Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/194

Rh changeable and eternal God dies—yet the sum total of Godhead is not diminished by this temporary subtraction but comes to life again and rises from the dead. The "sufferings" of the Son are an "infinite expiation" and "satisfaction" to God for the sins of men, who may thus escape from hell by his "vicarious atonement," His "merits" are transferred to their account, and they may advance to heaven through his "imputed righteousness," the "Divine condition" of salvation. But men receive this Divine salvation—deliverance from hell by vicarious atonement, and admission to heaven by imputed righteousness—on certain terms, the "human condition" of salvation. And the terms are such that, of all who have hitherto lived, the "saved" are a most pitiful fraction compared to the "lost!" Hell is roomy and crowded, while heaven is narrow, but with many mansions all unoccupied! The great mass of men, before their birth, are doomed to eternal torment, whence no act of theirs can set them free. The whole "scheme of redemption," with the doctrines of revelation, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of one undivided third part of the Godhead, salvation by Christ, has no other result but to save a handful, gleaned miraculously from the earthly field, while the great bulk of the human harvest, grown in so many centuries and reaped down by death, is shocked up by the devil for the threshing-floor of hell, where he and his angels shall flail at them for ever and ever, and winnow them with a fiery tempest of wrath, which lasts throughout all eternity.

These five false ideas are common to the three great parties into which the Christian Sect is divided—to the Greek church, the Latin church, and the German church. They all share the idea of an imperfect God—of a depraved and almost worthless human nature— of a relation of perpetual antagonism between God the Creator and man His work—of a miraculous inspiration, limited to a few persons—of a vicarious salvation, which helps only a few, while it leaves the great majority of mankind to perish for ever. These five false ideas are the chief thing in these Ecclesiastical Institutions, which take thence their peculiar form and special activity.