Volume Ii Part 41 (2/2)

WORLDLY JUSTICE.-It is possible to unhinge worldly justice with the doctrine of the complete non-responsibility and innocence of every man. An attempt has been made in the same direction on the basis of the opposite doctrine of the full responsibility and guilt of every man. It was the founder of Christianity who wished to abolish worldly justice and banish judgment and punishment from the world. For he understood all guilt as ”sin”-that is, an outrage against G.o.d and not against the world. On the other hand, he considered every man in a broad sense, and almost in every sense, a sinner. The guilty, however, are not to be the judges of their peers-so his rules of equity decided. Thus all dispensers of worldly justice were in his eyes as culpable as those they condemned, and their air of guiltlessness appeared to him hypocritical and pharisaical.

Moreover, he looked to the motives and not to the results of actions, and thought that only one was keen-sighted enough to give a verdict on motives-himself or, as he expressed it, G.o.d.

82.

AN AFFECTATION IN PARTING.-He who wishes to sever his connection with a party or a creed thinks it necessary for him to refute it. This is a most arrogant notion. The only thing necessary is that he should clearly see what tentacles. .h.i.therto held him to this party or creed and no longer hold him, what views impelled him to it and now impel him in some other directions. We have not joined the party or creed on strict grounds of knowledge. We should not affect this att.i.tude on parting from it either.

83.

SAVIOUR AND PHYSICIAN.-In his knowledge of the human soul the founder of Christianity was, as is natural, not without many great deficiencies and prejudices, and, as physician of the soul, was addicted to that disreputable, laical belief in a universal medicine. In his methods he sometimes resembles that dentist who wishes to heal all pain by extracting the tooth. Thus, for example, he a.s.sails sensuality with the advice: ”If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.”-Yet there still remains the distinction that the dentist at least attains his object-painlessness for the patient-although in so clumsy a fas.h.i.+on that he becomes ridiculous; whereas the Christian who follows that advice and thinks he has killed his sensuality, is wrong, for his sensuality still lives in an uncanny, vampire form, and torments him in hideous disguises.

84.

PRISONERS.-One morning the prisoners entered the yard for work, but the warder was not there. Some, as their manner was, set to work at once; others stood idle and gazed defiantly around. Then one of them strode forward and cried, ”Work as much as you will or do nothing, it all comes to the same. Your secret machinations have come to light; the warder has been keeping his eye on you of late, and will cause a terrible judgment to be pa.s.sed upon you in a few days' time. You know him-he is of a cruel and resentful disposition. But now, listen: you have mistaken me hitherto. I am not what I seem, but far more-I am the son of the warder, and can get anything I like out of him. I can save you-nay, I will save you. But remember this: I will only save those of you who _believe_ that I am the son of the prison warder. The rest may reap the fruits of their unbelief.”

”Well,” said an old prisoner after an interval of silence, ”what can it matter to you whether we believe you or not? If you are really the son, and can do what you say, then put in a good word for us all. That would be a real kindness on your part. But have done with all talk of belief and unbelief!” ”What is more,” cried a younger man, ”I don't believe him: he has only got a bee in his bonnet. I'll wager that in a week's time we shall find ourselves in the same place as we are to-day, and the warder will know nothing.” ”And if the warder ever knew anything, he knows it no longer,” said the last of the prisoners, coming down into the yard at that moment, ”for he has just died suddenly.” ”Ah ha!” cried several in confusion, ”ah ha! Sir Son, Sir Son, how stands it now with your t.i.tle?

Are we by any chance _your_ prisoners now?” ”I told you,” answered the man gently, ”I will set free all who believe in me, as surely as my father still lives.”-The prisoners did not laugh, but shrugged their shoulders and left him to himself.

85.

THE PERSECUTORS OF G.o.d.-Paul conceived and Calvin followed up the idea that countless creatures have been predestined to d.a.m.nation from time immemorial, and that this fair world was made in order that the glory of G.o.d might be manifested therein. So heaven and h.e.l.l and mankind merely exist to satisfy the vanity of G.o.d! What a cruel, insatiable vanity must have smouldered in the soul of the first or second thinker of such a thought!-Paul, then, after all, remained Saul-the persecutor of G.o.d.

86.

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