(Continued from page 108.)
We now touch briefly upon the sixth chapter of Professor Smith’s work. It treats of Amos as “The Man and the Prophet,” and bristles, as does the whole book, with subtle and dangerous errors. The second section of this chapter is entitled “The Word and its Origins,” and gives an answer to the question, “Whence came the Word to the man, the Word that made him a prophet?” The sum of the answer is to the effect that Amos draws the materials for his book solely from conscience and history. “Within himself he hears certain moral principles speak in the voice of God, and certain events of his days he recognises as the judicial acts of God. . . . From this agreement between inward conviction and outward event Amos draws his full confidence as a prophet, and enforces on the people his message of doom as God’s own word.” Moral principles are the source from which the Word comes. This answer does not place the prophet in any higher position than is possible to an ordinary preacher of truth and righteousness. According to an inspired apostle, “Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” —(2 Peter i. 21.) The New Testament abounds with testimonies to the same effect. But Professor Smith ignores these testimonies, and traces the authority and confidence of the prophet, not to the command of God and the guidance of the Holy Ghost, but to the moral principles embedded in his own conscience, and his observation of outward events. What better then was the prophet than any politician or preacher of later ages? Our author also wilfully misinterprets the prophet’s own language, for the latter continually declares, “Thus saith the Lord,” but Professor Smith practically describes him as saying, “Thus saith the conscience of Amos.” Prophecy, according to this view, is purely “by the will of man.” He further asserts that Amos not only cast forth belief in Jehovah as a national God, but also “the belief that a ceremonial of rites and sacrifices was indispensable to religion.” Amos certainly declares that the Lord despised their festivals and burnt-offerings, but not because these were sinful in themselves, but because the people multiplied these and forgot righteousness. The divine exhortation is not, “Cease your festivals and sacrifices,” but, “Let judgment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Of course, Professor Smith follows other modern critics in rejecting the book of Leviticus as given by God to Moses, and considers that Israel’s ritual belongs to a later, more formal, and unspiritual age. That divinely appointed ritual, we believe with the Church in all ages, foreshadowed and typified the one sacrifice that the Son of God offered upon the Cross in the fulness of times. It was therefore a continual reminder of sin, propitiation, forgiveness, and redemption to the people of Israel. It was a divine principle under both dispensations that “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” But with our modern critics this also is a pagan idea. They are therefore in harmony with the mind of Cain, who presented to the Lord the fruits of the earth, and omitted Abel’s offering, the sacrifice of blood. The doctrine of atonement is of no value in their estimation. The chief feature in our author’s criticism of the text of Amos is his rejection of the last verses of the prophecy. These he regards as too great a contrast to the denunciations of judgment that are found in the preceding part of the book, and are so unlike Amos, that they must have been added by some later writer possessed of brighter hopes. How much this is opposed to the doctrine of divine inspiration we leave our readers to judge.
The last part of this book, to which we call attention, is the comment upon Hosea. Our time and space will only permit us to notice serious doctrinal errors which Professor Smith announces as pure gospel. He devotes a chapter to the subject of “Repentance,” of which Hosea speaks so much. We quote the following—”Repentance, it is true, starts from faith in the mercy of God, for without this there were only despair. Nevertheless, in all true penitence there is despair. Genuine sorrow for sin includes a feeling of the irreparableness of the past, and the true penitent, as he casts himself upon God, does not dare to feel that he ever can be the same again.” What sort of theology is this? We are transgressors from our birth against God, and surely, if repentance means anything, it means the hope and desire on the part of the penitent to live a better life than he ever lived before. In a chapter entitled “The Sin against Love,” Professor Smith gives us his views of the Love of God and the atonement, which reveal Arminianism of the most pronounced type. He also develops an utterly erroneous and unscriptural theory of hell. Our author comments on the words of Hosea, “My God shall cast them away”—(Hos. ix. 17)—as if these meant permanent rejection, and applies them to the dealings of a God who loved all men. In a previous chapter he says that Christ’s message was that “The Father loves everyone of us” (p. 293), and now he adds, “The love of God has the same weakness which we have seen in the love of man. It, too, fails to redeem; it, too, has stood defeated on some of the highest moral battlefields of life.” “We are not bound to God by any unbreakable chain. The strands which draw us upwards to God, to holiness and everlasting life, have the weakness which bind us to the earthly souls we love. It is possible for us to break them. We love Christ, not because He has compelled us by any magic, irresistible influence to do so, but, as John in his great simplicity says, ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’ “The one unpardonable sin is the sin against our blessed Redeemer’s love as it is brought home to the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit. Every other sin is forgiven to men but to crucify afresh Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.” In these quotations, the doctrines of universal love, universal atonement, and also the possibility of falling away from grace are asserted in unmistakeable terms. Further quotations will show that our author believes that man in his natural state possesses power to keep the law of God in virtue of a universal redemption. He also tells us his view of the future state of misery. “Men say they cannot believe in hell because they cannot conceive how God may sentence men to misery for the breaking of laws they were born without power to keep. And one would agree with the inference if God had done any such thing. But for them which are under the law and the sentence of death Christ died once for all that He might redeem them. . . . . Believe then, in hell, because you believe in the love of God—not in a hell to which God condemns men of His will and pleasure, but a hell into which men cast themselves from the very face of His love in Jesus Christ. The place has been painted as a place of fires. But when we contemplate that men come to it with the holiest flames in their nature quenched, we shall justly feel that it is rather a dreary waste of ash and cinder, strewn with snow—some ribbed and frosted Arctic zone, silent in death, for there is no life there, and there is no life because there is no love, and no love because men, in rejecting and abusing her, have slain their own power ever again to feel her presence.”
From the above, we learn that hell is not a place of pain and suffering, but of utter insensibility, silent in death. Does this accord with the teaching of the Lord Jesus, who said that the rich man lifted up his eyes in hell, being in torment, and desired a drop of cold water to cool his tongue? Professor Smith dismisses the word of Christ as a mere piece of false painting, and substitutes his own theory in its place. We tremble at the daring irreverence and blind presumption that can treat the Word of Christ as a lie, and, at the same time, descant in sentimental terms about His love. Sufficient evidence has been produced to show that Professor Smith’s views of the Bible and its fundamental doctrines are wholly and dangerously wrong. They are also at utter variance with the Confession of Faith which he has subscribed and sworn to maintain and defend. If the Free Church allows such views to pass without steps of discipline, she adds one more proof that she has ceased to be a witness for Christ and His truth. We also deplore the dissemination of such unsound theological literature—literature which will inevitably work for the delusion and destruction of immortal souls.