WHICH IS THE TRUE VIEW ?
By R. F. Cottrell
The following extracts are from different articles in the same paper: “It [the Bible] does not treat sin as a venial offense, a constitutional infirmity, or a physical, and therefore excusable, necessity; but as a wanton and appalling criminality involving all the elements of guilt and personal ill-desert.” “It is furthermore an earnest that hereafter vice is to be regarded a misfortune deserving sympathy, rather than a fault deserving punishment. When we have become sufficiently wise to make a similar application of the broad, general law, herein suggested rather than written, to all that society now calls crime, our prisons will be transformed into industrial schools; criminals will be treated as persons intellectually deformed; and the much-wished-for social millennium will not then be far distant.” These two extracts seem to view sin in a widely different light. Which is the true one? Bible students will hardly be prepared to dispute that the writer of the first has stated the Bible view as it is. Crime is a crime in the sight of God, and deserving of punishment. Still God is merciful; he pities the sinner, and would have him turn from his evil ways, and live; but if he will not turn, if he persist in his rebellion, retributive wrath will inflict deserved punishment. How should we view sin? In the same light in which God views it. We should view it as a crime justly deserving punishment; but, like God, we should pity the sinner, and greatly desire his salvation, in the way God proposes to save him; but if he prove incorrigible, we should acquiesce in the just judgment of God against him. But another question arises. How should we treat criminals? as God does? We are not prepared to do this. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him.” We should not, because God threatens to burn up the wicked, anticipate his judgment, and set about the work of burning up those we esteem to be his foes, as persecutors have done in the past. There is another consideration which ought to incline “the powers that be,” to leniency toward the criminal, and that is, that all have sinned, and God might justly consign all to death. It, certainly, becomes those who would obtain mercy, to show mercy to their fellow-sinners. “Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.” “Let him that is without sin, cast the first stone.” It may be well to treat criminals something in the spirit of the second extract; not, however, because sin is a misfortune for which we are not to blame, but because it becomes those who are under like condemnation, to be merciful to others, perhaps no worse in the sight of God than themselves. It does not become sinners to cast out, and consign to vengeance, their fellows. But shall we, because when we condemn sin, we condemn ourselves, take the position that vice is a misfortune and not a crime? in other words, that sin is not sin? Is “the much-wished-for social millennium” to be founded on the idea that man is “intellectually deformed,” and, therefore, not responsible for his actions? Deliver us from such a millennium! We had thought that those who hold the doctrine of a temporal millennium, expected the conversion of mankind to the high and holy standard of the law of God, and have wondered how they could, amid the abounding iniquity of our times, see any signs of the approach of that day. But if in that millennium, sin is to be tolerated, palliated, excused, as an infirmity for which no one is to blame, and the distinction of right and wrong in human actions is to be obliterated, we shall no longer deny that the signs and “progression” of this age indicate that it is near at hand. Is this the much-wished-for millennium?