Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
It was Darwin’s judgment that in the world of nature and of man,
on the whole, “happiness decidedly prevails.” Wallace, Darwinism,
36-40—“Animals enjoy all the happiness of which they are capable.”
Drummond, Ascent of Man, 203 _sq._—“In the struggle for life there
is no hate—only hunger.” Martineau, Study, 1:330—“Waste of life is
simply nature’s exuberance.” Newman Smyth, Place of Death in
Evolution, 44-56—“Death simply buries the useless waste. Death has
entered for life’s sake.” These utterances, however, come far
short of a proper estimate of the evils of the world, and they
ignore the Scriptural teaching with regard to the connection
between death and sin. A future world into which sin and death do
not enter shows that the present world is abnormal, and that
morality is the only cure for mortality. Nor can the imperfections
of the universe be explained by saying that they furnish
opportunity for struggle and for virtue. Robert Browning, Ring and
Book, Pope, 1875—“I can believe this dread machinery Of sin and
sorrow, would confound me else, Devised,—all pain, at most
expenditure Of pain by Who devised pain,—to evolve, By new
machinery in counterpart, The moral qualities of man—how else?—To
make him love in turn and be beloved, Creative and
self-sacrificing too, And thus eventually godlike.” This seems
like doing evil that good may come. We can explain mortality only
by immorality, and that not in God but in man. Fairbairn:
“Suffering is God’s protest against sin.”
Wallace’s theory of the survival of the fittest was suggested by
the prodigal destructiveness of nature. Tennyson: “Finding that of
fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear.” William James: “Our
dogs are _in_ our human life, but not _of_ it. The dog, under the
knife of vivisection, cannot understand the purpose of his
suffering. For him it is only pain. So we may lie soaking in a
spiritual atmosphere, a dimension of Being which we have at
present no organ for apprehending. If we knew the purpose of our
life, all that is heroic in us would religiously acquiesce.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 72—“Love is prepared to take deeper
and sterner measures than benevolence, which is by itself a
shallow thing.” The Lakes of Killarny in Ireland show what a
paradise this world might be if war had not desolated it, and if
man had properly cared for it. Our moral sense cannot justify the
evil in creation except upon the hypothesis that this has some
cause and reason in the misconduct of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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