18. Examination of the principles of expediency
as applied to war
It is obvious that this reasoning proceeds upon the principle that it is lawful to do evil that good may come:
If good will come by violating a treaty, we may violate it.
If good will come by slaughtering other men, we may slaughter them.
I know that the advocate of expediency will tell us that it is not evil of which good, in the aggregate, comes, and that the good or evil of actions consists in the good or evil of their general consequences.
I appeal to the understanding and the conscience of the reader:
is this distinction honest to the meaning of the apostle?
Did he intend to tell his readers that they might violate their solemn promises, that they might destroy their fellow Christians, in order that good might come?
If he did mean this, surely there was little truth in the declaration of the same apostle, that he used great plainness of speech.
We are told that “whatever is expedient is right.”
We shall not quarrel with the dogma, but how is expediency to be determined? By the calculations and guessing of men, or by the knowledge and foresight of God?
Expediency may be the test of our duties, but what is the test of expediency?
Obviously, I think it is this:
the decisions that God has made known respecting what is best for man.
Calculations of expediency, of “particular and general consequences,” are not entrusted to us, for this most satisfactory reason: that we cannot make them.
The calculation, to be anything better than vague guessing, requires prescience, and where is prescience to be sought?
Now it is conceded by our opponents that the only possessor of prescience has declared that the forbearing, non-resisting character is best for man.
Yet we are told, that sometimes it is not best, that sometimes it is “inexpedient.”
How do we discover this?
The promulgator of the law has never intimated it:
From where, then, do we derive the right of substituting our computations for His prescience? Or, having obtained it, what is the limit to its exercise?
If, because we calculate that obedience will not be beneficial, we may dispense with his laws in one instance, why may we not dispense with them in ten?
Why may we not abrogate them altogether?