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THE GREAT WHITE THRONE.

THERE are red rays as well as blue and yellow. In the sun they are blended together, and their union gives the limpid daylight; but by transmitting through a prism the brightest beam, you can sever it into bars of many tints, all, however, ultimately resolved into ruby, gold, and sapphire. And conversely, you may take these parted beams and reunite them, and their commingling lustre gives you again the white transparent sunshine.

To Moses, the first of inspired penmen, the Most High revealed His Name, "The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children." To John, who fifteen centuries afterwards wrote the closing line of Scripture, the Most High announced His Name in a single word, and ever since it has been the Christian's joy to know that "GOD IS LOVE."

With many, however, there is still much confusion or misunderstanding. Say some, If God is Love, then I may go on in sin. I may do as I please, and still hope in His mercy. And a class very different- one which draws no encouragement to sin from God's abounding grace-is apt to be distressed by the severity with which sin is punished, and by the fearful amount of suffering which in consequence prevails. They not only stand in awe of God's judgments, but they find it difficult to reconcile these judgments with His boundless benevolence.

And yet, if we do not greatly err, the revelation of

Horeb is identical with the revelation of Patmos or Ephesus; and the graciousness, the truth, and the justice, which were proclaimed to the lawgiver, are not only consistent with the "love" announced by the evangelist, but they form the ingredients of which that love is composed. Through the murky medium of guilt nothing may be able to penetrate except the red ray of retributive justice; and, diffracted in the prism of our human thought and speech, we may be constrained to distinguish one perfection from another; but as they exist in the Godhead these attributes are a glorious unity. The wisdom is the forethought of goodness, and the retributions are the justice of One who is loving. But whether split into the spectrum of Sinai, or re-collected and combined in the focus of the gospel, these various perfections are the sunshine of the universe, and are all lost in the one Infinite Excellence of the Light Inaccessible. "God is Love," says St. John. This loving God says of Himself to Moses, that He is true, and merciful, and righteous.

Fixing our regard on God's kindness, but remembering at the same time that He is wise and righteous withal, let us suppose that moral evil has appeared in some province of His dominions. The plague has broken out. There is an individual or a family in revolt. The Father of that individual or family has always felt the fondest affection for it, and has lavished on it ceaseless favours, and even now fatherliness and affection would fain forgive. But can it be? He is the Father of other families also. Is it kind to these others to connive at this? Is it kind to those who still are happy, and happy only because they still are holy,

-is it kind to them to make no distinction in the treatment of obedience and transgression? Is it kind to the unfallen to bestow on the fallen the same blessings as before? Is it kind to the uncontaminated to allow the infected and disordered to range amongst them unmarked and unrestrained?

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In a Father at once wise and almighty, would not kindness itself necessitate in such a case the repression of feelings merely fatherly, and would it not constrain the exercise of judicial functions-functions which are penal to one because paternal to all the rest,-severe on sin because tenderly solicitous for the welfare of the universe?

In this view of it, "retributive, or rather vindictive, justice, arises from a competition between the objects of benevolence. Even when it inflicts suffering, it is manifestly the same as goodness; and, in fact, is nothing else but the preference of a greater to a lesser good,-a regard to the general welfare, requiring the sacrifice of a welfare which is limited [and which has already criminally sacrificed itself]. The justice of a public character is goodness regulated by the decisions of wisdom. God is infinitely good and infinitely wise, and therefore essentially and at all times just. His justice even, severe as is its aspect, springs from that view of His nature which is given in the glorious definition, God is Love.'"*

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Should any of our readers still find a difficulty in reconciling the retributive justice and the benevolence of the Most High, it is probably from overlooking the distinction between true kindness and a promiscuous tenderness; or from confounding moral disapprobation and judicial displeasure with personal vindictiveness.

There is a certain indiscriminate tenderness which, however indulgently we may view it, can scarcely be called a virtue. It passes by and it sees in the House of Correction a prisoner. True, he is a robber. They were his own crimes which brought him there. But what of that? Is it not sad that he should be shut up in that blank and dreary cell whilst there is warm summer in the world? and perhaps the poor wretch has a wife and children whom he has not

* Gilbert on the Atonement, p. 137.

seen for months. And so the soft-hearted passenger turns the key, and lets this gaol-bird range at liberty. But now that it is night, what crash was that of the parlour casement? What muffled step is this upon the stair? Who is it that enters the chamber with blackened face and upraised bludgeon? Oh! the ruthless miscreant to dash out the life of the startled householder, and next moment to wrench open his repositories, and rob his orphans of their all! But alas! misjudging householder, you brought the mischief on your own pate; and well was it that it was into your own dwelling, and not into an undeserving neighbour's, that the desperado stumbled. You did a wrong. It was painful to your feelings to see the captive pining. So would it have been to any of us; but because it was right and requisite that he should be kept in durance we would have borne the pain of pity. For the sake of others, if not his own, we would have denied the promptings of compassion; and though to feeling it would have been a luxury to let him loose, as long as love to our virtuous neighbour barred the door we would not allow false pity to force it open. There is a wide distinction between "the benevolence which in a moral system seeks the greatest sum of happiness, and which benevolence in God is really boundless, and the indiscriminate propensity to make every individual creature happy." And till once it can be shown that the comfort of criminals is more important than the welfare of the universe, it will be impossible to show how the punishment of sin is incompatible with the Divine benevolence.

For that is the other distinction which we asked you to make; namely, the difference betwixt judicial displeasure and personal vindictiveness. The latter is an emotion from which "the blessed and only Potentate" is sublimely exempted, no less by the perfection of His nature than by the unapproachable height of His position. The most angry

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assailant cannot endanger His throne, or darken His glory, or abridge for a moment His blessedness; and in all the indignation and wrath against sin which the Scriptures ascribe to Him, we may be very sure that there is not one trace of personal enmity, not the least tincture of that acrimony or personal hostility which darkens human vengeance.

What is there then? Doubtless, towards the sin there is enmity. Infinite Goodness and moral evil are the intensest antipathy. But towards the sinner what is God's feeling? What is the feeling of a right-minded judge to some atrocious culprit at his bar? "You are a bad man. You never hurt me, and me you never can hurt. But your offence is hateful. My sense of righteousness is outraged by your crime, and, as a tribute to the eternal laws of right and truth, which you have wilfully transgressed, and as a warning to others, you must be severely punished." And the more virtuous the tribunal is, the more intense will be the detestation with which the crime is viewed. And yet, consistently with it all, may be a feeling of unfeigned com-* passion, compassion in thinking of the dreary years of penal slavery to which the transgressor has brought himself, and a compassion deeper still in thinking of his wickedness. Alas! that you should be so bad! Alas! that with your fine powers and brilliant outset you should have at last besotted yourself into such coarse brutality, and in tastes so depraved, and in a conscience so fiend-freighted, that you should have provided such fearful company for all your future! And so with the Judge Supreme. "Fury is not in me. As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth." And yet compatibly with all this absence of rancour and remoteness from personal acerbity, so strong is the Divine abhorrence of sin, and so inevitably is a holy indignation called forth by transgression, that we