ot rigidly certain in
a given case, is still inevitable for the mass, and then torments him
eternally for his wickedness. Whether a man is slain outright, or merely
placed without help to wander at random through innumerable pitfalls,
makes no real difference in the character of the action. Theologians
profess horror at the doctrine of infantile damnation, though they
cannot always make up their minds to disavow it explicitly, but they
will find it easier to condemn the doctrine than effectually to
repudiate all responsibility. To the statement that it follows logically
from the dogma of original sin, they reply that logic is out of place in
such questions. But, if this be granted, do they not maintain doctrines
as hideous, when calmly examined? It is blasphemous, we are told, to say
with Edwards, that God holds the 'little vipers,' whom we call 'helpless
innocents,' suspended over the pit of hell, and drops millions of them
into ruthless torments. Certainly it is blasphemous. But is an infant
really more helpless than the poor savage of Australia or St. Giles,
surrounded from his birth with cruel and brutal natures, and never
catching one glimpse of celestial light? Nay, when the question is
between God and man, does not the difference between the infant and the
philosopher or the statesman vanish into nothing? All, whatever figment
of free-will may be set up, are equally helpless in face of the
surrounding influences which mould their characters and their fate.
Young children, the heterodox declare, are innocent. But the theologian
replies with unanswerable truth, that God looks at the heart and not at
the actions, and that science and theology are at one in declaring that
in the child are the germs of the adult man. If human nature is corrupt
and therefore hateful to God, Edwards is quite right in declaring that
the bursting bud must be as hateful as the full-grown tree. To beings of
a loftier order, to say nothing of a Being of infinite power and wisdom,
the petty race of man would appear as helpless as insects appear to us,
and the distinction between the children or the ignorant, and the wise
and full-grown, an irrelevant refinement.

It is of course true that the patient reception of this and similar
doctrines would indicate at the present day a callous heart or a
perverted intellect. Though, in the sphere of abstract speculation, we
cannot draw any satisfactory line between the man and the infant, there
is a wid