Surely this is a description, not of the Unitarian, but of the Lecturer"s own creed. It certainly is no part of his opponents"
belief, that G.o.d first admits the guilty to his favor, and _then "proceeds"_ "to restore his character." This arrangement, by which pardon _precedes_ moral restoration, is that feature in the Orthodox theory of the Divine dealings against which Unitarians protest, and which Mr. M"Neile himself insists upon as essential throughout his Lecture. "We think," he says, "that _before_ man can be introduced to the only true process of improvement, he must _first_ have forgiveness of his guilt." What is this "first" step, of pardon, but an "overlooking of man"s guilt"; and what is the second, of "sanctification," but a "restoring of character"; whether we say by "corrective discipline," or the "influence of the Holy Spirit,"
matters not. Is it said that the guilt is not overlooked, if Christ endured its penalty? I ask, again, whether justice regards only the _infliction_ of suffering, or its _quant.i.ty_, without caring about its _direction_? Was it impossible for the stern righteousness of G.o.d freely to forgive the penitent? And how was the injustice of liberating the guilty mended by the torments of the innocent? Here is the verdict against sin: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And how is this verdict executed? The soul that had sinned does _not_ die; and one "that knew no sin" dies instead. And this is called a divine union of _truth_ and _mercy_; being the most precise negation of both, of which any conception can be formed. First, to hang the destinies of all mankind upon a solitary volition of their first parents, and then let loose a diabolic power on that volition to break it down; to vitiate the human const.i.tution in punishment for the fall, and yet continue to demand obedience to the original and perfect moral law; to a.s.sert the absolute inflexibility of that holy law, yet all the while have in view for the offenders a method of escape, which violates every one of its provisions, and makes it all a solemn pretence; to forgive that which is in itself unpardonable, on condition of the suicide of a G.o.d, is to shock and confound all notions of rect.i.tude, without affording even the sublimity of a savage grandeur. This will be called "blasphemy"; and it is so; but the blasphemy is not in the _words_, but in the _thing_.
Unitarians are falsely accused of representing G.o.d as "overlooking man"s guilt." They hold, that _no guilt is overlooked till it is eradicated from the soul_; and that pardon proceeds _pari pa.s.su_ with sanctification.
[15] Mr. Buddicom has the following note, intimating his approbation of this rendering: "Some of the best commentators have connected e? t?
a?t?? a?at?, not with d?a t?? p?ste??, but with ??ast????? and, accordingly, Bishop Bull renders the pa.s.sage, "Quem proposuit Deus placamentum in sanguine suo per fidem.""--_Lecture on Atonement_, p.
496.
[16] John i. 29. For an example of the use of the word "_world_" to denote the Gentiles, see Rom. xi. 12-15; where St. Paul, speaking of the rejection of the Messiah by the Jews, declares that it is only temporary; and as it has given occasion for the adoption of the Gentiles, so will this lead, by ultimate reaction, to the readmission of Israel; a consummation in which the Gentiles should rejoice without boasting or high-mindedness. "If," he says, "the fall of them (the Israelites) be the riches of _the world_ (the Gentiles), and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness! For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the Apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify my office; if, by any means, I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh (the Jews), and save some of them; for if the casting away of them be the _reconciling of the world_, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?"
[17] Acts xx. 28. It is hardly necessary to say, that the reading of our common version, "_church of G.o.d_," wants the support of the best authorities; and that, with the general consent of the most competent critics, Griesbach reads "_church of the Lord_."
[18] Gal. iii. 13. Even here the Apostle cannot refrain from adverting to his _Gentile_ interpretation of the cross; for he adds,--"that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ."
[19] In three or four instances, it is true, a sin-offering is demanded from the perpetrator of some act of _moral wrong_. But in all these cases a suitable punishment was ordained also; a circ.u.mstance inconsistent with the idea, that the expiation procured remission of guilt. The _sacrifice_ appended to the _penal infliction_ indicates the twofold character of the act,--at once a _ceremonial defilement_ and a _crime_; and requiring, to remedy the one, an atoning rite,--to chastise the other, a judicial penalty. See an excellent tract by Rev.
Edward Higginson, of Hull, ent.i.tled, "The Sacrifice of Christ scripturally and rationally interpreted," particularly pp. 30-34.
[20] Heb. vii. 27. Let the reader look carefully again into the verbal and logical structure of this verse; and then ask himself whether it is not as plain as words can make it, that Christ "once for all"
_offered up_ "_a sacrifice first for_ HIS OWN SINS, and _then for the people"s_." The argument surely is this: "He need not do the _daily_ thing, for he has done it _once for all_; the never-finished work of other pontiffs, a single act of his achieved." The sentiment loses its meaning, unless that which he did once is _the selfsame thing_ which they did always: and what was that?--the offering by the high-priest of a sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the people"s. With what propriety, then, can Mr. Buddicom ask us this question: "Why is he said to have excelled the Jewish high-priest in _not_ offering a sacrifice for himself?" I submit, that no such thing is said; but that, on the contrary, it is positively affirmed that Christ _did_ offer sacrifice for his own sins. So plain indeed is this, that Trinitarian commentators are forced to slip in a restraining word and an additional sentiment into the last clause of the verse. Thus Pierce: "Who has no need, like the priests under the law, from time to time to offer up sacrifice first for his own sins, and after that for the people"s. For this _latter_ he did once for all when he offered up himself; _and as to the former, he had no occasion to do it at all_."
And no doubt the writer of the Epistle _ought_ to have said just this, if he intended to draw the kind of contrast which orthodox theology requires, between Jesus and the Hebrew priests. He limits the opposition between them to _one_ particular;--the Son of Aaron made offering _daily_,--the Son of G.o.d _once for all_. Divines must add _another_ particular;--that the Jewish priest atoned for _two_ cla.s.ses of sins, his own and the people"s,--Christ for the people"s only.
Suppose for a moment that this was the author"s design; that the word "_this_," instead of having its proper grammatical antecedent, may be restrained, as in the commentary cited above, to the sacrifice for _the people"s_ sins; then the word "daily" may be left out, without disturbance to the other substantive particular of the contrast: the verse will then stand thus: "Who needeth not, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice for his own sins; _for_ he offered up sacrifice for the people"s sins, when he offered up himself." Here, all the reasoning is obviously gone, and the sentence becomes a mere inanity: to make sense, we want, instead of the latter clause, the sentiment of Pierce,--_for_ "he had no occasion to do this at all." This, however, is an invention of the expositor, more jealous for his author"s orthodoxy than for his composition. I think it necessary to add, that, by leaving out the most emphatic word in this verse (the word _once_) Mr. Buddicom has suppressed the author"s ant.i.thesis, and favored the suggestion of his own. I have no doubt that this was unconsciously done; but it shows how system rubs off the angles of Scriptural difficulties.--I subjoin a part of the note of John Crell on the pa.s.sage: "De pontifice Christo loquitur. Quid vero fecit semel Christus? quid aliud, quam quod Pontifex antiquus stata die quotannis[21] faciebat? Princ.i.p.aliter autem hic non de oblatione pro peccatis populi; sed de oblatione pro ipsius Pontificis peccatis agi, ex superioribus, ipsoque rationum contextu manifestum est."
The sins which his sacrifice cancelled must have been of the same order in the people and in himself; certainly therefore not moral in their character, but ceremonial. His death was, for himself no less than for his Hebrew disciples, a commutation for the Mosaic ordinances. Had he not died, he must have continued under their power; "were he on earth, he would not be a priest," or have "obtained that more excellent ministry," by which he clears away, in the courts above, all possibilities of ritual sin below, and himself emerges from legal to spiritual relations.
[21] This is obviously the meaning of ?a? ?e?a? in this pa.s.sage; _from time to time_, and in the case alluded to, _yearly_; not, as in the common version, _daily_.
[22] Mr. Buddicom"s Lecture on the Atonement, p. 471.
[23] See Mr. M"Neile"s Lecture, pp. 302, 311, 328, 340, 341.
[24] Mr. M"Neile"s Lecture, p. 338.
MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.
_The Nature of the Atonement, and its Relation to Remission of Sins and Eternal Life._ By JOHN M"LEOD CAMPBELL. Cambridge: Macmillan & Co. 1856.
This is a strange book. A Greek would have hated it. A Puritan would have found it savory, even where it was unsound. Rosenkranz, who has written on the _aesthetik des Ha.s.slichen_, would have been thankful for such a fund of ill.u.s.tration. c.u.mbrous, tiresome, monotonous, it has few attractions for the natural man, who may have a weakness in favor of pure English and nice grammar. It despises the graces of carnal literature, and treats all the color and music of language as the Roundheads treated a cathedral, silencing the "box of whistles" and smashing the "mighty big angels in gla.s.s." And yet, if you can get over its grating way of delivering itself, you will find it no barbaric product, but the utterance of a deep and practised thinker, charged with the richest experiences of the Christian life, and resolute to clear them from every tangle of fiction or pretence.
Beneath the uncouth form there is not only severe truth, but great tenderness and beauty,--a fine apprehension of the real inner strife of tempted men, and an intense faith in an open way of escape from it, without compromise of any sanct.i.ty. The author, though not tuneful in his speech, has the gifts of a true prophet; and often enables one to fancy what Isaiah might have been if he had heard nothing but the bagpipe, and had set his "burdens" to its drone. Whether Mr.
Campbell"s style has been formed north of the Tweed, we know not. In any case, it is trained in the school of Calvinism; is untouched therefore by any feeling for art; and runs on with a sort of extemporaneous habit, insufficiently relieved by occasional flashes of grotesque and forcible expression. It is only in exterior aspect, however, that he presents the features of the rugged old Calvinism: and though the first-born of that system and its younger sons are distinguished like Isaac"s children, "Esau is a hairy man, and Jacob is a smooth man," yet no true patriarch of the school can be so blind as not to see beneath our author"s goat-skin dress, and know that he is other than the heir. In fact, the peculiarity of this work as a theological phenomenon is, that it is a destruction of Calvinism without any revolt from it,--an escape from it through its own interior. Its postulates are not denied. Its phraseology is not rejected. Its statement of the problem of redemption is in the main accepted. Its provision for the solution,--the Incarnation of the Son,--is sacredly preserved. Yet these elements are put into such play as to make it checkmate itself on its own area. Its definitions are shown to be suicidal; and its sharp-edged logic is used to cut through the ligaments that constrain and shape it.
We have spoken first of the _style_ of this book, because it strikes the reader at the outset, and is not unlikely to repel him if he is not warned. Of one other feature, derived from the same school, we must say a word, to qualify the admiration and grat.i.tude which we shall then ungrudgingly tender to the author. In common with all the great masters of the "Evangelical" school, he is too much at home with the Divine economy; knows too well how the same thing appears from the finite and the infinite point of view; can tell too surely how a mixed nature, both divine and human, would feel on looking from both ends at once; and altogether goes with too close a search to the "secret place of the Most High." Not that he speaks unworthily on these high themes; we have nothing truer to suggest, except more silence. But we must confess that when a teacher lays down the conditions of divine possibility, expatiates psychologically on the sentiments of the Father and the Son, and seems as though he had been allowed a peep into the autobiography of G.o.d, we shrink from the sharp outlines, and feel that we shall believe more if we are shown less. With so many soundings taken, and so many channels buoyed, the sense of the sh.o.r.eless sea is gone, and we find only a port of traffic, with coast-lights instead of stars. The temptation to this theological map-making has always proved peculiarly strong among the disciples of Geneva: and the reason is to be found in the very nature of the problem they have attempted to resolve. Religion has two foci to determine,--the divine nature and the human. Athanasius and the Greek influence fixed the doctrine of the G.o.dhead: Augustine and the Latin Church defined the spiritual state of man. The one, it has been said, produced a theology; the other, an anthropology. In the construction of the former, it is obvious that the appeal could be made only to positive authority, whether of Scripture or the Church. On the Nicene question no one could pretend to have personal insight or scientific data: it must be decided by arbitrary vote on impressions of testimony. But for establishing a doctrine of humanity, the living resources of consciousness and experience were present with perpetual witness; every proposition advanced could be confronted with its corresponding reality: the disciple could not help carrying the dogma inward to the test of his self-knowledge. The scheme of the Trinity partook of the nature of a _Gnosis_, which dwelt apart from the stir of phenomena, and, having once set and crystallized, could only be hung up for preservation. The dogmas of human depravity and helplessness partook of the nature of a _Science_, coming in contact with the facts of life and character at every point. Moral experience had something to say to them: and unless they could keep good terms with it, they could not hope to hold their ground. Hence the Augustinian divines have been constrained to seek a _philosophy_ of religion, and to collate the text of their Scriptural system with the running paraphrase of actual life. No writers have contributed so much to lay bare the inmost springs of human action and emotion; have tracked with so much subtilty the windings of guilty self-deception, or so found the secret sorrow that lies at the core of every unconsecrated joy. If we must concede to the Roman Catholic casuists and the problems of the confessional the merit of creating an ethical Art embodied in systems of rules, we owe to the deeper Evangelical spirit, whether in its action or its reaction, the ground-lines of an ethical Philosophy;--or, if you deny that such a thing as yet exists, at least the true idea and undying quest of it. The disciples of Augustine, belonging to an anthropological school, have been naturally distinguished by a reflective and psychologic habit.
If it was the function of the Greek period to settle the doctrine of G.o.d, and of its Latin successor to define the nature of man, it was the aim of the _Reformation_, leaving these two extremes undisturbed, to find the way of mediation between them. So long as the great sacerdotal Church, living continuator of Christ"s presence, was intrusted with the business, private Christians wanted no theory on the subject; all nice questions went into the ecclesiastical closet and disappeared. But as soon as ever the hierarchy fell out of this position, there was an immense void left to be filled. On the one hand, Infinite Holiness, quite alienated; on the other, Human Pravity, quite helpless: how was any approximation to be rendered conceivable? True, the great original Mediation on Calvary, which the papal priesthood pretended to prolong, remained; for it was fixed in history. But it lay a great way off, a fact in the old past; and its intervention was required to-day by Melancthon, and Carlstadt, and a whole generation quite remote from it.
How was its power to be fetched into the present? how applied to men walking about in Wittenberg or Zurich? This was the problem which flew open by the cancelling of the Romish credentials: and the various answers to it const.i.tute the body of Protestant theology. In one point they all agree, that, to replace the priestly media that are thrust out, _Personal Faith_ is the element that must be brought in. In what way this subjective state of the individual mind draws or appropriates the efficacy of the Incarnation; in what _order_ the redeeming process runs among the three given terms,--the alienated Father, the mediating Son, the believing disciple; whether any part of the process is moral and real, or all is legal and virtual;--these are questions which the Reformation has found it easier to open than to close. But answer them as you will, they entangle your thoughts in the mutual relations and sentiments of three persons; and cannot be discussed without establishing some principles of moral psychology, as the common grounds of intercommunion between minds finite and infinite, and dealing with hypothetical problems of divine as well as human casuistry. Hence the inevitable tendency of the doctrine of Mediation to venture on a natural history of the Divine Mind,--to construct a drama of Providence and Grace, with plot too artfully wrought for the free hand of Heaven, and traits too specific and minute for reverent contemplation.
It is deeply instructive to observe the pulsation of religious thought in men. Revealed religion is ever pa.s.sing into natural, and natural returning to re-interpret the revealed. We can almost see the steps by which sacred history was converted into dogma; while dogma, a.s.sumed in turn as the starting-point, is ever producing new readings of the history. This world may be regarded as a _human theatre_, where the Wills of men perform the parts; or as the stage of _Divine agency_, using the visible actors as the executants of an invisible thought.
Its vicissitudes, presented in the former aspect, yield only history; in the latter, give rise to doctrine. Noticed by Tacitus, the life of Christ is a provincial incident of Tiberius"s reign, and his death a judicial act of Pontius Pilate"s government. In the three first Gospels and the book of Acts, the crucifixion is still the act of wicked or misguided men, inflicted on an expostulating victim; not, however, without being _foreseen_ as the appointed precursor of a resurrection. The event is thus in the main simply historical; but with a divine comment which gives it an incipient theological significance. It appears under another aspect in the Gospel of John; there, Christ not only foresaw, but _determined_ his own death: his life "no man taketh it from him," but he "lays it down of himself"; he is not merely the submissive medium, but the spontaneous co-agent of a Divine intent. Finally, in St. Paul,--to whom the person and ministry of Christ were unfamiliar, who, as a disciple of his heavenly life, looked back upon them from a higher point,--the historical aspect almost wholly disappears in the ideal; and the cross becomes the Gospel, the wisdom of G.o.d and the power of G.o.d, the self-sacrifice of the Son the reconciling way to the Father, the very focus and symbol of all the mystery and mercy comprised in humanity. The movement of thought through these successive stages is obvious. An event is at first accepted as it arises. But in proportion as its concrete impression retires, the need becomes more urgent to find its function: instinctive search is made for all those elements, accessories, and effects of it, which promise to bring out its meaning and idea, until at last its doctrine absorbs itself, and enters the human mind as a permanent factor of positive religion. It is thus that the great ant.i.theses, of Law and Gospel, of the Natural and the Spiritual man, of dead Works and living Faith, of self-seeking enmity and self-surrendering reconciliation with G.o.d, have settled upon the consciousness of Christendom, and grown into the very substance of its experience. They have become part of its natural religion. But in this character they may, conversely, be taken as the initiative of a new version of the history whence they sprung. They could not be born into unmixed and formed existence at once; but, like all new affections, must feel their way out of an early indeterminate state, into clear self-apprehension and settled purity. The testimony of the Christian conscience needs time to become articulate and collected. The shadow of human guilt may lie so dark upon the mind, the dawn of the divine holiness may so dazzle the inward vision, that blindness in part may linger for a while; and the eye, in very opening to Christ"s healing touch, may fail to see. Once accustomed to the new light of life, men are no longer occupied with it alone, but find in it a medium for truer discernment of objects around. The special sentiments awakened by the Gospel test themselves afresh, like any other theory, by being fully lived out, and tried as experiments upon the soul. The type of character,--the edition of human nature,--in which they take embodiment, becomes a distinct object of critical appreciation; and while all its deep expressive traits speak for the inner truth whence they are moulded, every mixture of disharmony or defect calls for some revision of idea. In the thirsty spiritual state to which men were reduced on the eve of the Reformation, they drank up with intense eagerness the most turbid supplies of evangelical doctrine. With purer health and finer perception they become aware that not all was water of life; and that coa.r.s.e notions of the nature of justice, the conditions of mercy, and the measurement of sin, were intermixed and must become mere sediment. Cleared of these, the theory is taken back to the facts of revelation, and so washed through them, that they may also emerge as from a sprinkling of regeneration. Through such re-baptism does our author, furnished with a purified conception of "atonement," pa.s.s the history of Christ.
In looking for the whereabouts of the atonement, we are guided, as in search for the pole-star, by two pointers whose indications we are to follow. Its function was double,--to cancel a guilty past, to make a holy future: and it must be of such a nature as to disappoint neither of these conditions. In determining its form, the great anxiety of theologians. .h.i.therto has been to fit it for its _retrospective_ action, and disembarra.s.s the problem of salvation of the burden of acc.u.mulated sin. It is Mr. Campbell"s distinction that he lays the superior stress on its _prospective_ action, and requires that it shall positively heal the sickness of our nature, and evolve thence a real and living righteousness. G.o.d"s moral perfectness could be satisfied with nothing less. If, indeed, He looked on our guilt merely as an obstacle to our "salvation," and desired to remove it as a hinderance out of the way,--if He rather sought a pretext for making us happy than a provision for drawing us to goodness,--then the work of Christ might be so devised as simply to tear out the defiled page of the past, and register an infinite credit not our own, without inherent care for ulterior personal holiness. But were it so, the divine _love_ would amount only to an unrighteous desire for our happiness, and the divine _righteousness_ to an unloving repulsion from our sin. Such spurious a.n.a.lysis corresponds with no reality; and in the truth of things there can be no heavenly affection that is not holy, nor any holiness that is not affectionate.
"While in reference to the not uncommon way of regarding this subject which represents righteousness and holiness as opposed to the sinner"s salvation, and mercy and love as on his side, I freely concede that all the Divine attributes were, in one view, against the sinner, in that they called for the due expression of G.o.d"s wrath against sin in the history of redemption: I believe, on the other hand, that the justice, the righteousness, the holiness of G.o.d, have an aspect according to which they, as well as his mercy, appear as intercessors for man, and crave his salvation. Justice may be contemplated as according to sin its due; and there is in righteousness, as we are conscious to it, what testifies that sin should be miserable. But _justice_, looking at the sinner not simply as the fit subject of punishment, but as existing in a moral condition of unrighteousness, and so its own opposite, must desire that the sinner should cease to be in that condition; should cease to be unrighteous, should become righteous: righteousness in G.o.d craving for righteousness in man, with a craving which the realization of righteousness in man alone can satisfy. So also of holiness. In one view it repels the sinner, and would banish him to outer darkness, because of its repugnance to sin.
In another, it is pained by the continued existence of sin and unholiness, and must desire that the sinner should cease to be sinful.
So that the sinner, conceived of as awakening to the consciousness of his own evil state, and saying to himself, "By sin I have destroyed myself. Is there yet hope for me in G.o.d?"--should hear an encouraging answer, not only from the love and mercy of G.o.d, but also from his very righteousness and holiness. We must not forget, in considering the response that is in conscience to the charge of sin and guilt, that, though the fears which accompany that response are partly the effect of a dawning of light, they also in part arise from remaining darkness. He who is able to interpret the voice of G.o.d within him truly, and with full spiritual intelligence will be found saying, not only, "There is to me cause for fear in the righteousness and holiness of G.o.d," but also, "There is room for hope for me in the Divine righteousness and holiness." And when gathering consolation from the meditation of the name of the Lord, that consolation will be not only, "Surely the Divine mercy desires to see me happy rather than miserable," but also, "Surely the Divine righteousness desires to see me righteous,--the Divine holiness desires to see me holy,--my continuing unrighteous and unholy is as grieving to G.o.d"s righteousness and holiness as my misery through sin is to his pity and love." "Good and righteous is the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners the way which they should choose." "A just G.o.d and a Saviour"; not as the harmony of a seeming opposition, but "a Saviour, _because_ a just G.o.d.""--p. 29.
From this justly-conceived pa.s.sage the characteristics of Mr.
Campbell"s theory may already be divined. He sets his faith on a concrete, living, indivisible G.o.d, whom you can never understand by laying out His abstract attributes one by one, with their separate requirements, and then putting them together again to compute the resultant. He insists on the absolute dominance of a moral and spiritual idea throughout the revealed economy: of this nature is the evil to be met,--sin and estrangement; of this nature is the good to be reached,--righteousness and reconciliation; and only of this nature can be the mediation which effects the change; related upward to the Father and downward to men, in a way accordant with the laws of conscience, and intelligible by its self-light. He craves, therefore, a natural juncture, a real causal nexus, between the several parts of the process, to the exclusion of all forensic fictions and arbitrary scene-shifting and sovereign _tours-de-force_. In short, he will have no tricks pa.s.sed off, no _quasi_-transformations upon the conscience; he feels the moral world to be above the range of mere miracle; any change in it irreducible to its solemn laws would _ipso facto_ fall out of it and become a mere dynamical surprise. Of _physical_ miracle our author avails himself to the full amount; the incarnation of the Son of G.o.d being, with him, as with others, the central fact and essential medium of Christian redemption. But the august power thus _super_naturally set up--the Person at once divine and human--works out his great problem _naturally_, without requiring the suspension of one rule of right, or holding any magical dealings with the character of G.o.d or man. His problem, therefore, is to show how the life and death of Christ--considered as G.o.d in humanity--were fitted, and alone fitted, to blot out the sins of the world before G.o.d, and to introduce among men a new state of real righteousness and eternal life.
The common Evangelical scheme of redemption so far affects to be deduced from certain general principles, and to render the way of redemption _conceivable_, that it is stigmatized as _rationalistic_ by Catholics and Anglicans. It is so, however, only in the sense of hanging well together, and serving the purpose of a _theological Mnemonic_ to those who want a religion ready more than deep. In the higher sense, of occupying any natural ground of reason, it does not earn its reproach. The propositions which it lays down, as to the inability of a holy nature to forgive unless circuitously and with compensation, and as to the commutability of either penal liabilities or moral attributes, are without any support from our primary sentiments of right and wrong, and could be carried out by no sane man in the conduct of life. The doctrine is taught in two princ.i.p.al forms;--the earlier and more exact scheme of "_Satisfaction_,"
elaborated by Anselm of Canterbury, and perfected by Owen and Edwards; and the modern theory of "_Public Justice_," maintained in the writings of Dr. Pye Smith and Dr. Payne, and prevailing wherever the first decadence from the old Calvinism is going on. The first of these prepares its ground by laying down these principles as fundamental;--that the connection between sin and suffering is inviolably secured on the veracity of G.o.d; that "when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants," and have only rendered our strict due; that, far from "doing all," we have done and can do nothing, except acc.u.mulate guilt, which, measure it as you will,--by the majesty of the authority defied, or the mult.i.tude of the offenders and their sins,--is practically of infinite amount. Here, then, is a case of utter despair: infinite debt; nothing to pay; remission impossible; punishment eternal; death unattainable. But we are brought into the labyrinth on one side, to emerge from it on the other. While _men_ can only multiply demerit, there are natures conceivable to which merit is possible. A Divine Person, laying aside a blessedness inherently his, and a.s.suming sorrow not his own, and doing this out of a pure love, fulfils the conditions; and when the Son takes on him our humanity, the act, carried out unto the end, has a merit in it which in amount is a full set-off against the guilt of men. Still, this only leaves us with two opposite funds--of infinite good desert and infinite ill desert--which sit apart and unrelated. In due course, the one ought to have a boundless reward, the other a boundless punishment. But to render his affluence available for our debt, the Son consummates his self-sacrifice, subst.i.tutes himself for us as the object of retribution, and dies once for all,--one infinite death for many finite hereafters of woe. The Father"s justice is satisfied; the allotment of suffering to sin has been accurately observed; His desire to pardon is released from its restraint. Having dealt with the person of the Son as if it were mankind, He may deal with mankind as if they were the Son, and look upon them as clothed with a perfect obedience.
The wholly artificial structure of this scheme, which is its greatest condemnation, has been its chief security. It is by approaching within conducting-distance of reality, that a doctrine elicits resistance and meets the stroke of natural objection; and if it only keeps far enough aloft in the metaphysic atmosphere, it may float along unarrested from zone to zone of time. Men know not what to make of propositions so much out of their sphere, so evasive of any real encounter with their consciousness, and are apt to let them pa.s.s for their very strangeness" sake. But surely we are bound to demand for them some "response of conscience," and, with Mr. Campbell, to demur to such of them as will not bear this test. Limiting ourselves to the _mediatorial_ part of the theory, we will a.s.sume the problem of moral evil to be correctly stated, and only ask whether, from the supposed case of despair, the offered solution affords any real exit of relief.
Nor do we a.s.sume this for argument"s sake alone. We can perfectly understand any remorseful sense, however deep, of human unworthiness; any appreciative reverence, however intense, of Christ"s self-sacrifice. Set the one under the shadow of the Father"s infinite disapproval, the other in the light of His infinite complacency; so far we go; there let them lie. But what next? Here, on the left hand, is Sin with its need of punishment; there, on the right, a perfect Holiness with its merits. While they are thus spread beneath the Father"s eye, they break up their inviolable alliances; each moral cause crosses over and takes the opposite effect. If such change took place, the _seat_ of the fact must be sought partly in the consciousness of Christ, partly in the Father"s view of things. In reference to the first, must we say that the Crucified _felt himself_ under Divine wrath and punishment, and esteemed that wrath to be _just_,--the fitting expression of his own inward _remorse_? If so, can we affirm that his consciousness was veracious? or did he not feel, in regard to _others"_ sins, sentiments and experiences that are false except in relation to _one"s own_? And, ascending to the other point of view, shall we affirm that the Father _saw sin_ in the Son and was angry with him; so that, in the hour of sublimest obedience, the words ceased to be true, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"? And on the other hand, what is meant when it is said that beneath the Divine eye men in their guilt are seen "clothed with"
a perfect righteousness? Is such an aspect of them _true_? or is it akin to an ocular deception? We seem to be reduced to this dilemma;--the change of apparent moral place implied in "imputation"
is either a faithful representation, or a _quasi_-representation, of the reality of things. If the latter, then the Divine consciousness is illusory, and the world is administered on a fiction; if the former, then the moral law, in a.s.suring us of the personal and inalienable nature of sin, gives a false report, and there is nothing to prevent a circulating medium of merit from pa.s.sing current through the universe.
Mr. Campbell"s deference for the great advocates of this marvellous doctrine does not obstruct his perception of its difficulties.
"I freely confess," he says, "that to my own mind it is a relief, not only intellectually, but also morally and spiritually, to see that there is no foundation for the conceptions that when Christ suffered for us, the just for the unjust, he suffered either "as by imputation unjust,"
or "as if he were unjust." I admit that _intellectually_ it is a relief not to be called to conceive to myself a double consciousness, both in the Father and in the Son, such as seems implied in the Father"s seeing the Son at one and the same time, though it were but for a moment, as the well-beloved Son, to whom infinite favor should go forth, and also as worthy, in respect of the imputation of our sins to him, of being the object of infinite wrath, he being the object of such wrath accordingly; and in the Son"s knowing himself the well-beloved of the Father, and yet having the consciousness of being personally, through imputation of our sin, the object of the Father"s wrath. I feel it intellectually a relief neither to be called to conceive this, nor to a.s.sume it as an unconceived mystery. Still more do I feel it _morally_ and _spiritually_ a relief, not to be required to recognize legal fictions as having a place in this high region, in which the awful realities of sin and holiness, spiritual death and spiritual life, are the objects of a transaction between the Father and the Son in the Eternal Spirit."--p.
310.
The second form of mediatorial doctrine, to which we have referred as the modern type of Calvinism, has arisen from the endeavor to evade some of these perplexities. The riddle that haunts its teachers is still the same,--how it can become possible to show mercy to sinners; but the difficulty in the way is differently conceived, and therefore met by a different expedient. It is not an obstacle in G.o.d, arising from his personal sentiment of equity, which must be satisfied; but springs out of the necessity of consistent rect.i.tude, and adherence to law in his administrative government. The Father himself, it is intimated, would be quite willing to forgive, were there nothing to consult except his own disposition. But it would never do to play fast and loose with the criminal law of the universe, and, notwithstanding the most solemn enactments, let off delinquents on mere repentance, as if nothing were the matter beyond a personal affront. Something more is due to _Public Justice_. If the due course of retribution is to be turned aside, it must be in such a way and at such a cost as to proclaim aloud the awfulness of the guilt remitted. This, we are told, is accomplished by the sufferings and death of the Son of G.o.d, which were subst.i.tuted for our threatened punishment, not as its quant.i.tative equal paid to the Father, but as a moral equivalent in the eyes of men. Their validity is thus conceived to depend by no means on their particular measure, but on the meritorious obedience of love which was their sustaining and animating soul, and which, being on the scale of a Divine nature, gave infinite value to the smallest sorrow. Within the casket of his grief was held such a priceless righteousness, that, on beholding it, the Father might regard it as an adequate plea for acts of mercy to sinners.
He does not indeed impute to them the actual moral perfectness of Christ, so as to see them invested with it, any more than he imputed to Christ their guilt, and frowned on Calvary. It is the _effects_ only of that holiness which he imputes; he offers to men the benefits of it, without reckoning it as really theirs, and giving them the _legal standing_ which its possession would bestow.
No doubt this scheme gets rid of the penal mensuration and moral conveyancing of the older Calvinism. It shifts also the bar to free mercy away from the inner personality of G.o.d, and sets it in his outer government. But when we again attempt to seize the _mediatorial expedient_, what is it? It is said to be a display of the enormity of that guilt which needs to be redeemed at such a cost. But is that need _real_? Have we not been told that it has no place in G.o.d? Does he then hang out a profession that is not true to the kernel of things, but only a show-off for impression"s sake? If Eternal Justice in its inner essence does _not_ require the expiation provided, why in its outer manifestation pretend that it _does_? As nothing can become right for "the sake of good example" that is not right in itself, so is "Public Justice," unsustained by the sincere heart of reality, a mere dramatic imposture. Mr. Campbell has supplied us with a forcible statement of this truth:--
"Surely rectoral or public justice, if it is to have any moral basis,--any basis other than expediency,--must rest upon, and refer to, distributive or absolute justice. In other words, unless there be a rightness in connecting sin with misery, and righteousness with blessedness, looking at individual cases simply in themselves, I cannot see that there is a rightness in connecting them as a rule of moral government. "An English judge once said to a criminal before him: You are condemned to be transported, not because you have stolen these goods, but that goods may not be stolen." (_Jenkyns_, 175, 176.) This is quoted in ill.u.s.tration of the position, that "the death of Christ is an honorable ground for remitting punishment," because "his sufferings answer the same ends as the punishment of the sinner." I do not recognize any harmony between this sentiment of the English judge and the voice of an awakened conscience on the subject of sin. It is just because he has sinned and deserves punishment, and not because he says to himself that G.o.d is a moral governor, and must punish him to deter others, that the wrath of G.o.d against sin seems so terrible,--and as just as terrible."--p. 79.
Even were the expression backed up by reality, we cannot but ask about the fitness of the medium for the thought to be conveyed. G.o.d"s horror at guilt is publicly proclaimed by the most awful crime in human history! To explain the difficulty of letting off the offender, he exhibits the anguish of the innocent! The spectacle would seem in danger of suggesting the wrong lesson to the terrified observer,--of raising to intensity the doubt whether, in a world that gives its silver to a Judas, its judgment-seat to a Pilate, and the cross to the Son of G.o.d, any Providence can care for rect.i.tude at all. Even when the death of Christ is contemplated exclusively as a _self_-sacrifice, without remembering the guilt which compa.s.sed it, we are at a loss to understand how it could be "an honorable ground for remitting punishment." What difference did it make in the previous reasons of the Divine government, so that penalties right before should be less right afterwards? If Catiline were undergoing his just retribution at the date of the Last Supper, what plea was there for releasing him at or before the date of the resurrection? That obedience rendered and suffering endured by one soul should dispense with the liabilities of another, is a supposition at variance with the personal and inalienable nature of all sin; and to say that G.o.d "imputes the _effects_" of Christ"s holiness to those who are not partakers in the cause, is to accuse the Divine government of total disregard to character and evasion of moral reality. The old Calvinism represents the Father as having an illusory _perception_ of men, _as if_ they were clad in a divine righteousness. The new Calvinism represents him as having indeed a true perception of their unrighteousness, but, notwithstanding this, falsifying the truth _in action_, and proceeding as if the facts were quite other than they are. Inasmuch as unveracious vision is intellectual, while unveracious practice is moral, the younger doctrine appears to us a positive degradation of the elder, not only in logical completeness, but in religious worth.
Both of them make the redeeming economy proceed upon a _fiction_; but there is all the difference between unconscious and conscious fiction; between an inner "satisfaction" brought about by an optical displacement of merit, and an outward "exhibition" set up for the sake of impression. The theory of Owen, stern as it is, bears the stamp of resolute meaning consistently carried through into the inmost recess of the Divine nature. The newer doctrine is the production of a platform age, which obtrudes considerations of _effect_ even into its thoughts of G.o.d and his government, and can scarce refrain from turning the universe itself into pathos and _ad captandum_ display.
With good reason, therefore, does our author feel that this whole subject is in need of reconsideration. His own doctrine diverges from its predecessors at a very early point, and is seen at its source in the following proposition of Edwards, as cited by Mr. Campbell:--
"In contending that sin must be punished with an infinite punishment, President Edwards says, "that G.o.d could not be just to himself without this vindication, unless there could be such a thing as a repentance, humiliation, and sorrow for this (viz. sin) proportionable to the greatness of the Majesty despised,"--for that there must needs be "either an equivalent punishment, or an equivalent sorrow and repentance"; "so," he proceeds, "sin must be punished with an infinite punishment"; thus a.s.suming that the alternative of "an equivalent sorrow and repentance" was out of the question. But, upon the a.s.sumption of that identification of himself with those whom he came to save, on the part of the Saviour, which is the foundation of Edwards"s whole system, it may at the least be said, that the Mediator had the two alternatives open to his choice,--either to endure for sinners an equivalent punishment, or to experience in reference to their sin, and present to G.o.d on their behalf, an adequate sorrow and repentance. Either of these courses should be regarded by Edwards as equally securing the vindication of the majesty and justice of G.o.d in pardoning sin."--p. 136.
The side of the alternative which Edwards abandoned, our author takes up and follows out. The work of Christ, as a ground of remission, consisted in the offering on behalf of humanity of an adequate repentance. Adequate it could not have been but for his Divine nature; which attaches to his holy sorrow an infinite moral value, to balance the infinite heinousness of the sin deplored. The only reason why human penitence does not in itself avail to restore, lies in its imperfect purity and depth. Through the cloud of evil, and with the eye of self, we are disqualified for true discernment of sin as it is: both the limits of a finite nature, and the delusions of a tempted and fallen one, hinder us from appreciating the measure of our guilt and misery. Even when our better mind rea.s.serts itself, our very compunction carries in it many a speck of ill, and our repentance needs to be repented of. But were it not for this, there would be "more atoning worth in one tear of the true and perfect sorrow which the memory of the past would awaken," "than in endless ages of penal woe." It is not the inefficacy, but the impossibility, of due penitence that const.i.tutes our fatal disability; to be relieved from which we need to be taken out of ourselves, to be identified with a perfect spirit; our humanity must cease to be human, and become one with the Divine nature. This is precisely the condition which realized itself in Christ. As G.o.d in humanity, he had perfect sympathy with the holiness of one sphere, and the infirmities of the other; he saw the whole amount of the world"s moral estrangement, not only with infinite pity for its misery, but with infinite horror at its guilt. He could both make a plenary confession for us, and respond unreservedly to the Father"s righteous judgment; could bear our burden on his heart before heaven, and utter the _Miserere_ of holy sorrow, which our most plaintive cry can never approach. This is the true nature of his sufferings. He "made his soul an offering for sin," yielded it up to be filled with a sense of our real aspect beneath the Omniscient eye, and an Amen to its condemning look. Hence his sorrows had nothing _penal_ in them, any more than the tears of a devout parent over a prodigal child are penal. They are incident to that att.i.tude of soul which a perfect nature cannot but have in the presence of a brother"s sin. They are altogether moral and spiritual; and their efficacy as an expiation is that of true repentance; expressing at once our entire confession, acceptance of the Father"s just displeasure, and sympathy with his compa.s.sionate grieving at our alienation.
At the same time, this mere retrospective confession would not of itself avail, were there no better hope for the future of mankind. But our Mediator"s own experience in humanity, his consciousness of intimate peace and communion with the Father, opened to him the other side of our nature, a.s.sured him of its secret capacity for good, and filled him with hope in the very moment of contrition. As his sympathy could have fellowship with our temptations, so could ours have fellowship with his righteousness; and the light of Divine love that rested actually on himself was thereby a possibility for the universal human soul, and was already hovering round with longing to descend. It was on the strength of this a.s.surance that his intercession on our behalf was presented; it would never have pleaded for indemnity in relation to the past, but as the prelude to a real righteousness, a true partnership in his life of filial harmony with G.o.d. The validity of his transaction on our behalf consisted in its perfect seizure of the whole reality, its entire "response to the mind of the Father in relation to men"; sorrow for their estrangement, conviction of their possible return, and desire to draw them into the spirit of genuine Sonship.
It was needful, then,--so we conceive our author"s meaning,--that the sentiments of G.o.d towards the world"s sin and misery should quit their absolute position, and should come and take their station in humanity; and from that field should turn their gaze and expression upward to meet the Father"s downward and accordant look. As this "Amen of the Son to the mind of the Father" const.i.tutes the essence of the atonement on the Divine side, so does it consist on the human side in "the Amen of each individual soul to the Amen of the Son." The reproduction in us of the filial spirit of Christ,--his confession, his pleading, his trust,--is our fellowship with him and reconciliation with G.o.d.
"This is saving faith,--true righteousness,--being the living action, and true and right movement of the spirit of the individual man in the light of eternal life. And the certainty that G.o.d has accepted that perfect and divine Amen as uttered by Christ in humanity is necessarily accompanied by the peaceful a.s.surance that, in uttering, in whatever feebleness, a true Amen to that high Amen, the individual who is yielding himself to the spirit of Christ to have it uttered in him is accepted of G.o.d. This Amen in man is the due response to that word, "Be ye reconciled to G.o.d"; for the gracious and Gospel character of which word, as the tenderest pleading that can be addressed to the most sin-burdened spirit, I have contended above. This Amen is sonship; for the Gospel call, "Be ye reconciled to G.o.d," when heard in the light of the knowledge that "G.o.d made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of G.o.d in him," is understood to be the call to each one of us on the part of the Father of our spirits, "My son, give me thine heart," addressed to us on the ground of that work by which the Son had declared the Father"s name, that the love wherewith the Father hath loved him may be in us, and he in us. In the light itself of that Amen to the mind of the Father in relation to man which shines to us in the atonement, we see the _righteousness of G.o.d in accepting the atonement_, and in that same light the Amen of the individual human spirit to that divine Amen of the Son of G.o.d is seen to be what the Divine righteousness will necessarily acknowledge as the _end of the atonement accomplished_."--p. 225.
In this view, it is not the rescue from punishment, not any favorable change in our legal standing, not any imputed righteousness, that Christ"s mediation obtains, but a real transformation of soul and character through the divine infection and infusion of his own filial spirit. Only in so far as his mind thus spreads to us are we united to him, or in any way partakers of his gift of life. Personal alienation can have no reversal but in personal return; nor can anything "extraneous to the nature of the Divine will itself, to which we are to be reconciled, have part in reconciling us to that will." The fear of h.e.l.l is not repentance; the a.s.surance of heaven is not salvation; nor under any modification can the desire of safety, or the consciousness of its attainment, const.i.tute the least approach to holiness. The good alone can touch the springs of goodness; and the divine and trustful life of Christ must speak to us on its own account, and win us by its own power, or not at all. Not that it acts on us merely in the way of _example_. We do not so stand apart from him in our independent individuality, that by an external imitation we can copy him, and become, as it were, each another Christ, repeating in ourselves his offering of propitiation. He is the Vine, of which we are the branches. The sap is from him, drawn through the eternal root of righteousness, and does but flow as a derived life into us. The Son of G.o.d is not a mere historical personage, to be contemplated at a distance in the past, but ever with us in the power of an endless life; still succoring us when we are tempted, and ministering to conscience a present help and peace. It is not, therefore, by _following_ him, but by _abiding in_ him, that we have our fellowship in his harmony with G.o.d.