If the Son of God came down to earth, if God became a man, it is a fact. To make it of no importance is evidently false; because it offers an infinite object, affords the highest and most formative motive, and implies, especially when inquired into, the deepest moral elements in the relationship of God and man. Am I to worship Him or not? And worship is the highest condition of the soul. Is He to be all to me or not? Is the rejection of Him, and of perfect love in Him, indifferent?
Mr. L.'s delight is skepticism, his judgment of events superficial. Thus the excessive corruption, and money oppression, the shocking of conscience, before the Reformation, is all ignored. Of truth they never think. They will speak of darkness, of light in themselves, of man's competency to judge good and evil finally!—a strange thing to say in looking at what is in the world, and the variety of judgments; but of truth, of what God is, of what He is revealed to be, even of responsibility, never. For them there is no such thing as “the truth “; it is an evil “to make guilt out of errors of opinion.” I understand compassion on ignorance; but surely, if I have rejected the true God to worship Venus, or accept Mahomet as a prophet, there is some moral depravity. If Christ be God adequately manifested, the error which holds Him to be only man is a culpable one.
All revelation as a source of truth is for him impossible—all knowledge of God which it is important to maintain as truth. “Exclusive salvation” and “eternal punishment” are his two bugbears. If political economy prosper, and men go to the theater, all will be well! Wherever there is a dominant clergy, there will be bigotry. But we learn how the church, in leaving and losing its suffering place, and not holding the truth at its own cost instead of at that of others, has given a handle and a stumbling-block to the skeptic for his own destruction. The cross is its only place.