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come unable to see or follow the light. Hence there is a tendency in sin to "final permanence."

Now I am far from denying this law of judicial blindness. I fully recognize the existence of such a law. All philosophy and religion bear witness to its reality. It would be supreme folly to deny that there is a process of losing the vision of the soul.

We all understand very well that by neglecting to use any faculty, it becomes useless. If we do not use our memory we cannot remember. So with the eye of the spirit, with that mental faculty whereby we see the truth: if we do not use that faculty we lose it. If we shut our eyes to the truth and refuse to obey it, we benumb this faculty and our ability to see the truth is impaired. And by a long course of such practice we render ourselves mentally blind, we cannot see the truth when presented, just as a man by constant lying cannot tell the truth. This is what the Saviour means when he says, "From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath." He means that by neglecting our powers we lose them. They are, so to speak, taken fro... us.

This law of judicial blindness, therefore, is a reality, and its penalty is also a reality. If we wilfully and persistently shut our eyes to the truth, we bring upon ourselves terrible retribution. Indeed, I know not but this is the most terrible retribution of which humanity has any knowledge. Look over the world's history, and you find that the most fearful and crushing retributions have come upon men and nations because they have wilfully shut out the light that would have saved them. It is a fearful thing to shut our eyes to the truth. God's most weighty judgments fall upon those who refuse to accept and follow the light He gives. The law of judicial blindness and its consequences, therefore, are most fully recognized and accepted.

It does not, however, prove the doetrine in hand. It does not prove that this sinful tendency, under the government of God, will be suffered to go on until sin becomes absolutely permanent. This is the thing to be proven. It is not enough

to show, according to this law, that there is a tendency downward in sin; it must be shown that there is nothing to coun teract this tendency that it will go on inevitably until it reaches a final, fixed condition of sinfulness.

To do this by this argument it must be shown that the effects of the law, that the blindness and the retribution are permanent, that they are moral adamant that cannot be broken or removed. And this is just what Mr. Cook does not prove and what cannot be proven.,

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On the other hand it is clearly" demonstrable" that these effects, this blindness and this retribution, are not permanent but temporary; that under the government of God they are not final states but conditions by the way. A complete analysis shows that in this retribution there is a power that tends to arrest and counteract the downward tendency in the law of of judicial blindness, a power that tends to open the eyes of the blind and "make the deaf hear and the lame walk." We must see what this law has to say before we decide this question.

Something very analogous to the operation of these two laws is found in nature. By the law of gravitation water always seeks its level, and if this were the only law no leaf would quiver on a tree or plant grow out of the ground. But there is another law in organic growth that counteracts this law of gravitation and carries the water to the top of the highest tree and greens the, leaf there as on the lowest vine. Hence it would be utterly inconsequential to prove, according to the law of gravitation the tendency in water to seek its own level, and then affirm as a consequence that no vegetation could exist. The answer would come very quickly: Why, here is another law that counteracts this law of gravitation, and makes vegetation possible; therefore your argument proves nothing to the point.

Just so in the case in hand. By the law of judicial blindness the downward tendency in sin is established, and then the final permanency of sin is affirmed as a consequence. this does not follow. The argument is inconclusive. It does

But

not establish the point. For here is another law that counteracts this law of judicial blindness and arrests this downward tendency, and so prevents the sin from becoming permanent.

That there is such a law there can be no manner of doubt. That there is a power in the retribution produced by shutting our eyes to the light, which tends to remove this blindness and open our eyes, cannot be denied. All experience testifies to the fact. Human history is brimful of examples of the removal of this wilful blindness by retribution.

The case of the Prodigal is in point. He shut his eyes to the truth and went away into the darkness, and grew worse and worse, until he found himself among the swine. Then he "came to himself." The scales fell from his eyes. The husks and the swine administered a retribution that restored his vision. He began to see the truth. His blindness was not permanent. He did not turn into an ape, but he came

to himself and went home to his father.

National examples of this judicial blindness removed by retribution are without number. Egypt would not let the Israelites go. Pharaoh's heart grew harder and his eyes blinder for a long time under the retribution that came from shutting his eyes to the truth. But the Lord's hand was too heavy. He was forced to yield at last. It took very severe punishment, but he came to terms finally and let the Israelites go.

Take France. Never was there an example of greater or more wilful political blindness than that which ordered the massacre of St. Bartholomew. As Carlyle says, "France slit her own veins and let out her best blood when she murdered and drove out the Huguenots." What were the consequences? The French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the Napoleons, and the Franco-German war, with all their terrible woes. But France is learning; she is getting her eyes open. The retribution has been terrible, but it has not been in vain.

Take Great Britain in her treatment of her colonies. How utter was the blindness of the mother country in adopting such measures as brought on the Revolution. But her eyes

NEW SERIES. VOL. XXI.

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were opened at last. It took eight years of dire war to make her see, but she saw finally, and let the colonies set up for themselves, and with what an immense blessing to the world.

Take our own national history. Have not our eyes been opened by retribution? What people ever more willfully shut their eyes to the truth than we did to the truth concerning slavery. It was as clear as sunlight that we could not hold slaves in opposition to the spirit of the age and of our own institutions, when all civilized nations were setting them free. And yet we would not see it. We shut our eyes to the truth until in our headlong blindness we plunged into the Rebellion. Then we began to see. That terrible castigation opened our eyes. We acknowledged the truth amid the pains and under "the furnace blast of our own transformation." It took a good deal of punishment to remove our blindness, but we saw at last and let the bondmen go free.

But perhaps the best example of this judicial blindness is furnished by the Jews in their rejection of Christianity. And here we are fortunate in having the whole question settled by inspiration. The Jews rejected the gospel light in the most wilful manner. Their blindness was complete, and their retribution the most terrible that was ever visited upon a people. But was that blindness permanent and is the retribution to last forever? Hear what the great Teacher says: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. Ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord" (Matt. xxiii. 37-39). Listen also to the great Apostle as he illuminates the whole subject in the eleventh chapter of Romans: "I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that blindness in part is happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved."

Here we have the highest authority in direct opposition to

Jesus and Paul declare

the teachings under consideration. positively that this judicial blindness under the government of God is not permanent but temporary, hence its retribution cannot be eternal. It must be seen, therefore, that the argument under this head fails utterly. There is another law in the retribution caused by this blindness, as all these examples clearly show, that counteracts this law of judicial blindness and renders all arguments drawn from it in support of the final permanence of evil entirely worthless.

2. The self-propagating power of sin. The argument

under this head is but little more than a restatement in an other form of the argument under the previous one. It is that every act of sin weakens the force of righteousness within us and tends to make us the slaves of sin. By continuous disobedience we form or grow the habit of disobedience. If we do wrong to-day it becomes easier for us to do wrong tomorrow, and by doing wrong to-morrow it becomes still easier the next day, and so on, until we lose the power to do anything but wrong. We all know the power of habit, and the argument is that habit may become so strong as to defy all the power of God and man to break it.

"Under irreversible natural law," says Mr. Cook, "there is a self-propagating power in sin. Of course this self-propagating power depends upon the law of judicial blindness very largely, but by no means exclusively. So are we inade that every effect in the growth of our character becomes a cause." 4

That is, we sin; that sin produces a bad effect in our souls; that bad effect is the cause of more sin, and so on until we are tied to sin by the force of habit with adamantine chains. In illustration of this argument Mr. Cook relates the following incident in the life of the great naturalist, Agassiz:

Agassiz, wishing to study the glittering interior of an Alpine chasm, allowed himself on one occasion to be lowered into a crevice in a glacier, and remained for some hours at midday, at a point hundreds of feet below the surface of the ice. After gratifying his enthusiastic curiosity, he gave the signal to be drawn up. I heard him say this himself:

4 Ibid. p. 156.

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