nd substance of the teachings of
the Old Testament, conclusively confutes this dogma. The Golden Rule was
no new discovery, unless its Author was mistaken, for he says:
"_Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do
ye even so to them_: FOR THIS IS THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS."[165] He
declares the very basis and foundation of the whole Old Testament
religion to be those eternal principles of godliness and charity, which
he quotes in the very words of the law: "_Then one of them, which was a
lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is
the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is
like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two
commandments hang all the law and the prophets._"[166] The law and the
prophets, then, taught genuine world-wide benevolence, Christ being
witness; and the moral law of the Old Testament is the moral law of the
New Testament, if we may believe the Lawgiver.

5. Still, it is alleged, "it can not be denied that the writers of the
Old Testament breathed a spirit of vindictiveness, and imprecated curses
on their enemies, utterly at variance with the precepts of the gospel,
which command us to bless and curse not; and even in their solemn
devotions uttered sentiments unfit for the mouth of any Christian; nor
that their views of the character of God were stern and gloomy, and that
they represented the Hebrew Jehovah as an unforgiving and vengeful
being, utterly different from the kind and loving Father whom Christ
delighted to reveal."

This, if the truth were told, is the grand objection to the Old
Testament. The holy and righteous sin-hating God, presented in its
history, is the object of dislike. The God who drowned the old world,
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven, commanded the
extermination of the lewd and bloody Canaanites, thundered his curses
against sinners of every land and every age, saying, "_Cursed be he that
confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them_," requiring all the
people to say _Amen_,[167] is not the God whom Universalists can find in
their hearts to adore. A mild, easy, good-natured being, who would allow
men to live and die in sin without any punishment, would suit them
better. They try to think that he is altogether suc