greatest good, and whatever seems to us adapted to promote hap- piness is right, then God and the moral law are lost sight of. Our own happiness is apt to become the chief good for us, as it is for the universe. (4.) It need hardly be remarked that we are incompe- tent to determine what course of conduct will issue in the greatest amount of physical good, and therefore can never tell wliat is right and what is wrong. It may be said that we are not left to our own sagacity to decide that question. The law of God as revealed in his word, is a divine rule by which we can learn what tends to hap- piness and what to misery. But this not only degrades the moral law into a series of wise maxims, but it changes the motive of obe- dience. We obey not out of regard to the authority of God, but because He knows better than we what will promote the greatest good. Besides this, in the questions which daily present them- selves for decision, we are forced to judge for ourselves what is I'ight and wrong, in the light of conscience and of the general prin- ciples contained in the Scriptures. And if these principles all re- solve themselves into the one maxim, that that is right which pro- motes hapiiiness, we are obliged to resort to the calculations of expediency, for which in our short-sighted wisdom we are utterly incompetent. (5.) Besides all this, the theory assumes that sin, and the present awful amount of sin, are the necessary means of the greatest o-ood. What then becomes of the distinction between good and evil ? If that is good which tends to promote the great- est happiness, and if sin is necessary to secure the greatest happi- ness, then sin ceases to be sin, and becomes a good. Then also it must be right to do evil that good may come. How, asks tlie Apostle, on this principle, can God judge the world ? If the sins of men not only in fact promote the highest end, but if a man in sin- ning has the purpose and desire to cooperate with God in producing the greatest amount of happiness, how can he be condemned ? If virtue or holiness is right simply because it tends to produce the gresttest happiness, and if sin also tends to the same result, then the man who sins with a view to the greatest good is just as virtu- ous as the man who practices holiness with the same end in view. It may be said that it is a contradiction to say that a man sins with a truly benevolent purpose ; for the essence of virtue is to purpose the greatest good, and therefore whatever is done in the execution of that purpose, is virtuous. Exactly so. The objection itself shows that right becomes wrong and wrong right, according to the design with which it is committed or performed. And therefore, if a man lies, steals, or murders with a design to promote the
148 PART U. Ch. VIU. — sin.
""ood of society, of the church, or of the universe, he is a virtuous man. It was principally for the adoption of, and the carrying into practice this doctrine, that the Jesuits became an abomination in the sight of Christendom and were banished from all civilized countries. Jesuits were however, unhappily not its only advocates. The principle has been widely disseminated in books on morals, and has been adopted by theologians as the foundation of their whole system of Christian doctrine. (6.) If happiness be not the highest good, then benevolence is not the sum of all excellence, and selfishness as the opposite of benevolence, cannot be the essence of sin. On this point, again, appeal may be safely made to our own consciousness and to the common consciousness of men. Our moral nature teaches us, on the one hand, that all virtue cannot be re- solved into benevolence : justice, fidelity, humility, forbearance, pa- tience, constancy, spiritual mindedness, the love of God, gratitude to Christ, and zeal for his glory, do not reveal themselves in conscious- ness as forms of benevolence. They are as distinct to the moral sense, as red, blue, and green are distinct to the eye. On the other hand, unbelief, hardness of heart, ingratitude, impenitence, malice, and enmity towards God, are not modifications of selfishness. These attempts at simplification are not only unphilosophical, but also dan- gerous; as they lead to confounding things which differ, and, as we have seen, to denying the essential nature of moral distinctions.
The doctrine which makes all sin to consist in selfishness, as it has been generally held, especially in this country, considers selfishness as the opposite of benevolence agreeably to the theory which has just been considered. There are others, however, that mean by it the opposite to the love of God. As God is the proper centre of the soul and the sum of all perfection, apostasy from Him is the essence of sin ; apostasy from God involves, it is said, a falling back into ourselves, and making self the centre of our being. Thus Miiller,^ Tholuck,^ and many others, make alienation from God the primary principle of sin. But dethroning God necessitates the putting an idol in his place. That idol, Augustine and after him numerous writers of different schools, say, is the creatui*e ; as the Apostle concisely describes the wickedness of men, by saying, that they " worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator." But Miiller argues that as it is self the sinner seeks in the creature, the real principle of sin consists in putting self in the place of God, and in making it the highest end of life and its gratification or
1 Lehre von der Sunde, rol i. pp. 134-158. ;, 3 Von der Sunde und vom Vtrtdhner, p. 32.