Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/242

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228
EMINENT LIBERALS OUT OF PARLIAMENT.

ments, Mr. Spurgeon's publications of one kind or other have been innumerable. Of his sermons some twenty-two volumes have already been published, and single copies have been known to attain a circulation of two hundred thousand.

Who shall say that the theological age of the world has yet been outlived? And it is not because Mr. Spurgeon preaches soothing doctrines to his flock that they are attracted by him. He is the mainstay of Calvinism in England. The elect few alone are to be saved; the rest go to eternal perdition. He will not hear of the smallest limitation to their torments. This diabolic dogma, worthy of the man who betrayed the noble Serve tus to the stake,—a man head and shoulders above Calvin, both as a theologian and as a man of science,—is not worthy either of the head or heart of the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Were it true, the creature would then indeed be more just than the Creator, and all but the vilest reprobates would refuse to become "breeders of sinners." Virtuous men would everywhere conspire to bring the race to speedy extinction, so as to balk the malevolent Demiurgus of his prey. The doctrine is rendered forever incredible by its very enormity. I took some exception to the religion of humanity in the preceding article; but this may be called the religion of inhumanity, and it I totally repudiate. "A plague on both your houses!" more especially the latter. Burns was more humane, and peradventure not less Christian, when he wrote of the "arch enemy"—

"But fare ye weel, auld Nickie-Ben!
 Oh, wad ye tak' a thought and men',
 Ye aiblins might, I dinna ken,