those terms signify in us. The modern philosophy, however, teaches that, if God be an absolute Being, thinking, feeling, will- ing, and acting are inconsistent with his nature. Hence, —
1. Some teach that God is only the original ground of being, having in Himself no distinctive attributes. What we call the attributes of God are only the attributes of finite creatures having the ground of their being in God. That they are intelligent, moral, voluntary agents, is no proof that the same is true of God. That the sun produces the sensation of heat in us is no proof that it experiences the same sensation. The attributes of God, there- fore, are only different aspects of the causality in Him which pro- duces different effects. Justice, then, is not an attribute of God ; it is only the causality to which the connection between sin and suffering is to be referred.
2. Others, while insisting that personality, and all that it in- volves, are incompatible with the idea of an absolute Being, still maintain that we are constrained, and bound, to believe in the personality of God, on the authority of the Bible and of our own moral nature. But the Bible reveals, it is said, not absolute, but only regulative truth ; not what He is, but what it is expedient for us to think He is. Justice in God, then, is for us what generosity in a fairy is for nursery children.
3. Others again, while they admit personality in God, make it a personality which precludes all willing, and all acting, except in the form of law, or general, uniform efficiency. Justice in God, therefore, is only a name for one form, or one mode, of the mani- festation of the power of God. As it is to be referred to his ordi- nation, or to his nature, that fire burns and acids corrode, so it is to be referred to his general efficiency that sin produces misery. There is no special intervention of God, when fire burns ; and there is no special decision, or judgment on his part, when a sinner is punished. Punishment is not the execution of a sentence pro- nounced by an intelligent being on the merits of the case, but the operation of a general law. Bruch (Professor of Theology in the Theological Seminary in Strasbourg) is a representative of this mode of thinkmg. He professes Theism, or faith in a personal God, but he teaches that the attributes of God are nothing else (als die Modalitaten seiner ewigen Wirksamkeit) " than the modes Df his constant efficiency." Since among men justice is exercised in a succession of special acts, it is erroneously inferred that there is a like succession of acts of the will of God by which He approves or condemns. The great difficulty, he says, arises from judging
426 PAKT I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. V. — Divine Attributks.
of God after the analogy of our own nature. He admits that the Bible does this ; that it constantly speaks of God as a righteous judge, administering justice according to his will. In this case, however, he adds, it is important to separate the real truth from the imperfection of its Scriptural form. Penalties are not evils inflicted by a special act of the divine will, but the natural conse- quences of sin, which cannot fail to manifest themselves. There is an organic connection between sin and evil. All the activity or agency of God is in the form of laws having their foundation in his nature. Thus justice is simply that law, or uniform mode of divine operation, by which sin is made its own punishment.* Hence there is no distinction between natural and positive inflic- tions ; the deluge was either no punishment, or it was the natural consequence of the sins of the antediluvians. Hence, there is no such thing as forgiveness. The only possible way to remove the suffering is to remove the sin. But how is the sin of theft or murder to be removed ? We can understand how pride or envy may be subdued and the suffering they occasion be escaped : but how can a past act be removed ? A man hardened in sin suffers little or nothing for a special offence ; the morally refined suffer indescribably. Thus, according to this theory, the better a man is, the more severely he is punished for his sin. Strauss is con- sistent enough to carry the principle out, and discard altogether the ideas of reward and punishment, as belonging to a low form of thought. He quotes and adopts the dictum of Spinoza : " Beati- tudo non est virtutis praemium, sed ipsa virtus."
4. Scarcely distinguished fi'om the doctrinfe last mentioned, is that presented by Dr. John Young.^ His doctrine is that there are certain eternal and immutable laws arising out of the nature of things, independent of the will or nature of God, to which He is as much subject as his creatures. One of these laws is, that virtue produces happiness, and vice misery. The one is, therefore, re- warded, and the other punished, by the necessary and immutable operation of that law, and not by the will of God. God, therefore, ceases to be the ruler of the world. He is Himself subordinate to eternal and necessary laws. That this doctrine is at variance ■with the whole tenor of the Bible cannot be doubted. It is no less opposed to the dictates of our own moral and religious nature. It is revealed in that nature that we are subject, not to necessary and
1 See the section on the " Gerechtigkeit Gottes " in Bruch's Lehre von den Gdttlichen Eiffenschnflen, pp. 275-296. a Light and Life of Men.