherwise. As Mozley says: "He has the right to take away the innocent, much more the guilty; the right to take away without a reason given, much more with a reason given of moral purpose." And to include all the points of the problem, He has the right to employ men as His agents of death as much as He has to employ the disease which takes away our single life, or the pestilence which destroys its hundreds at once. The only

G

Has God the right to take

human life?

LECT. IV. thing which has to be taken for granted in these Scripture incidents is, that God did order men to be His agents, and that they knew it by miraculous intimation.

God's special

judgments a means to

a higher end.

There is one more consideration which must not be omitted; in this very accommodation to men's undeveloped ideas God was preparing them for higher ones. By no means make the mistake of thinking that such incidents as have been referred to were confined to Israel, or began with God. The very argument is, that this judicial punishment of many in one was the common action of all the nations. It was fearfully common. Humanity had no rights. Blood was spilt like water. Massacres and destructions, commanded almost day by day by conquering kings and capricious potentates, were on the largest scale. Now what human kings did at any time the Divine King of Israel kept for His own action, limiting, mark you, such judgments to His own special commands. What heathen kings did out of mere caprice Jehovah subordinated to high moral purpose. Thus Israel's judgments became an educational power, an elevating moral force. Men began to look upon them as belonging to God, and as indicative of His "jealousy" against violations of His moral law. They became therefore Divine judgments,

he sense of which penetrates men with the sense of the claims of Divine holiness. "When thy judgments are abroad, the people of the earth learn righteousness." Dim and confused at first, They have developed men's ideas grew clearer and more elevated under Christian this course of Divine instruction, and at last out of the low undeveloped sense of justice, which we have considered, was evolved the higher Christian consciousness of to-day. We no longer merge the individual in the mass, and therefore we are no longer called upon to defend these ancient actions as absolutely right, but only conditionally so; nor to believe that the moral sense of even the Old Testament heroes, of Gideon, Jephthah, Barak, Deborah, or Samuel, was as high and pure as ours, nor to think that God would ever call upon us to do such things as they did. Our conscience is free to say, "I would not include the innocent with the guilty." No such burden is laid on us.

It is a glorious truth to know, that God's manifestations have a purifying purpose, that one action of Divine jealousy is to trouble the sinful conscience and make it grow, and to throw light into the darkened moral sense and make it see. We see it historically; we may, if we will, realize it individually.

"On our dead selves we rise to higher things."