Thus, the larger view goes a long way to explain God's delay in saving
the heathen. We may fail in giving them the Gospel; but will He fail? Is
His success made dependent on any passing whim or indifference of ours?
Surely not. He may have good reasons for saving some in this life, and
others in the next. We see but a short way into the whole scheme
of things.
This larger view also solves the difficulty of dealing after death with
the imperfect Christian. He is not fit for the world of bliss, nor yet
for the world of woe. But the discipline we are supposing fits him for
his higher destiny.
And so, we may well suppose, it will be with the non-Christian good man.
On the principle that what is good will endure, all that is good in him
will be retained, and the evil will be eliminated.
Also, on this basis we can reasonably forecast the destiny of the
insane. Since they lost their reason they are not responsible. But they
will resume their reason at the point where it deserted them, and they
will be prepared for the inheritance of the saints.
The same theory justifies the destruction of wicked nations. They had
gone down to such depths of sin, that it was better for them to be cut
off, and to have a new opportunity under more favorable conditions.
This larger view also explains why God chose to continue the human race
after they sinned, and entailed on all their posterity such mourning,
lamentation and woe. God did an infinitely better thing for the race
than extinction. He provided a way of salvation for all. So the day may
come in the endless years when all the pains and penalties of earth will
be reckoned trifles as light as air, contrasted with the supernal glory
that has been attained.
I would also say that according to this larger view there is no more
difficulty as to supposed eternal separations. It has always been a
mystery how the good can be happy when conscious that those whom they
loved are in everlasting torment. Some have even tried to believe that
they would rise to God's own point of view, and survey with complacency
the utmost torments of the dammed!
When I was a child I often heard the dictum from the pulpit that "the
nature that sinned must suffer." Therefore, it was said that our Lord
took our humanity in order that He might suffer in our nature. I have
believed since that if He had suffered in any other nature, His
suffering would be no less efficacious. I believe that the merit of His
suffering could be transferred to any other world that needs it, be the
inhabitants human or otherwise, and be their sin what it may. I think it
is not for us to limit that merit to our own race. But we need not
follow that point farther now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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