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of the wrong suggestion which parents impart to their offspring, and which moulds their lives in the wrong way. It is, however, comforting to know that the leaders of rational thought in the world have unequivocally condemned the imputation of such cruel, unfatherly and ungod-like vengeance to the deity. Eminent men from amongst the orthodox Christians themselves are now beginning to form a more accurate and dignified notion of divinity, and there is every reason to hope that in the near future such fables as that of the uncontrollable fury of the Almighty will only make us smile at our own ignorance and credulity.
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
As the idea of the punishment of the innocent is foreign to our notions of the dignity, the justice and the mercy of God, so is the idea of the vicarious atonement of Jesus, a pure dogma of ignorant faith. We agree with Mr. Bernard Lucas when he says:
"In the moral realm to substitute the innocent for the guilty is a conception which subverts the moral idea. To conceive of the punishment of the just for the unjust is not only an outrage on the moral sense of humanity; it is a subversion of the moral character of God. The suffering of the innocent for the guilty presents difficulties to our moral nature and to our belief in a beneficent God, but its arbitrary infliction as a penalty is a conception from which the modern mind absolutely revolts. The conception of the solidarity of the race may throw some light on the problem of suffering, but it throws no light on a suffering which is a penalty arbitrarily inflicted on the innocent in order that the guilty may escape. That which is bad morality cannot be good theology. That which the highest and best within us repudiates and condemns, God cannot approve and adopt. Vicarious punishment marks a lower stage of man's moral development, in which it presented no difficulty to the moral sense. At the present day it would be an outrage to civilization. Our theology must transcend our morality, not fall below it. One can
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