THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION. TWO DISCOURSES. GALATIANS, VI. 7. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sowe.h, that shall he also reap." I UNDERSTAND these words, my brethren, as laying down in some respects a stricter law of retribution, than is yet received even by those who are considered as its strictest interpreters. There is much dispute about this law at the present day; and there are many who are jealous, and very properly jealous, of every encroachment upon its salutary principles. But even those who profess to hold the strictest faith on this subject, and who, in my judgment, do hold a faith concerning what they call the infinity of man's ill-desert, that is warranted neither by reason nor scripture, even they, nevertheless, do often present views of conversion and of God's mercy, and of the actual scene of retribution, which, in my apprehension, detract from the wholesome severity of the rule by which we are to be judged. Their views may be strong enough, too strong; and yet not strict enough, nor impressive enough. Tell a man that he deserves to suffer infinitely, and I am not sure, that it will, by any means come so near his conscience, as to tell him that he deserves to endure some small, but specific evil. Tell him that he deserves an infinity of suffering, and he may blindly assent to it; it is a vast and vague something that presses upon his conscience, and has no edge nor point: but, put a sword into the hand of conscience, and how might this easy assenter to the justice of infinite torments grow astonished and angry, if you were to tell him that he deserved to suffer but the amputation of a single finger! Or tell the sinner that he shall suffer for his offences a thousand ages hence, and though it may be true, and will be true, if he goes on offending till that period, yet it will not come home to his heart with half so vivid an impression, or half so effectual a restraint, as to make him foresee the pain, the remorse, and shame, that he will suffer the very next hour. Tell him, in fine, as it is common to do tell him of retribution in the gross, and however strong the language, he may listen to it with apathy; he often does so; but if you could show him what sin is doing within him, at every moment; how every successive offence lays on another and another shade upon the brightness of the soul; how every transgression, as if it held the very sword of justice, is cutting off one by one, the fine and invisible fibres that bind the soul to happiness; and then, by all the love of happiness such a man must be interested, and concerned for himself. Or, tell the bad man that he must be converted, or he cannot be happy hereafter, and you declare to him an impressive truth; but how much would it add to the impression, if instead of leaving him to suppose that bare conversion in the popular sense of that term - that the brief work of an hour, would bring him to heaven, you should say to him, "you shall be just as happy hereafter, as you are pure and upright, and no more; you shall be just as happy as your character prepares you to be, and no more; your moral, like your mental character, though it may take its date or its impulse from a certain moment, is not formed in a moment; your character, that is to say, the habit of your mind, is the result of many thoughts, and feelings, and efforts, and these are bound together by many natural and strong ties, so that it is strictly true, and this is the great law of retribution: that all coming experience is to be affected by every present feeling; that every future moment of being must answer for every present moment; that one moment, sacrificed to sin or lost to improvement, is for ever sacrificed and lost; that one year's delay, or one hour's wilful delay, to enter the right path, is to put you back so far, in the everlasting pursuit of happiness; and that every sin ay, every sin of a good man, is thus to be answered for, though not according to the full measure of its ill-desert, yet according to a rule of unbending rectitude and impartiality. This is undoubtedly the strict and solemn Law of Retribution: but how much its strictness has really entered I say not now into our hearts and lives; I will take up that serious question in another season of meditation but how much the strictness of the principles of retribution has entered into our creeds, our theories, our speculations, is a matter that deserves attention. - It is worthy of remark, indeed, that there is no doctrine which is more universally received, and at the same time more universally evaded, than this very doctrine which NO. 192. VOL. XVII.· 1* care. we are considering. It is universally received, because the very condition of human existence involves it-because it is a matter of experience; every after period of life being affected, and known to be affected, by the conduct of every earlier period; manhood by youth, and age by manhood; professional success, by the preparation for it; domestic happiness, by conjugal fidelity and parental It is thus seen, that life is a tissue, into which the thread of this connection is every where interwoven. It is thus seen that the law of retribution presses upon every man, whether he thinks of it or not; that it pursues him through all the courses of life, with a step that never falters nor tires, and with an eye that never sleeps nor slumbers. The doctrine of a future retribution has been universally received, too, because it has been felt that in no other way, could the impartiality of God's government be vindicated; that if the best and the worst men in the world, if the ruthless oppressor and his innocent victim, if the proud and boasting injurer, and the meek and patient sufferer, are to go to the same reward, to the same approbation of the good and just God; there is an end. of all discrimination, of all moral government, and of all light upon the mysteries of providence. It has been felt, moreover, that character carries with it, and in its most intimate nature, the principles of retribution, and that it must work out weal or wo for its possessor. But this doctrine, so universally received, has been, I say, as universally evaded. The classic mythologies of paganism did, indeed, teach that there were infernal regions; but few were doomed to them, and for those few, who, failing of the rites of sepulture, or of some other ceremonial qualification, were liable to that doom, an |