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THE

UNIVERSALIST MISCELLANY.

VOL. III.

JUNE, 1846.

No. 12.

DO THE CONSEQUENCES OF WHAT TAKES PLACE IN WHAT WE CALL TIME, EXTEND TO WHAT WE CALL ETERNITY?

BY REV. HOSEA BALLOU.

THIS question was suggested to my mind by a declaration, which, not long since, I heard from the pulpit, namely, "That the consequences of sin reach into man's future state." This was expressed simply as the opinion of the preacher; not as a point of doctrine suggested by the passage of scripture he was then preaching from, nor was it stated as a truth which he was about to prove, for in no other instance did he allude to it.

It is no new thing for people to be told their actions in this world, both good and bad, will, in their consequences, attend them into the future state. And it has been generally believed for ages in the Christian church and community, that people who are righteous in this world will be happy hereafter, as a consequence growing out of their well-doing; and that those who are wicked, and who practise vice here will suffer for the same in the world to come. And it has also been the general belief that the good effects of doing right, and the bad effects of doing wrong, will both be endless.

It must be allowed that this doctrine involves some questions of difficult solution, one of which grows out of the well

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known fact, that all men are more or less wicked, and that all do some things which are right. And, moreover, according to scripture and history, some of the best of men have been some of the worst, sustaining these two contrary characters at different periods of their lives. If the good consequences of their virtues, and the bad consequences of their vices, attend them in the future state, it seems to refute the belief that the bliss of the future state will be free from the evil consequences resulting from wrong doing in this. It is true, our Christian doctors teach that it is the moral state or character in which men go out of this world, which will decide their happy or unhappy state hereafter. But if this be granted, it must be hazardous to say, without reserve, that the evil consequences of sin reach into the future state, or that the good consequences of doing right reach into that state. If we say that the consequences of sin reach into the future state, and say this without reserve, we surely thereby may be supposed to mean that all sin, committed in this mortal state, will, in its consequences, reach into the future.

If we reason from what we know, which seems to be the most safe way to reason, another important fact claims our consideration. We see, in this life, that bad consequences result from virtuous causes, and that good consequences follow from causes which are bad. No one will doubt the fact that all the good and the evil in our world may be traced back to its creation, and the creation of man in it. We read, (Gen. i, 31,) “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." There is no necessity, in this case, of debating the question, whether the Creator designed that man should ever do that which is evil, or not; nor need we ask whether it was possible for man, being such as the Creator made him, to have avoided doing all that he has done; it is enough for our present purpose that the fact be allowed, that whatever man has done could not have been done, if God had not created him. Moreover, it must be allowed, that man could not have sinned if he had not been constituted liable so to do. It is evidently safe to argue that man's liability to sin was not only good in the sight of him who made him thus, but an indispensable cause of the sin which followed. If the reader should say that this reasoning takes away all blame from wrong-doing, he is reminded that his inference involves a question which is not now under consideration. What we now are endeavoring to have seen, is that evil or bad consequences may follow causes which are good..

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The reprehensible conduct of the mother of Jacob and Esau, in putting a lie into the mouth of her son, and in contriving a deception to impose a falsehood on her husband and their father, was attended with immediate evil consequences. In the breast of Esau was kindled a deadly hate against his brother, which led to a determination to take away his life. Here we see sin leading, in its consequences, to more sin, and to immediate unhappiness. But the consequences of this sin of Rebecca and her son extended far beyond those evils which were immediate. By looking carefully at what soon followed, we find Jacob sent to Padanaram, to secure him from his brother's malicious purpose. Now that this journey, which certainly was a consequence of the sin before mentioned, was not only dictated by prudence, but approbated by heaven, seems evident from the fact, that it was while Jacob was on this journey that the God of his fathers manifested himself to him, and to him made the same promise which he made to Abraham and Isaac, as follows :— I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." From this time the blessings of divine providence attended Jacob in the land to which he fled from the indignation of his brother, which burned in his heart in consequence of the sinful conduct of this same Jacob and his mother. We have now arrived to events which were marked with the characteristics of virtue and goodness, and can easily trace these events back to the sinful conduct which God overruled to bring about his own purposes.

The sinful conduct of David, king of Israel, in his intercourse with the wife of Uriah, and in his procuring the death of this most loyal and patriotic servant, is marked with circumstances peculiarly aggravating, and the immediate consequences of this sin were distressing to the guilty offender. But the consequences of this sin of David, like those which followed the sin of Rebecca and Jacob, extended beyond those which were immediate, and gave to the house of Israel the most glorious, the wisest, and most celebrated king which ever ruled over that people. This was

that Solomon who built the temple of God. But the consequences of David's sinful conduct extended still farther; for this same Solomon, in consequence of being king of Israel, took to himself seven hundred princesses of various nations to be his wives. This was in direct violation of the divine command; and these idolatrous wives drew away the heart of Solomon from the true God, to worship the idols of those nations to which those wives belonged. Thus we see good and evil consequences following the same causes, and extending to innumerable effects far beyond our powers of calculation.

The abominable sinful conduct of the Jews in persecuting Jesus, the promised Messiah, whom they finally caused to be crucified, appears to be of the most atrocious character; and the immediate, and even remote consequences, to that people, which evidently followed, correspond with the heinousness of the sin. But, collateral with these evil consequences, we see others which are good, and for which the Christian world is rendering daily thanks to the Father of that mercy which is extended to mankind by means of the sufferings and death of the crucified. The Jews, by their wickedness, fulfilled some of the most important prophecies concerning the Messiah, which to us is one of the strongest proofs of divine revelation. And even the precautions which they employed to prevent the disciples of Jesus from taking away the body of their Master from the sepulchre, which were but a continuance of their wicked malice, furnished some of the best proofs of the fact of the resurrection.

By the light into which our reasoning has brought us, we see, that if we allow that sin, in its consequences, extends into man's future state, it does not determine whether these consequences will be good or bad, whether they will be attended with happiness or misery.

If we reason on the general principle of cause and effect, and if we reason philosophically, we shall find that whatever event takes place is attended with consequences which extend beyond all our means of tracing them. We shall also find that whatever event takes place, though we may be able to trace back, to some extent, the causes which produced it, we are utterly incapable of following the chain so as to arrive at the first. There does not appear to be any thing unphilosophical in supposing that all events which take place in what we call time, all that we call virtuous and all that we call vicious, will, in their consequences, extend into the future state, and even to all eternity. But this does

not determine whether these consequences will be good or whether they will be evil. This must be decided by the wisdom of Him "who worketh every thing after the counsel of his own will."

It would be wise in us, no doubt, to avail ourselves of the instructions of the divine word, in which we are told that "The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and our children forever." Whatever God has revealed in his word, in regard to man's future state, is, doubtless, so revealed for our benefit, "that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope. Those numerous speculations which seem to give a character to our times, and which have no foundation in the revealed word, can claim but small kindred with that bread of God which came down from heaven and giveth life to the world.

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COMING TO CHRIST.

BY REV. WILLIAM S. BALLOU.

"Ye will not come to me that ye might have life."-JOHN v, 40.

THE gospel of Jesus Christ is often violently opposed; and this opposition arises not from any natural opposition in the nature of man towards it, but from the unnatural and deceived state of his mind and heart. So pure in its spirit, so liberal in its doctrine, and so impartial in its nature, the gospel must necessarily come in contact with the selfishness, pride, and folly of the world, and with all those religious systems of men, which are but the image and embodiment of this worldly selfishness and folly. Hence those whose minds are darkened and perverted by this earthly wisdom have ever stood forth arrayed in opposition to divine truth. The blinded Jews, to whom Christ addressed the words which head this article, were of this character, and so great is this opposition, that many are contending that a portion of the human family never will be redeemed and saved; and these words of Christ above cited, are appealed to as authority for that opinion.

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