Vou. XXI ALLEGHENY, PA., JUNE 1, 1900 No. 11 VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER WHY BEV. LYMAN ABBOTT IS NOT A UNIVERSALIST At a General Convention of Universalists one session was set apart as “Interdenominational Evening,” and amongst other speakers was Dr. Lyman Abbott, a representative Congregationalist, who gave his reasons for not believing in universal salvation. Speaking as a liberal Congregationalist he declared that modern Congregationalism does not accept the doctrine of eternal punishment as preached by the celebrated Jonathan Edwards of the last century. We make quotations from Dr. Abbott’s discourse as follows :-— “J do not believe that any one of God’s creatures will be kept by God in eternal existence simply that he may go on in sin and misery forever. The proposition has long since become spiritually unthinkable to me. I might perhaps believe that a soul could suffer eternally; but I can not believe that any being that God ever made will be kept in existence by God that he may go on in sin eternally. “What was the old doctrine of eternal punishment? The Savoy Confession, up to about the middle of this century, was the recognized expression of orthodox Congregationalism. Not that it was binding on orthodox Congregationalists; but it was the only historic creed they possessed. Except in the matter of polity, and one or two minor matters, it was identical with the Westminister Confession of Faith; and this was the substance of its statement: It declared that our first parents fell by eating the forbidden fruit; that, they being the root of all mankind, their guilt was imputed and their sinful and corrupted nature was conveyed to all their posterity; that as a result we are ‘utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good;’ that from the race thus lost and ruined in the Fall, ‘by the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others are foreordained to everlasting death;’ that those not effectually called, God was pleased, ‘for the glory of his sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice;’ and that those ‘not elected, altho they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come to Christ, and therefore cannot be saved.’ “Specifically, and clause by clause, I disown that statement..... This doctrine is inconsistent with the character of a righteous God. I might fear such a God; I might tremble before such a God; I might, because I was a coward, obey such a God; but I could not reverence such a God. It is inconsistent with the faith that Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, for it was not His nature to pass any by or to ordain any to dishonor and wrath. It is inconsistent with the Scripture; inconsistent with the parable of the prodigal son, which is Christ’s epitome of the Gospel; inconsistent with the declaration of Paul that ‘every knee should bow and every tongue confess Jesus Christ to be the Lord, to the glory of God the Father’; inconsistent with the very chapters of Romans on which it is supposed to be founded, for they close with the declaration that ‘God hath concluded all in unbeltef, that he might have mercy upon all,’ inconsistent with the splendid picture John paints, of the time when every creature that is in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, shall give praise and glory to the God of their salvation.” These noble words and logical arguments surely appeal to all God-loving and God-honoring hearts and heads; and we are glad so to think: it is a sign of heart enlargement which should be admired, even tho the speaker (like other great men of our times) has swerved far from the Bible under the influence of Evolution and Higher Criticism, and is no longer trusting in the great sacrifice for sins “finished” at Calvary for salvation. But Dr. Abbott said some more good things in that discourse. In telling his Universalist audience why he does not believe in universal salvation, he displayed excellent logic. In reasoning that “the ultimate fact in human life is the freedom of the human will,” he said:— “T know that I can choose the good, and therefore I can choose the evil. What I find true in myself I believe to be true in every other man; he can choose the good, and therefore he can choose the evil. And while I wistfully desire—yea, and sometimes devoutly hope—that when the great drama of life here and hereafter is ended, all God’s creatures will have chosen the good—I do not know. If I were a Calvinist, I should be a Universalist. If I believed that God could make all men righteous, I should be sure that he would make [2639] all men righteous; otherwise he would not be a righteous God. But I start from the other pole. I begin with my own absolute freedom. I recognize as a fact, in my life, in my philosophy and in my preaching, that, in the last analysis, the destiny of every man is in his own hands. Father may persuade, mother may entice, influences may environ, God himself may surround with all possible persuasions, but in the last analysis the destiny of every man is in his own hands. And what he will do with it I do not know. “Why, if God be good, has he made a world in which there is sin? Why has he not made a world sinless? Could he not? Certainly; he not only could, he has. The birds are sinless. But he could not make a world in which are free moral agents able to choose the good without giving them at the same time power to choose the evil. Power to choose the one is power to choose the other; and a world in which there are some men who choose shame, dishonor, sin and death, is a better world, I dare to say, than a world made of machines that could choose neither the good nor the evil.” We fully concur with the foregoing, reminding our readers nevertheless of the necessity for remembering the two opposite views of free agency which may properly be taken from different standpoints, as shown in our issue of Dec. 1, 1899, page 264, But two queries naturally arise: (1) How does Dr. Abbott harmonize his two propositions, fa) that the decision respecting his harmony or disharmony with God lies with man himself, individually; (6) that God has made no provision for the eternal torture of any? The logical mind will surely inquire, What then will become of the wicked who are unwilling to be saved on divine terms and hence unfit for the rewards of eternal bliss, if the time is to come when “every creature that is in heaven and on earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea shall give praise and glory to the God of their salvation”? Is it possible that so fine a logician as Dr. Abbott has overlooked the logic of his own expressions? Oh no! We answer, The connecting link in the Doctor’s logic is clear to his own mind, but he does not care to make it very public because it is not very popular yet—the same is true of many others of the ablest ministers in all denominations. The connecting link of his logic will be seen at once when it is stated,—he believes in the utter destruction of the incorrigibly wicked, as we do, and as we teach publicly. But public teachers who keep silence on this subject and put their light under a bushel, do so at a great cost—the cost of further guidance of the Lord into the “all truth” promised. Oh, how many ministers in seeking to avoid the senseless charge, “Annihilationist,” have suffered God’s character to be blasphemed and his people to be deluded by the doctrine of an eternal torment of the unsaintly ;—preferring numbers and popularity and honor among men and the financial emoluments of these rather than the truth! Alas! they seek to be wise and prudent according to this world’s standards, entirely overlooking the fact that the Lord declares he will not reveal his secrets to such. Our Lord pointed this out, saying, “JT thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes’—who will utter the truth regardless of consequences.—Matt. 11:25. (2) Some one wili say then, If Dr. Abbott believes thus in the final reign of righteousness and the destruction of the incorrigibly wicked, is he not very close to the truth and a very hopeful subject? We answer, No. At one time, so far as we might judge of any man’s heart by his writings, Dr. Abbott was very close to the truth—a believer not only as above but also in the Atonement and in the second coming of him who made the atonement with his own precious blood. But the Doctor seems to have permitted himself to become one of the “wise and prudent” who prefer honor one of another rather than that which cometh from God only. (John 5:44) At any rate, instead of coming out more and more boldly for the truth on these unpopular subjects, he seems to have put the light he had under a bushel until it has gone out. For according to Dr. Abbott’s present teachings he undoubtedly is now an Evolutionist with all that implies of rejection of the Bible doctrine of a fall by our first parents (and we in them) from perfection and harmony with God—into sin and its mental, moral and physical degeneration and death. And the rejection of this implies a rejection of the Atonement; for if man did not fall he needed no redemption from the fall—no Redeemer. And if the “ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6) is denied, then logically “times of restitution” to a former estate (Acts (163-164)
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