I. It is inconsistent with itself.

(1.) In its manner of treating the principles of natural religion.

Our faith in the infinite benevolence of God is represented as

destitute of adequate support from the testimony of nature. It

requires, we are assured, the suppression of a mass of appearances,

that would scare it away in an instant, were it to venture into their

presence; and is a dream of sickly and effeminate minds, whose belief

is the inward growth of amiable sentimentality, rather than a genuine

production from God's own facts. The appeal to the order and

magnificence of creation, to the structures and relations of the

inorganic, the vegetable, the animal, the spiritual forms, that fill

the ascending ranks of this visible and conscious universe;--to the

arrangements which make it a blessing to be born, far more than a

suffering to die,--which enable us to extract the relish of life from

its toils, the affections of our nature from its sufferings, the

triumphs of goodness from its temptations;--to the seeming plan of

general progress, which elicits truth by the self-destruction of

error, and by the extinction of generations gives perpetual

rejuvenescence to the world;--this appeal, which is another name for

the scheme of natural religion, is dismissed with scorn; and sin and

sorrow and death are flung in defiance across our path,--barriers

which we must remove, ere we can reach the presence of a benignant

God. Come with us, it is said, and listen to the wail of the sick

infant; look into the dingy haunts where poverty moans its life away;

bend down your ear to the accursed hum that strays from the busy hives

of guilt; spy into the hold of the slave-ship; from the factory follow

the wasted child to the gin-shop first, and then to the cellar called

its home; or look even at your own tempted and sin-bound souls, and

your own perishing race, snatched off into the dark by handfuls

through the activity of a destroying God; and tell us, did our

benevolent Creator make a creature and a world like this? A Calvinist

who puts this question is playing with fire. But I answer the question

explicitly: All these things we have met steadily, and face to face;

in full view of them, we have taken up our faith in the goodness of

God; and in full view of them we will hold fast that faith. Nor is it

just or true to affirm, that our system hides these evils, or that our

practice refuses to grapple with them. And if you confess that these

ills of life would be too much for your natural piety, if you declare,

that these rugged foundations and tempestuous elements of Providence

would starve and crush your confidence in God, while ours strikes its

roots in the rock, and throws out its branches to brave the storm, are

you entitled to taunt us with a faith of puny growth? Meanwhile, we

willingly assent to the principle which this appeal to evil is

designed to establish; that, with much apparent order, there is some

apparent disorder in the phenomena of the world; that from the latter,

by itself, we should be unable to infer any goodness and benevolence

in God; and that, were not the former clearly the predominant result

of natural laws, the character of the Great Cause of all things would

be involved in agonizing gloom. The mass of physical and moral evil we

do not profess fully to explain; we think that in no system whatever

is there any approach to an explanation; and we are accustomed to

touch on that dread subject with the humility of filial trust, not

with the confidence of dogmatic elucidation.

Surely the fall of our first parents, I shall be reminded, gives the

requisite solution. The disaster which then befell the human race has

changed the primeval constitution of things; introduced mortality and

all the infirmities of which it is the result; introduced sin, and all

the seeds of vile affections which it compels us to inherit; introduced

also the penalties of sin, visible in part on this scene of life, and

developing themselves in another in anguish everlasting. Fresh from the

hand of his Creator, man was innocent, happy, and holy; and he it is,

not God, who has deformed the world with guilt and grief.

Now, _as a statement of fact_, all this may or may not be true. Of this

I say nothing. But who does not see that, _as an explanation_, it is

inconsistent with itself, partial in its application, and leaves matters

incomparably worse than it found them? It is inconsistent with itself;

for Adam, perfectly pure and holy as he is reputed to have been, gave

the only proof that could exist of his being neither, by succumbing to

the first temptation that came in his way; and though finding no

enjoyment but in the contemplation of God, gave himself up to the first

advances of the Devil. Never surely was a reputation for sanctity so

cheaply won. The canonizations of the Romish Calendar have been

curiously bestowed on beings sufficiently remote from just ideas of

excellence; but usually there is _something_ to be affirmed of them,

legendary or otherwise, which, _if true_, might justify a momentary

admiration. But our first parent was not laid even under this necessity,

to obtain a glory greater than canonization; he had simply to do

nothing, except to fall, in order to be esteemed the most perfectly holy

of created minds. Most partial, too, is this theory in its application;

for disease and hardship, and death unmerited as the infant's, afflict

the lower animal creation. Is this, too, the result of the fall? If so,

it is an _unredeemed_ effect; if not, it presses on the benevolence of

the Maker, and, by the physical analogies which connect man with the

inferior creatures, forces on us the impression, that his corporeal

sufferings have an original source not dissimilar from theirs. And

again, this explanation only serves to make matters worse than before.

For how puerile is it to suppose that men will rest satisfied with

tracing back their ills to Adam, and refrain from asking who was Adam's

cause! And then comes upon us at once the ancient dilemma about evil;

was it a mistake, or was it malignity, that created so poor a creature

as our progenitor, and staked on so precarious a will the blessedness of

a race and the well-being of a world? So far, this theory, falsely and

injuriously ascribed to Christianity, would leave us where we were: but

it carries us into deeper and gratuitous difficulties, of which natural

religion knows nothing, by appending eternal consequences to Adam's

transgression; a large portion of which, after the most sanguine

extension of the efficacy of the atonement, must remain unredeemed. So

that if, under the eye of naturalism, the world, with its generations

dropping into the grave, must appear (as we heard it recently

described[13]) like the populous precincts of some castle, whose

governor called his servants, after a brief indulgence of liberty and

peace, into a dark and inscrutable dungeon, never to return or be seen

again, the only new feature which this theory introduces into the

prospect is this: that the interior of that cavernous prison-house is

disclosed; and while a few of the departed are seen to have emerged into

a fairer light, and to be traversing greener fields, and sharing a more

blessed liberty than they knew before, the vast multitude are discerned

in the gripe of everlasting chains and the twist of unimaginable

torture. And all this infliction is a penal consequence of a first

ancestor's transgression! Singular spectacle to be offered in

vindication of the character of God!

We are warned, however, not to start back from this representation, or

to indulge in any rash expression at the view which it gives of the

justice of the Most High; for that, beyond all doubt, parallel instances

occur in the operations of nature; and that, if the system deduced from

Scripture accords with that which is in action in the creation, there

arises a strong presumption that both are from the same Author. The

arrangement which is the prime subject of objection in the foregoing

theory, viz. the vicarious transmission of consequences from acts of

vice and virtue, is said to be familiar to our observation as a _fact_;

and ought, therefore, to present no difficulties in the way of the

admission of a _doctrine_. Is it not obvious, for example, that the

guilt of a parent may entail disease and premature death on his child,

or even remoter descendants? And if it be consistent with the Divine

perfections that the innocent should suffer for others' sins at the

distance of one generation, why not at the distance of a thousand? The

guiltless victim is not more completely severed from identity with Adam,

than he is from identity with his own father. My reply is brief: I admit

both the fact and the analogy; but the fact is of the exceptional kind,

from which, by itself, I could not infer the justice or the benevolence

of the Creator; and which, were it of large and prevalent amount, I

could not even reconcile with these perfections. If then you take it

out of the list of exceptions and difficulties, and erect it into a

cardinal rule, if you interpret by it the whole invisible portion of

God's government, you turn the scale at once against the character of

the Supreme, and plant creation under a tyrant's sway. And this is the

fatal principle pervading all analogical arguments in defence of

Trinitarian Christianity. No resemblances to the system can be found in

the universe, except in those anomalies and seeming deformities which

perplex the student of Providence, and which would undermine his faith,

were they not lost in the vast spectacle of beauty and of good. These

disorders are selected and spread out to view, as specimens of the

Divine government of nature; the mysteries and horrors which offend us

in the popular theology are extended by their side; the comparison is

made, point by point, till the similitude is undeniably made out; and

when the argument is closed it amounts to this: Do you doubt whether God

could break men's limbs? You mistake his strength of character; only see

how he puts out their eyes! What kind of impression this reasoning may

have, seems to me doubtful even to agony. Both Trinitarian theology and

nature, it is triumphantly urged, must proceed from the same Author; ay,

but what sort of author is that? You have led me, in your quest after

analogies, through the great infirmary of God's creation; and so haunted

am I by the sights and sounds of the lazar-house, that scarce can I

believe in anything but pestilence; so sick of soul have I become, that

the mountain breeze has lost its scent of health; and you say, it is all

the same in the other world, and wherever the same rule extends: then I

know my fate, that in this universe Justice has no throne. And thus, my

friends, it comes to pass, that these reasoners often gain indeed their

victory; but it is known only to the Searcher of Hearts, whether it is a

victory against natural religion, or in favor of revealed. For this

reason I consider the "Analogy" of Bishop Butler (one of the profoundest

of thinkers, and on purely moral subjects one of the justest too) as

containing, with a design directly contrary, the most terrible

persuasives to Atheism that have ever been produced. The essential error

consists in selecting the difficulties,--which are the rare, exceptional

phenomena of nature,--as the basis of analogy and argument. In the

comprehensive and generous study of Providence, the mind may, indeed,

already have overcome the difficulties, and, with the lights recently

gained from the harmony, design, and order of creation, have made those

shadows pass imperceptibly away; but when forced again into their very

centre, compelled to adopt them as a fixed station and point of mental

vision, they deepen round the heart again, and, instead of illustrating

anything, become solid darkness themselves.

I cannot quit this topic without observing, however, that there

appears to be nothing in nature and life at all analogous to the

vicarious principle attributed to God in the Trinitarian scheme of

Redemption. There is nowhere to be found any proper transfer or

exchange, either of the qualities, or of the consequences, of vice and

virtue. The good and evil acts of men do indeed affect others _as

well_ as themselves; the innocent suffer _with_ the guilty, as in the

case before adduced, of a child suffering in health by the excesses of

a parent. But there is here no endurance _for_ another, similar to

Christ's alleged endurance in the place of men; the infliction on the

child is not deducted from the parent; it does nothing to lighten his

load, or make it less than it would have been, had he been without

descendants; nor does any one suppose his guilt alleviated by the

existence of this innocent fellow-sufferer. There is a nearer approach

to analogy in those cases of crime, where the perpetrator seems to

escape, and to leave the consequences of his act to descend on others;

as when the successful cheat eludes pursuit, and from the stolen gains

of neighbors constructs a life of luxury for himself; or when a

spendthrift government, forgetful of its high trust, turning the

professions of patriotism into a lie, is permitted to run a prosperous

career for one generation, and is personally gone before the popular

retribution falls, in the next, on innocent successors. Here, no

doubt, the harmless suffer _by_ the guilty, in a certain sense _in

the place of_ the guilty: but not in the sense which the analogy

requires. For there is still no substitution; the distress of the

unoffending party is not struck out of the offender's punishment; does

not lessen, but rather aggravates, his guilt; and, instead of fitting

him for pardon, tempts the natural sentiments of justice to follow him

with severer condemnation. Nor does the scheme receive any better

illustration from the fact, that whoever attempts the cure of misery

must himself suffer; must have the shadows of ill cast upon his spirit

from every sadness he alleviates; and interpose himself to stay the

plague which, in a world diseased, threatens to pass to the living

from the dead. The parallel fails, because there is still no

transference: the appropriate sufferings of sin are not given to the

philanthropist; and the noble pains of goodness in him, the glorious

strife of his self-sacrifice, are no part of the penal consequences of

others' guilt; they do not cancel one iota of those consequences, or

make the crimes which have demanded them, in any way, more ready for

forgiveness. Indeed, it is not in the good man's _sufferings_,

considered as such, that any efficacy resides; but in his _efforts_,

which may be made with great sacrifice or without it, as the case may

be. Nor, at best, is there any proper annihilation of consequences at

all accruing from his toils; the past acts of wrong which call up his

resisting energies are irrevocable, the guilt incurred, the penalty

indestructible; the series of effects, foreign to the mind of the

perpetrator, may be abbreviated; prevention applied to new ills which

threaten to arise; but by all this the personal fitness of the

delinquent for forgiveness is wholly unaffected; the volition of sin

has gone forth, and on it flies, as surely as sound on a vibration of

the air, the verdict of judgment.

Those who are affected by slight and failing analogies like these,

would do well to consider one, sufficiently obvious, which seems to

throw doubt upon their scheme. The atonement is thought to be, in

respect to all believers, a reversal of the fall: the effects of the

fall are partly visible and temporal, partly invisible and eternal;

linked, however, together as inseparable portions of the same penal

system. Now it is evident, that the supposed redemption on the cross

has left precisely where they were all the _visible_ effects of the

first transgression: sorrow and toil are the lot of all, as they have

been from of old; the baptized infant utters a cry as sad as the

unbaptized; and between the holiness of the true believer and the

worth of the devout heretic, there is not discernible such a

difference as there must have been between Adam pure and perfect and

Adam lapsed and lost. And is it presumptuous to reason from the seen

to the unseen, from the part which we experience to that which we can

only conceive? If the known effects are unredeemed, the suspicion is

not unnatural, that so are the unknown.

I sum up, then, this part of my subject by observing, that, besides

many inconclusive appeals to nature, the advocates of the vicarious

scheme are chargeable with this fundamental inconsistency. They appear

to deny that the justice and benevolence of God can be reconciled with

the phenomena of nature; and say that the evidence must be helped out

by resort to their interpretation of Scripture. When, having heard

this auxiliary system, we protest that it renders the case sadder than

before, they assure us that it is all benevolent and just, because it

has its parallel in creation. They renounce and adopt, in the same

breath, the religious appeal to the universe of God.

(2.) Another inconsistency appears, in the view which this theory

gives of the character of God.

It is assumed that, at the era of creation, the Maker of mankind had

announced the infinite penalties which must follow the violation of

his law; and that their amount did not exceed the measure which his

abhorrence of wrong required. "And that which he saith, he would not

be God if he did not perform: that which he perceived right, he would

be unworthy of our trust, did he not fulfil. His veracity and justice,

therefore, were pledged to adhere to the word that had gone forth; and

excluded the possibility of any free and unconditional forgiveness."

Now I would note, in passing, that this announcement to Adam of an

eternal punishment impending over his first sin, is simply a fiction;

for the warning to him is stated thus: "In the day that thou eatest

thereof, thou shalt surely die"; from which our progenitor must have

been ingenious as a theologian, to extract the idea of endless life in

hell. But to say no more of this, what notions of veracity have we

here? When a sentence is proclaimed against crime, is it indifferent

to judicial truth _upon whom_ it falls? Personally addressed to the

guilty, may it descend without a lie upon the guiltless? Provided

there is the suffering, is it no matter _where_? Is this the sense in

which God is no respecter of persons? O what deplorable reflection of

human artifice is this, that Heaven is too veracious to abandon its

proclamation of menace against transgressors, yet is content to vent

it on goodness the most perfect! No darker deed can be imagined, than

is thus ascribed to the Source of all perfection, under the insulted

names of truth and holiness. What reliance could we have on the

faithfulness of such a Being? If it be consistent with his nature to

_punish_ by substitution, what security is there that he will not

_reward_ vicariously? All must be loose and unsettled, the sentiments

of reverence confused, the perceptions of conscience indistinct, where

the terms expressive of those great moral qualities which render God

himself most venerable are thus sported with and profaned.

The same extraordinary departure from all intelligible meaning of

words is apparent, when our charge of vindictiveness against the

doctrine of sacrifice is repelled as a slander. If the rigorous

refusal of pardon till the whole penalty has been inflicted, (when,

indeed, it is no pardon at all,) be not vindictive, we may ask to be

furnished with some better definition. And though it is said, that

God's love was manifested to us by the gift of his Son, this does but

change the object on which this quality is exercised, without removing

the quality itself; putting _us_ indeed into the sunshine of his

grace, but _the Saviour_ into the tempest of his wrath. Did we desire

to sketch the most dreadful form of character, what more emphatic

combination could we invent than this,--rigor in the exaction of penal

suffering, and indifference as to the person on whom it falls?

But in truth this system, in its delineations of the Great Ruler of

creation, bids defiance to all the analogies by which Christ and the

Christian heart have delighted to illustrate his nature. A God who

could accept the spontaneously returning sinner, and restore him by

corrective discipline, is pronounced not worth serving, and an object

of contempt.[14] If so, Jesus sketched an object of contempt when he

drew the father of the prodigal son, opening his arms to the poor

penitent, and needing only the sight of his misery to fall on his neck

with the kiss of welcome home. Let the assertions be true, that

sacrifice and satisfaction are needful preliminaries to pardon, that

to pay any attention to repentance without these is mere weakness, and

that it is a perilous deception to teach the doctrine of mercy apart

from the atonement, and this parable of our Saviour's becomes the most

pernicious instrument of delusion,--a statement, absolute and

unqualified, of a feeble and sentimental heresy. Who does not see what

follows from this scornful exclusion of corrective punishment? Suppose

the infliction not to be corrective, that is, not to be designed for

any good, what then remains as the cause of the Divine retribution?

The sense of insult offered to a law. And thus we are virtually told,

that God must be regarded with a mixture of contempt, unless he be

susceptible of personal affront.

(3.) The last inconsistency with itself, which I shall point out in

this doctrine, will be found in the view which it gives of the work of

Christ. Sin, we are assured, is necessarily infinite. Its infinitude

arises from its reference to an Infinite Being, and involves as a

consequence the necessity of redemption by Deity himself.

The position, that guilt is to be estimated, not by its amount or its

motive, but by the dignity of the being against whom it is directed,

is illustrated by the case of an insubordinate soldier, whose

punishment is increased according as his rebellion assails an equal

or any of the many grades amongst his superiors. It is evident,

however, that it is not the dignity of the person, but the magnitude

of the effect, which determines the severity of the sanction by which,

in such an instance, law enforces order. Insult to a monarch is more

sternly treated than injury to a subject, because it incurs the risk

of wider and more disastrous consequences, and superadds to the

personal injury a peril to an official power which, not resting on

individual superiority, but on conventional arrangement, is always

precarious. It is not indeed easy to form a distinct notion of an

infinite act in a finite agent; and still less is it easy to evade the

inference, that, if an immoral deed against God be an infinite

demerit, a moral deed towards him must be an infinite merit.

Passing by an assertion so unmeaning, and conceding it for the sake of

progress in our argument, I would inquire what is intended by that

other statement, that only Deity can redeem, and that by Deity the

sacrifice was made? The union of the divine and human natures in

Christ is said to have made his sufferings meritorious in an infinite

degree. Yet we are repeatedly assured, that it was in his manhood only

that he endured and died. If the divine nature in our Lord had a joint

consciousness with the human, then did God suffer and perish; if not,

then did the man only die, Deity being no more affected by his

anguish, than by that of the malefactors on either side. In the one

case the perfections of God, in the other the reality of the

atonement, must be relinquished. No doubt, the popular belief is, that

the Creator literally expired; the hymns in common use declare it; the

language of pulpits sanctions it; the consistency of creeds requires

it; but professed theologians repudiate the idea with indignation. Yet

by silence or ambiguous speech, they encourage, in those whom they are

bound to enlighten, this degrading humanization of Deity; which

renders it impossible for common minds to avoid ascribing to him

emotions and infirmities totally irreconcilable with the serene

perfections of the Universal Mind. In his influence on the

worshipper, _He_ is no Spirit, who can be invoked by his agony and

bloody sweat, his cross and passion. And the piety that is thus taught

to bring its incense, however sincere, before the mental image of a

being with convulsed features and expiring cry, has little left of

that which makes Christian devotion characteristically venerable.

II. I proceed to notice the inconsistency of the doctrine under review

with the Christian idea of salvation.

There is one _significant Scriptural fact_, which suggests to us the

best mode of treating this part of our subject. It is this: that the

language supposed to teach the atoning efficacy of the cross does not

appear in the New Testament till the Gentile controversy commences,

nor ever occurs apart from the treatment of that subject, under some

of its relations. The cause of this phenomenon will presently appear;

meanwhile I state it, in the place of an assertion sometimes

incorrectly made, viz. that the phraseology in question is confined to

the Epistles. Even this mechanical limitation of sacrificial passages

is indeed nearly true, as not above three or four have strayed beyond

the epistolary boundary into the Gospels and the book of Acts; but the

restriction in respect of subject, which I have stated, will be found,

I believe, to be absolutely exact, and to furnish the real

interpretation to the whole system of language.

(1.) Let us then first test the vicarious scheme by reference to the

sentiments of Scripture generally, and of our Lord and his Apostles

especially, where this controversy is out of the way. Are their ideas

respecting human character, the forgiveness of sin, the terms of

everlasting life, accordant with the cardinal notions of a believer in

the atonement? Do they, or do they not, insist on the necessity of a

sacrifice for human sin, as a preliminary to pardon, to

sanctification, to the love of God? Do they, or do they not, direct a

marked and almost exclusive attention to the cross, as the object to

which, far more than to the life and resurrection of our Lord, all

faithful eyes should be directed?

(a.) Now to the fundamental assertion of the vicarious system, that

the Deity cannot, without inconsistency and imperfection, pardon on

simple repentance, the whole tenor of the Bible is one protracted and

unequivocal contradiction. So copious is its testimony on this head,

that if the passages containing it were removed, scarcely a shred of

Scripture relating to the subject would remain. "Pardon, I beseech

thee," said Moses, pleading for the Israelites, "the iniquity of this

people, according to the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast

forgiven this people from Egypt even until now. And the Lord said, _I

have pardoned according to thy word_." Will it be affirmed, that this

chosen people had their eyes perpetually fixed in faith on the great

propitiation, which was to close their dispensation, and of which

their own ceremonial was a type?--that whenever penitence and pardon

are named amongst them, this reference is implied, and that as this

faith was called to mind and expressed in the shedding of blood at the

altar, such sacrificial offerings take the place, in Judaism, of the

atoning trust in Christianity? Well, then, let us quit the chosen

nation altogether, and go to a heathen people, who were aliens to

their laws, their blood, their hopes, and their religion; to whom no

sacrifice was appointed, and no Messiah promised. If we can discover

the dealings of God with such a people, the case, I presume, must be

deemed conclusive. Hear, then, what happened on the banks of the

Tigris. "Jonah began to enter into the city," (Nineveh,) "and he cried

and said, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the

people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on

sackcloth, from the greatest of them even unto the least of them."

"Who can tell," (said the decree of the king ordaining the fast,) "if

God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we

perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil

way; and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto

them; and he did it not." And when the prophet was offended, first at

this clemency to Nineveh, and afterwards that the canker was sent to

destroy his own favorite plant, beneath whose shadow he sat, what did

Jehovah say? "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not

labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished

in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein

are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between

their right hand and their left hand?"--and who are not likely, one

would think, to have discerned the future merits of the Redeemer.

In truth, if even the Israelites had any such prospective views to

Calvary, if their sacrifices conveyed the idea of the cross erected

there, and were established for this purpose, the fact must have been

privately revealed to modern theologians; for not a trace of it can be

found in the Hebrew writings. It must be thought strange, that a

prophetic reference so habitual should be always a secret reference;

that a faith so fundamental should be so mysteriously suppressed; that

the uppermost idea of a nation's mind should never have found its way to

lips or pen. "But if it were not so," we are reminded, "if the Jewish

ritual prefigured nothing ulterior, it was revolting, trifling, savage;

its worship a butchery, and the temple courts no better than a

slaughter-house." And were they not equally so, though the theory of

types be true? If neither priest nor people could _see at the time_ the

very thing which the ceremonial was constructed to reveal, what

advantage is it that divines can see it _now_? And even if the notion

was conveyed to the Jewish mind, (which the whole history shows not to

have been the fact,) was it necessary that hecatombs should be slain,

age after age, to intimate obscurely an idea, which one brief sentence

might have lucidly expressed? The idea, however, it is evident, slipped

through after all; for when Messiah actually came, the one great thing

which the Jews did _not_ know and believe about him was, that he could

die at all. So much for the preparatory discipline of fifteen centuries!

There is no reason, then, why anything should be supplied in our

thoughts, to alter the plain meaning of the announcements of prophets

and holy men, of God's unconditional forgiveness on repentance. "Thou

desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in

burnt-offering; the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken

and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." "Wash you, make

you clean," says the prophet Isaiah in the name of the Lord; "put away

the evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do evil, learn

to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the

fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together,

saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as

snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Once

more, "When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; if he turn

from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right; if the wicked

restore the pledge, give again that he hath robbed, walk in the

statutes of life without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he

shall not die." Nor are the teachings of the Gospel at all less

explicit. Our Lord treats largely and expressly on the doctrine of

forgiveness in several parables, and especially that of the prodigal

son; and omits all allusion to the propitiation for the past. He

furnishes an express definition of the terms of eternal life: "Good

master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And

he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good save

one, that is God; but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the

commandments." And Jesus adds, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell

that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in

heaven; and come, follow me." This silence on the prime condition of

pardon cannot be explained by the fact, that the crucifixion had not

yet taken place, and could not safely be alluded to, before the course

of events had brought it into prominent notice. For we have the

preaching of the Apostles, after the ascension, recorded at great

length, and under very various circumstances, in the book of Acts. We

have the very "words whereby," according to the testimony of an angel,

"Cornelius and all his house shall be saved"; these, one would think,

would be worth hearing in this cause: "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth

with the Holy Ghost, and with power; who went about doing good, and

healing all that were oppressed of the Devil, for God was with him.

And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land of

the Jews and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree. Him

God raised up the third day, and showed openly; not to all the people,

but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and

drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to

preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he who was ordained

of God to be the judge of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets

witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall

receive remission of sins." Did an Evangelical missionary dare to

preach in this style now, he would be immediately disowned by his

employers, and dismissed as a disguised Socinian, who kept back all

the "peculiar doctrines of the Gospel."

(b.) The emphatic mention of the resurrection by the Apostle Peter in

this address, is only a particular instance of a system which pervades

the whole preaching of the first missionaries of Christ. _This_, and

not the cross, with its supposed effects, is the grand object to which

they call the attention and the faith of their hearers. I cannot quote

to you the whole book of Acts; but every reader knows, that "Jesus and

the resurrection" constitutes the leading theme, the central

combination of ideas in all its discourses. This truth was shed, from

Peter's tongue of fire, on the multitudes that heard amazed the

inspiration of the day of Pentecost. Again, it was his text, when,

passing beneath the beautiful gate, he made the cripple leap for joy;

and then, with the flush of this deed still fresh upon him, leaned

against a pillar in Solomon's porch, and spake in explanation to the

awe-struck people, thronging in at the hour of prayer. Before priests

and rulers, before Sanhedrim and populace, the same tale is told

again, to the utter exclusion, be it observed, of the essential

doctrine of the cross. The authorities of the temple, we are told,

were galled and terrified at the Apostle's preaching; "naturally

enough," it will be said, "since, the real sacrifice having been

offered, their vocation, which was to make the prefatory and typical

oblation, was threatened with destruction." But no, this is not the

reason given: "They were grieved because they preached, through Jesus,

the resurrection from the dead." Paul, too, while his preaching was

spontaneous and free, and until he had to argue certain controversies

which have long ago become obsolete, manifested a no less remarkable

predilection for this topic. Before Felix, he declares what was the

grand indictment of his countrymen against him: "Touching the

resurrection of the dead, I am called in question of you this day."

Follow him far away from his own land; and, with foreigners, he harps

upon the same subject, as if he were a man of one idea; which, indeed,

according to our opponents' scheme, he ought to have been, only it

should have been _another idea_. Seldom, however, can we meet with a

more exuberant mind than Paul's; yet the resurrection obviously haunts

him wherever he goes: in the synagogue of Antioch you hear him

dwelling on it with all the energy of his inspiration; and, at Athens,

it was this on which the scepticism of Epicureans and Stoics fastened

for a scoff. In his Epistles, too, where he enlarges so much on

justification by faith, when we inquire what precisely is this faith,

and what the object it is to contemplate and embrace, this remarkable

fact presents itself: that the one only important thing respecting

Christ, which is _never once_ mentioned as the object of justifying

faith, is _his death_, _and blood_, _and cross_. "Faith" by itself,

the "faith of Jesus Christ," "faith of the Gospel," "faith of the Son

of God," are expressions of constant occurrence; and wherever this

general description is replaced by a more specific account of this

justifying state of mind, it is _faith in the resurrection_ on which

attention is fastened. "It is Christ that died, _yea, rather, that is

risen again_." "He was delivered for our offences, and _raised again

for our justification_." "Faith shall be imputed to us for

righteousness, if we believe on _him that raised up Jesus our Lord

from the dead_." Hear, too, the Apostle's definition of saving faith:

"If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt

believe in thy heart _that God hath raised him from the dead_, thou

shalt be saved." The only instance in which the writings of St. Paul

appear to associate the word faith with the death of Christ, is the

following text: "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through

faith in his blood"; and in this case the Apostle's meaning would, I

conceive, be more faithfully given by destroying this conjunction, and

disposing the words thus: "Whom God hath set forth to be a

propitiation by his blood, through faith." The idea of his _blood_, or

_death_, belongs to the word propitiation, not to the word faith. To

this translation no Trinitarian scholar, I am persuaded, can

object;[15] and when the true meaning of the writer's sacrificial

language is explained, the distinction will appear to be not

unimportant. At present I am concerned only with the defence of my

position, that the death of Christ is never mentioned as the object of

saving faith; but that his resurrection unquestionably is. This

phenomenon in Scripture phraseology is so extraordinary, so utterly

repugnant to everything which a hearer of orthodox preaching would

expect, that I hardly expect my affirmation of it to be believed. The

two ideas of _faith_, and of our _Lord's death_, are so naturally and

perpetually united in the mind of every believer in the atonement,

that it must appear to him incredible that they should never fall

together in the writings of the Apostles. However, I have stated my

fact; and it is for you to bring it to the test of Scripture.

(c.) Independently of all written testimony, moral reasons, we are

assured, exist, which render an absolute remission for the past

essential to a regenerated life for the future. Our human nature is said

to be so constituted, that the burden of sin, on the conscience once

awakened, is intolerable; our spirit cries aloud for mercy; yet is so

straitened by the bands of sin, so conscious of the sad alliance

lingering still, so full of hesitancy and shame when seeking the relief

of prayer, so blinded by its tears when scanning the heavens for an

opening of light and hope, that there is no freedom, no unrestrained and

happy love to God; but a pinched and anxious mind, bereft of power,

striving to work with bandaged or paralytic will, instead of trusting

itself to loosened and self-oblivious affections. Hence it is thought,

that the sin of the past must be cancelled, before the holiness of the

future can be commenced; that it is a false order to represent

repentance as leading to pardon, because to be forgiven is the

prerequisite to love. We cannot forget, however, how distinctly and

emphatically he who, after God, best knew what is in man, has

contradicted this sentiment; for when that sinful woman, whose presence

in the house shocked the sanctimonious Pharisee, stood at his feet as he

reclined, washing them with her tears, and kissing them with reverential

lips, Jesus turned to her and said, "Her sins, which are many, are

forgiven; _for_ she loved much." From him, then, we learn, what our own

hearts would almost teach, that love may be the prelude to forgiveness,

as well as forgiveness the preparative for love.

At the same time let me acknowledge, that this statement respecting

the moral effects of conscious pardon, to which I have invoked Jesus

to reply, is by no means an unmixed error. It touches upon a very

profound and important truth; and I can never bring myself to regard

that assurance of Divine forgiveness, which the doctrine of atonement

imparts, as a demoralizing state of mind, encouraging laxity of

conscience and a continuance in sin. The sense of pardon, doubtless,

reaches the secret springs of gratitude, presents the soul with an

object, strange before, of new and divine affection, and binds the

child of redemption, by all generous and filial obligations, to serve

with free and willing heart the God who hath gone forth to meet him.

That the motives of self-interest are diminished in such a case, is a

trifle that need occasion small anxiety. For the human heart is no

laborer for hire; and, where there is opportunity afforded for true

and noble love, will thrust away the proffered wages, and toil rather

in a free and thankful spirit. If we are to compare, as a source of

duty, the grateful with the merely prudential temper, rather may we

trust the first, as not the worthier only, but the stronger too; and

till we obtain emancipation from the latter,--forget the computations

of hope and fear, and precipitate ourselves for better or for worse on

some object of divine love and trust,--our nature will be puny and

weak, our wills will turn in sickness from their duty, and our

affections shrink in aversion from their heaven. But though personal

gratitude is better than prudence, there is a higher service still. A

more disinterested love may spring from the contemplation of what God

is in himself, than from the recollection of what he has done for us;

and when this mingles most largely as an element among our springs of

action; when, humbled indeed by a knowledge of dangers that await us,

and thankful, too, for the blessings spread around us, we yet desire

chiefly to be fitting children of the everlasting Father and the holy

God; when we venerate him for the graciousness, and purity, and

majesty of his spirit, impersonated in Jesus, and resolve to serve him

truly, _before_ he has granted the desire of our heart, and because he

is of a nature so sublime and merciful and good;--then are we in the

condition of her who bent over the feet of Christ; and we are

forgiven, because we have loved much.

(2.) Let us now, in conclusion, turn our attention to those portions

of the New Testament which speak of the death of Christ as the means

of redemption.

I have said, that these are to be found exclusively in passages of the

sacred writings which treat of the Gentile controversy, or of topics

immediately connected with it. This controversy arose naturally out of

the design of Providence to make the narrow, exclusive, ceremonial

system of Judaism give birth to the universal and spiritual religion of

the Gospel; from God's method of expanding the Hebrew Messiah into the

Saviour of humanity. For this the nation was not prepared; to this even

the Hebrew Christians could not easily conform their faith; and in the

achievement of this, or in persuading the world that it was achieved,

did Paul spend his noble life, and write his astonishing Epistles. The

Jews knew that the Deliverer was to be of their peculiar stock, and

their royal lineage; they believed that he would gather upon himself all

the singularities of their race, and be a Hebrew to intensity; that he

would literally restore the kingdom to Israel; ay, and extend it too,

immeasurably beyond the bounds of its former greatness; till, in fact,

it swallowed up all existing principalities, and powers, and thrones,

and dominions, and became coextensive with the earth. Then in Jerusalem,

as the centre of the vanquished nations, before the temple, as the altar

of a humbled world, did they expect the Messiah to erect his throne; and

when he had taken the seat of judgment, to summon all the tribes before

his tribunal, and pass on the Gentiles, excepting the few who might

submit to the law, a sentence of perpetual exclusion from his realm;

while his own people would be invited to the seats of honor, occupy the

place of authority, and sit down with him (the greatest at his right

hand and his left) at his table in his kingdom. The holy men of old were

to come on earth again to see this day. And many thought that every part

of the realm thus constituted, and all its inhabitants, would never die:

but, like the Messiah himself, and the patriarchs whom he was to call to

life, would be invested with immortality. None were to be admitted to

these golden days except themselves; all else to be left in outer

darkness from this region of light, and there to perish and be seen no

more. The grand title to admission was conformity with the Mosaic law;

the most ritually scrupulous were the most secure; and the careless

Israelite, who forgot or omitted an offering, a tithe, a Sabbath duty,

might incur the penalty of exclusion and death: the law prescribed such

mortal punishment for the smallest offence; and no one, therefore, could

feel himself ready with his claim, if he had not yielded a perfect

obedience. If God were to admit him on any other plea, it would be of

pure grace and goodness, and not in fulfilment of any promise.

The Jews, being scattered over the civilized world, and having

synagogues in every city, came into perpetual contact with other

people. Nor was it possible that the Gentiles, among whom they lived,

should notice the singular purity and simplicity of the Israelitish

Theism, without some of them being struck with its spirit, attracted

by its sublime principles, and disposed to place themselves in

religious relations with that singular people. Having been led into

admiration, and even profession, of the nation's theology, they could

not but desire to share their hopes; which indeed were an integral

part of their religion, and, at the Christian era, the one element in

it to which they were most passionately attached. But this was a

stretch of charity too great for any Hebrew; or, at all events, if

such admission were ever to be thought of, it must be only on

condition of absolute submission to the requirements of the law. The

Gentile would naturally plead, that, as God had not made him of the

chosen nation, he had given him no law, except that of conscience;

that, being without the law, he must be a law unto himself; and that,

if he had lived according to his light, he could not be justly

excluded on the ground of accidental disqualification. Possibly, in

the provocation of dispute, the Gentile might sometimes become froward

and insolent in his assertion of claim; and, in the pride of his

heart, demand as a right that which, at most, could only be humbly

hoped for as a privilege and a free gift.

Thus were the parties mutually placed to whom the Deliverer came. Thus

dense and complicated was the web of prejudice which clung round the

early steps of the Gospel; and which must be burst or disentangled ere

the glad tidings could have free course and be glorified. How did

Providence develop from such elements the divine and everlasting

truth? Not by neglecting them, and speaking to mankind as if they had

no such ideas; not by forbidding his messengers and teachers to have

any patience with them; but, on the contrary, by using these very

notions as temporary means to his everlasting ends; by touching this

and that with light before the eyes of Apostles, as if to say, there

are good capabilities in these; the truth may be educed from them so

gently and so wisely, that the world will find itself in light,

without perceiving how it has been quitting the darkness.

So long as Christ remained on earth, he necessarily confined his

ministry to his nation. He would not have been the Messiah had he done

otherwise. By birth, by lineage, by locality, by habit, he was

altogether theirs. Whoever, then, of his own people, during his mortal

life, believed in him and followed him, became a subject of the

Messiah; ready, it was supposed, even by the Apostles themselves, to

enter the glory of his kingdom, whenever it should please him to

assume it; qualified at once, by the combination of pedigree and of

belief, to enter into life, to become a member of the kingdom of God,

to take a place among the elect; for by all these phrases was

described the admission to the expected realm. If, then, Jesus had

never suffered and died, if he had never retired from this world, but

stayed to fulfil the anticipations of his first followers, his

Messianic kingdom might have included all the converts of the

Israelitish stock. From the exclusion which fell on others, they would

have obtained salvation. Hence, it is never in connection with the

first Jewish Christians that the _death of Christ_ is mentioned.

It was otherwise, however, with the Gentiles. They could not become his

followers in his mortal lifetime; and had a Messianic reign _then_ been

set up, they must have been excluded; no missionary would have been

justified in addressing them with invitation; they could not, as it was

said, have entered into life. The Messiah must cease to be Jewish,

before he could become universal; and this implied his death, by which

alone the personal relations, which made him the property of a nation,

could be annihilated. To this he submitted; he disrobed himself of his

corporeality, he became an immortal spirit; thereby instantly burst his

religion open to the dimensions of the world; and, as he ascended to the

skies, sent it forth to scatter the seeds of blessing over the field of

the world, long ploughed with cares, and moist with griefs, and softened

now to nourish in its bosom the tree of Life.

Now, how would the effect of this great revolution be described to the

proselyte Gentiles, so long vainly praying for admission to the

Israelitish hope. At once it destroyed their exclusion; put away as

valueless the Jewish claims of circumcision and law; nailed the

handwriting of ordinances to the cross; reconciled them that had been

afar off; redeemed them to God by his blood, out of every tongue, and

kindred, and people, and nation; washed them in his blood; justified

them _by his resurrection and ascension_; an expression, I would

remark, unmeaning on any other explanation.

Even during our Lord's personal ministry his approaching death is

mentioned as the means of introducing the Gentiles into his Messianic

kingdom. He adverts repeatedly to his cross, as designed to widen, by

their admission, the extent of his sway; and, according to Scripture

phrase, to yield to him "much fruit." He was already on his last fatal

visit to Jerusalem, when, taking the hint from _the visit of some

Greeks to him_, he exclaimed: "The hour is come, that the Son of man

should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of

wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but _if it die,

it bringeth forth much fruit_." He adds, in allusion to the death he

should die: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all

men unto me_." It is for this end that he resigns for a while his

life,--that he may bring in the wanderers who are not of the

commonwealth of Israel: "Other sheep I have, which are not of this

fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there

shall be one fold and one shepherd: _therefore doth my Father love me,

because I lay down my life_, that I may take it again." Many a parable

did Jesus utter, proclaiming his Father's intended mercy to the

uncovenanted nations: but for himself personally he declared, "I am

not sent, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." His advent

was a promise of _their_ economy; his office, the traditionary hope of

their fathers; his birth, his life, his person, were under the Law,

and excluded him from relations to those who were beyond its

obligations. On the cross, all the connate peculiarities of the

Nazarene ceased to exist: when the seal of the sepulchre gave way, the

seal of the law was broken too; the nationality of his person passed

away; for how can an immortal be a Jew? This, then, was the time to

open wide the scope of his mission, and to invite to God's acceptance

those that fear him in every nation. Though, before, the disciple

might "have known Christ after the flesh," and followed his steps as

the Hebrew Messiah, "yet now henceforth was he to know him so no

more"; these "old things had passed away," since he had "died for

all,"--died to become universal,--to drop all exclusive relations, and

"reconcile the world," the Gentile world, to God. Observe to whom this

"ministry of reconciliation" is especially confided. As if to show

that it is exclusively _the risen Christ_ who belongs to all men, and

that his death was the instrument of the Gentiles' admission, their

great Apostle was one Paul, who had not known the Saviour in his

mortal life; who never listened to his voice till it spake from

heaven; who himself was the convert of his ascension; and bore to him

the relation, not of subject to the person of a Hebrew king, but of

spirit to spirit, unembarrassed by anything earthly, legal, or

historical. Well did Paul understand the freedom and the sanctity of

this relation; and around the idea of the Heavenly Messiah gathered

all his conceptions of the spirituality of the Gospel, of its power

over the unconscious affections, rather than a reluctant will. His

believing countrymen were afraid to disregard the observances of the

law, lest it should be a disloyalty to God, and disqualify them for

the Messiah's welcome, when he came to take his power and reign. Paul

tells them, that, while their Lord remained in this mortal state, they

were right; as representative of the law, and filling an office

created by the religion of Judaism, he could not but have held them

_then_ to its obligations; nor could they, without infidelity, have

neglected its claims, any more than a wife can innocently separate

herself from a living husband. But as the death of the man sets the

woman free, and makes null the law of their union, so the decease of

Christ's body emancipates his followers from all legal relations to

him; and they are at liberty to wed themselves anew to the risen

Christ, who dwells where no ordinance is needful, no tie permitted but

of the spirit, and all are as the angels of God. Surely, then, this

mode of conception explains why the death of Jesus constitutes a great

date in the Christian economy, especially as expounded by the friend

and Apostle of those who were not "Jews by nature, but sinners of the

Gentiles." Had he never died, they must have remained aliens from his

sway; the enemies against whom his power must be directed; without

hope in the day of his might; strangers to God and his vicegerent.

But, while thus they "were yet without strength, Christ died for" these

"ungodly"; died to put himself into connection with them, else

impossible; and, rising from death, drew them after him into spiritual

existence on earth, analogous to that which he passed in heaven. "You,"

says their Apostle, "being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of

your flesh, hath he quickened together with him"; giving you, as "risen

with him," a life above the world and its law of exclusion,--a life not

"subject to ordinances," but of secret love and heavenly faith, "hid

with Christ in God"; "blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that

was against us, which was contrary to us, and taking it out of the way,

nailing it to his cross." God had never intended to perpetuate the

division between Israel and the world, receiving the one as the sons,

and shutting out the other as the slaves of his household. If there had

been an appearance of such partiality, he had always designed to set

these bondmen free, and to make them "heirs of God through Christ"; "in

whom they had redemption through his blood" from their servile state,

the forgiveness of disqualifying sins, according to the riches of his

grace. Though the Hebrews boasted that "theirs was the adoption," and

till Messiah's death had boasted truly; yet in that event God, "before

the foundation of the world," had "blessed us" (Gentiles) "with all

spiritual blessings in heavenly places"; "having predestinated us unto

the adoption of children, by Jesus Christ, according" (not indeed to any

right or promise, but) "to the good pleasure of his will," "and when we

were enemies, having reconciled us, by the death of his Son"; "that in

the fulness of times he might gather together in one _all things_ in

Christ"; "by whom we" (Gentiles) "have now received this atonement"

(reconciliation); that he might have no partial empire, but that "in him

might all fulness dwell." "Wherefore," says their Apostle, "remember

that ye, _Gentiles in the flesh_, were in time past without Messiah,

being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the

covenant of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world; but

now in Christ Jesus, ye, who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by

the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and

hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us" (not between

God and man, but between Jew and Gentile); "having abolished in his

flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments, contained in ordinances;

for to make in himself, of twain, one new man, so _making peace_; and

that he might reconcile both unto God, in one body, by the cross, having

slain the enmity thereby; and came and preached peace to you who were

afar off, as well as to them that were nigh. For through him we both

have an access by one spirit unto the Father."

The way, then, is clear and intelligible, in which the death and

ascension of the Messiah rendered him universal, by giving spirituality

to his rule; and, on the simple condition of faith, added the

uncovenanted nations to his dominion, so far as they were willing to

receive him. This idea, and this only, will be found in almost every

passage of the New Testament (excepting the Epistle to the Hebrews)

usually adduced to prove the doctrine of the Atonement. Some of the

strongest of these I have already quoted; and my readers must judge

whether they have received a satisfactory meaning. There are others, in

which the Gentiles are not so distinctly stated to be the sole objects

of the redemption of the cross; but with scarcely an exception, so far

as I can discover, this limitation is implied, and either creeps out

through some adjacent expression in the context, or betrays itself, when

we recur to the general course of the Apostle's argument, or to the

character and circumstances of his correspondents. Thus Paul says, that

Christ "gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time"; the

next verse shows what is in his mind, when he adds, "_whereunto_ I am

ordained a preacher, and an Apostle, a teacher of THE GENTILES in faith

and verity"; and the whole sentiment of the context is the _Universality

of the Gospel_, and the duty of praying for Gentile kings and people, as

not abandoned to a foreign God and another Mediator; for since Messiah's

death, to _us all_ "there is but One God, and One Mediator between God

and men, the man Christ Jesus": wherefore the Apostle wills, that _for

all_ "men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and

doubting,"--without wrath at their admission, or doubt of their

adoption. And wherever emphasis is laid on the _vast number_ benefited

by the cross, a contrast is implied with the _few_ (only the Jews) who

could have been his subjects had he not died: and when it is said, "he

gave his life a ransom _for many_"; his blood was "shed _for many_, for

the remission of sins"; "thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us by thy

blood, _out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation_, and

hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign on the

earth"; "behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of _the

world_";[16]--by all these expressions is still denoted the efficacy of

Christ's death in removing the Gentile disqualification, and making his

dispensation spiritual as his celestial existence, and universal as the

Fatherhood of God. Does Paul exhort certain of his disciples "to feed

the church of the Lord, which he hath purchased with his own blood"?[17]

We find that he is speaking of the _Gentile_ church of Ephesus, whose

elders he is instructing in the management of their charge, and to which

he afterwards wrote the well-known Epistle, on their Gentile freedom and

adoption obtained by the Messiah's death. When Peter says, "Ye know that

ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from

your vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers; but

with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and

without spot,"--we must inquire _to whom_ he is addressing these words.

If it be to the Jews, the interpretation which I have hitherto given of

such language will not apply, and we must seek an explanation altogether

different. But the whole manner of this Epistle, the complexion of its

phraseology throughout, convinces me that it was addressed especially to

the _Gentile converts_ of Asia Minor; and that the redemption of which

it speaks is no other than that which is the frequent theme of their own

Apostle.

In the passage just quoted, the form of expression itself suggests the

idea, that Peter is addressing a class which did not include himself:

"YE were not redeemed," &c.; farther on, in the same Epistle, the same

sentiment occurs, however, without any such visible restriction.

Exhorting to patient suffering for conscience' sake, he appeals to the

example of Christ; "who, when he suffered, threatened not, but

committed himself to Him that judgeth righteously; who, his own self,

bare _our_ sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to

sins, should live unto righteousness": yet, with instant change in the

expression, revealing his correspondents to us, the Apostle adds, "by

whose stripes YE were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but

are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." With the

instinct of a gentle and generous heart, the writer, treating in plain

terms of the former sins of those whom he addresses, puts himself in

with them; and avoids every appearance of that spiritual pride by

which the Jew constantly rendered himself offensive to the Gentile.

Again, in this letter, he recommends the duty of patient endurance, by

appeal to the same consideration of Christ's disinterested

self-sacrifice. "It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer

for well-doing than for evil-doing: for Christ also hath once suffered

for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." And

who are these "unjust" that are thus brought to God? The Apostle

instantly explains, by describing how the "Jews by nature" lost

possession of Messiah by the death of his person, and "sinners of the

Gentiles" gained him by the resurrection of his immortal nature; "being

put to death in flesh, but quickened in spirit; and _thereby he went and

preached unto the spirits in prison, who formerly were without faith_."

This is clearly a description of the heathen world, ere it was brought

into relation to the Messianic promises. Still further confirmation,

however, follows. The Apostle adds: "Forasmuch, then, as Christ hath

suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same

mind; for the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the

will _of the Gentiles_; when _we_ walked in lasciviousness, lusts,

excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and _abominable idolatries_."

If we cannot admit this to be a just description of the holy Apostle's

former life, we must perceive that, writing to Pagans of whom it was

all true, he beautifully withholds from his language every trace of

invidious distinction, puts himself for the moment into the same class,

and seems to take his share of the distressing recollection.

The habitual delicacy with which Paul, likewise, classed himself with

every order of persons in turn, to whom he had anything painful to

say, is known to every intelligent reader of his Epistles. Hence, in

_his_ writings too, we have often to consider _with whom_ it is that

he is holding his dialogue, and to make our interpretation dependent

on the answer. When, for example, he says, that Jesus "was delivered

for _our_ offences, and was raised again for _our_ justification"; I

ask, "For whose?--was it for everybody's?--or for the Jews', since

Paul was a Hebrew?" On looking closely into the argument, I find it

beyond doubt that neither of these answers is correct; and that the

Apostle, in conformity with his frequent practice, is certainly

identifying himself, Israelite though he was, with _the Gentiles_, to

whom, at that moment, his reasoning applies itself. The neighboring

verses have expressions which clearly enough declare this: "when we

were _yet without strength_," and "_while we were yet sinners_,"

Christ died for us. It is to the _Gentile church_ at Corinth, and

while expatiating on their privileges and relations as such, that Paul

speaks of the disqualifications and legal unholiness of the heathen,

as vanishing in the death of the Messiah; as the recovered leper's

uncleanness was removed, and his banishment reversed, and his

exclusion from the temple ended, when the lamb without blemish, which

the law prescribed as his sin-offering, bled beneath the knife, so did

God provide in Jesus a lamb without blemish for the exiled and

unsanctified Gentiles, to bring them from their far dwelling in the

leprous haunts of this world's wilderness, and admit them to the

sanctuary of spiritual health and worship: "He hath made him to be a

sin-offering for us (Gentiles), who knew no sin; that we might be made

the justified of God in him"; entering, under the Messiah, the

community of saints. That, in this sacrificial allusion, the Gentile

adoption is still the Apostle's only theme, is evident hence: that

twice in this very passage he declares that he is speaking of that

peculiar "reconciliation," the word and ministry of which have been

committed to himself; he is dwelling on the topic most natural to one

who "magnified his office," as "Apostle of the Gentiles."

To the same parties was Paul writing, when he said, "Christ, our

passover, is sacrificed for us." Frequently as this sentence is cited

in evidence of the doctrine of Atonement, there is hardly a verse in

Scripture more utterly inapplicable; nor, if the doctrine were true,

could anything be more inept than an allusion to it in this place. I

do not dwell on the fact that the paschal lamb was neither

sin-offering nor proper sacrifice at all: for the elucidation of the

death of Jesus by sacrificial analogies is as easy and welcome as any

other mode of representing it. But I turn to the whole context, and

seek for its leading idea, before multiplying inferences from a

subordinate illustration. I find the author treating, not of the

_deliverance_ of believers from curse or exclusion, but of their duty

to keep the churches cleansed, by the expulsion of notoriously

profligate members. Such persons they are to cast from them, as the

Jews, at the passover, swept from their houses all the leaven they

contained; and as for eight days, at that season, only pure unleavened

bread was allowed for use, so the Church must keep the Gospel festival

free from the ferment of malice and wickedness, and tasting nothing

but sincerity and truth. This comparison is the primary sentiment of

the whole passage; under cover of which the Apostle is urging the

Corinthians to expel a certain licentious offender: and only because

the feast of unleavened bread, on which his fancy has alighted, set in

with the day of passover, does he allude to this in completion of the

figure. As his correspondents were Gentiles, their Christianity

commenced with the death of Christ; with him, as an immortal, their

spiritual relations commenced; when he rose, they rose with him, as by

a divine attraction, from an earthly to a heavenly state; their old

and corrupt man had been buried together with him, and, with the human

infirmities of his person, left behind for ever in his sepulchre; and

it became them "to seek those things which are above," and to "yield

themselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead." This period

of the Lord's sequestration in the heavens Paul represents as a

festival of purity to the disciples on earth, ushered in by the

self-sacrifice of Christ. The time is come, he says; cast away the

leaven, for the passover is slain, blessed bread of heaven to them

that taste it! let nothing now be seen in all the household of the

Church, but the unleavened cake of simplicity and love.

Paul again appears as the advocate of the Gentiles, when he protests

that now between them and the Jews "there is no difference, since all

have sinned and come short of the glory of God"; that the Hebrew has

lost all claim to the Messianic adoption, and can have no hope but in

that free grace of God, which has a sovereign right to embrace the

heathen too; and which, in fact, has compassed the Gentiles within its

redemption, by causing Jesus the Messiah to die; "by whose blood God

hath set forth a propitiation, through faith; to evince his justice,

while overlooking, with the forbearance of God, transgressions

past;--to evince his justice in the arrangements of the present

crisis; which preserve his justice (to the Israelite), yet justify on

mere discipleship to Jesus." The great question which the Apostle

discusses throughout this Epistle is this: "On what terms is a man now

admitted as a subject to the Messiah, so as to be acknowledged by him,

when he comes to erect his kingdom?" "He must be one of the

circumcised, to whom alone the holy law and promises are given," says

the Jew. "That is well," replies Paul; "only the promises, you

remember, are conditional on obedience; and he who claims by the law

must stand the judgment of the law. Can your nation abide this test,

and will you stake your hopes upon the issue? Or is there on record

against you a violation of every condition of your boasted

covenant,--wholesale and national transgression, which your favorite

code itself menaces with 'cutting off'? Have you even rejected and

crucified the very Messiah, who was tendered to you in due fulfilment

of the promises? Take your trial by the principles of your law, and

you must be cast off, and perish, as certainly as the heathen whom you

despise; and whose rebellion against the natural law, gross as it is,

does not surpass your own offences against the tables of Moses. You

must abandon the claim of right, the high talk of God's justice and

plighted faith;--which are alike ill suited to you both. The rules of

law are out of the question, and would admit nobody; and we must

ascend again to the sovereign will and free mercy of Him who is the

source of law; and who, to bestow a blessing which its resources

cannot confer, may devise new methods of beneficence. God has violated

no pledge. Messiah came to Israel, and never went beyond its bounds;

the uncircumcised had no part in him; and every Hebrew who desired it

was received as his subject. But when the people would not have him,

and threw away their ancient title, was God either to abandon his

vicegerent, or to force him on the unwilling? No: rather did it befit

him to say: 'If they will reject and crucify my servant,--why, let him

die, and then he is Israelite no more; I will raise him, and take him

apart in his immortality; where his blood of David is lost; and the

holiness of his humanity is glorified; and all shall be his, who will

believe, and love him, as he there exists, spiritually and truly.'"

Thus, according to Paul, does God provide a new method of adoption or

justification, without violating any promises of the old. Thus he

makes Faith in Jesus--a moral act, instead of a genealogical

accident--the single condition of reception into the Divine kingdom

upon earth. Thus, after the passage of Christ from this world to

another, Jew and Gentile are on an equality in relation to the

Messiah; the one gaining nothing by his past privileges; the other,

not visited with exclusion for past idolatry and sins, but assured, in

Messiah's death, that these are to be overlooked, and treated as if

cleansed away. He finds himself invited into the very penetralia of

that sanctuary of pure faith and hope, from which before he had been

repelled as an unclean thing; as if its ark of mercy had been purified

for ever from his unworthy touch, or he himself had been sprinkled by

some sudden consecration. And all this was the inevitable and instant

effect of that death on Calvary, which took Messiah from the Jews and

gave him to the world.

With emphasis, not less earnest than that of Paul, does the Apostle John

repudiate the notion of any _claim_ on the Divine admission by law or

righteousness; and insist on humble and unqualified acceptance of God's

free grace and remission for the past, as the sole avenue of entrance to

the kingdom. This avenue was open, however, to all "who confessed that

Jesus the Messiah had come in the flesh"; in other words, that, during

his mortal life, Jesus had been indicated as this future Prince; and

that his ministry was the Messiah's preliminary visit to that earth on

which shortly he would reappear to reign. The great object of that visit

was to prepare the world for his real coming; for as yet it was very

unfit for so great a crisis; and especially to open, by his death, a way

of admission for the Gentiles, and frame, on their behalf, an act of

oblivion for the past. "If," says the Apostle to them, "we walk in the

light, _as he is in the light_" (of love and heaven), "we have

fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son

cleanseth us from all sin": the Israelite will embrace the Gentiles in

fraternal relations, knowing that the cross has removed their past

unholiness. Nor let the Hebrew rely on anything now but the Divine

forbearance; to appeal to rights will serve no longer: "If we say we

have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Nor let

any one despair of a reception, or even a restoration, because he has

been an idolater and sinner: "Jesus Christ the righteous" is "an

advocate with the Father" for admitting all who are willing to be his;

"and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only (not

merely for our small portion of Gentiles, already converted); but also

for the _whole_ world," if they will but accept him. He died to become

universal; to make all his own; to spread an oblivion, wide as the

earth, over all that had embarrassed the relations to the Messiah, and

made men aliens, instead of Sons of God. Yet did no spontaneous movement

of their good affections solicit this change. It was "not that we

(Gentiles) loved God; but that he loved us, and sent his Son, the

propitiation for our sins"; "he sent his only-begotten Son into the

world, that we might live through him." That this Epistle was addressed

to Gentiles, and is therefore occupied with the same leading idea

respecting the cross which pervades the writings of Paul, is rendered

probable by its concluding words, which could hardly be appropriate to

Jews: "Keep yourselves from idols." How little the Apostle associated

any vicarious idea even with a form of phrase most constantly employed

by modern theology to express it, is evident from the parallel which he

draws, in the following words, between the death of our Lord and that of

the Christian martyrs: "Hereby perceive we love, because _Christ_ laid

down his life _for us_; and we ought to lay down our lives _for the

brethren_."

Are, then, the _Gentiles alone_ beneficially affected by the death of

Christ? and is no wider efficacy _ever_ assigned to it in Scripture? The

great number of passages to which I have already applied this single

interpretation will show that I consider it as comprising _the great

leading idea_ of the Apostolic theology on this subject; nor do I think

that there is (out of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which I shall soon

notice) a single doctrinal allusion to the cross, from which this

conception is wholly absent. At the same time, I am not prepared to

maintain, that this is the _only_ view of the crucifixion and

resurrection ever present to the mind of the Apostles. Jews themselves,

they naturally inquired, how _Israel_, in particular, stood affected by

the unanticipated death of its Messiah; in what way its relations were

changed, when the offered Prince became the executed victim; and how far

matters would have been different, if, as had been expected, the

Anointed had assumed his rights and taken his power at once; and,

instead of making his first advent a mere preliminary and warning visit

"in the flesh," had set up the kingdom forthwith, and gathered with him

his few followers to "reign on the earth." Had this--instead of

submission to death, removal, and delay--been his adopted course, what

would have become of his own nation, who had rejected him,--who must

have been tried by that law which was their boast, and under which he

came,--who had long been notorious offenders against its conditions, and

now brought down its final curse by despising the claims of the

accredited Messiah? They must have been utterly "cut off," and cast out

among the "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel," "without Messiah,"

"without hope," "without God"; for while "circumcision profiteth, _if

thou keep the law_; yet if thou be a _breaker of the law_, thy

circumcision is made uncircumcision." Had he come _then_ "to be

glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that

believe,"--had he then been "revealed with his mighty angels" (whom he

might have summoned by "legions"),--it must have been "in flaming fire,

taking vengeance on them that knew not God, nor obeyed the glad tidings

of the Lord Jesus Christ"; to "punish with everlasting destruction from

the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power." The sins and

prospects of Israel being thus terrible, and its rejection imminent (for

Messiah was already in the midst of them), he withheld his hand; refused

to precipitate their just fate; and said, "Let us give them time, and

wait; I will go apart into the heavens, and peradventure they will

repent; only they must receive me then spiritually, and by hearty faith,

not by carnal right, admitting thus the willing Gentile with

themselves." And so he prepared to die and retire; he did not permit

them to be cut off, but was cut off himself instead; he restrained the

curse of their own law from falling on them, and rather perished himself

by a foul and accursed lot, which that same law pronounces to be the

vilest and most polluted of deaths. Thus says St. Paul to the Jews: "He

hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us;

for it is written, 'Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.'"[18] In

this way, but for the death of the Messiah, Israel too must have been

lost; and by that event they received time for repentance, and a way for

remission of sins; found a means of reconciliation still; saw their

providence, which had been lowering for judgment, opening over them in

propitiation once more; the just had died for the unjust, to bring them

to God. What was this delay,--this suspension of judgment,--this

opportunity of return and faith,--but an instance of "the long-suffering

of God," with which "he endures the vessels of wrath (Jews) fitted to

destruction, and makes known the riches of his glory on the vessels of

mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory"? If Christ had not

withdrawn awhile, if his power had been taken up at once, and wielded in

stern and legal justice, a deluge of judgment must have overwhelmed the

earth, and swept away both Jew and Gentile, leaving but a remnant safe.

But in mercy was the mortal life of Jesus turned into a preluding

message of notice and warning, like the tidings which Noah received of

the flood; and as the growing frame of the ark gave signal to the world

of the coming calamity, afforded an interval for repentance, and made

the patriarch, as he built, a constant "preacher of righteousness"; so

the increasing body of the Church, since the warning retreat of Christ

to heaven, proclaims the approaching "day of the Lord," admonishes that

"all should come to repentance," and fly betimes to that faith and

baptism which Messiah's death and resurrection have left as an ark of

safety. "Once, in the days of Noah, the long-suffering of God waited

while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were

saved by water: a representation, this, of the way in which baptism

(not, of course, carnal washing, but the engagement of a good conscience

with God) saves us now, _by the resurrection of Jesus Christ_; who is

gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels, and

authorities, and powers, being made subject to him." Yet "the time is

short," and must be "redeemed"; "it is the last hour"; "the Lord," "the

coming of the Lord," "the end of all things," are "at hand."

I have described _one_ aspect, which the death of the Messiah

presented to _the Jews_; and, in this, we have found another primary

conception, explanatory of the Scriptural language respecting the

cross. Of the two relations in which this event appeared (the Gentile

and the Israelitish), I believe the former to be by far the most

familiar to the New Testament authors, and to furnish the true

interpretation of almost all their phraseology on the subject. But, as

my readers may have noticed, many passages receive illustration by

reference to either notion; and some may have a meaning compounded of

both. I must not pause to make any minute adjustment of these claims,

on the part of the two interpreting ideas: it is enough that, either

separately or in union, they have now been taken round the whole

circle of apostolic language respecting the cross, and detected in

every difficult passage the presence of sense and truth, and the

absence of all hint of vicarious atonement.

It was on the _unbelieving_ portion of the Jewish people that the

death of their Messiah conferred the national blessings and

opportunities to which I have adverted. But to _the converts_ who had

been received by him during his mortal life, and who would have been

heirs of his glory, had he assumed it at once, it was less easy to

point out any personal benefits from the cross. That the Christ had

retired from this world was but a disappointing postponement of their

hopes; that he had perished as a felon was shocking to their pride,

and turned their ancient boast into a present scorn; that he had

become spiritual and immortal made him no longer theirs "as concerning

the flesh," and, by admitting Gentiles with themselves, set aside

their favorite law. So offensive to them was this unexpected slight on

the institutions of Moses, immemorially reverenced as the ordinances

of God, that it became important to give some turn to the death of

Jesus, by which that event might be harmonized with the national

system, and be shown to _effect the abrogation of the law, on

principles strictly legal_. This was the object of the writer of the

Epistle to the Hebrews; who thus gives us a third idea of the

relations of the cross,--bearing, indeed, an essential resemblance to

St. Paul's Gentile view, but illustrated in a manner altogether

different. No trace is to be observed here of Paul's noble glorying in

the cross: so studiously is every allusion to the crucifixion avoided,

till all the argumentative part of the Epistle has been completed,

that a reader finds the conclusion already in sight, without having

gained any notion of _the mode_ of the Lord's death, whether even it

was natural or violent,--a literal human sacrifice, or a voluntary

self-immolation. Its ignominy and its agonies are wholly unmentioned;

and his mortal infirmities and sufferings are explained, not as the

spontaneous adoptions of previous compassion in him, but as God's

fitting discipline for rendering him "a merciful and faithful

high-priest." They are referred to in the tone of apology, not of

pride; as needing rather to be reconciled with his office, than to be

boldly expounded as its grand essential. The object of the author

clearly is, to find a place for the death of Jesus among the Messianic

functions; and he persuades the Hebrew Christians that it is (not a

satisfaction for moral guilt, but) a commutation for the Mosaic Law.

In order to understand his argument, we must advert for a moment to

the prejudices which it was designed to conciliate and correct.

It is not easy for us to realize the feelings with which the Israelite,

in the yet palmy days of the Levitical worship, would hear of an

abrogation of the Law;--the anger and contempt with which the mere bigot

would repudiate the suggestion;--the terror with which the new convert

would make trial of his freedom;--the blank and infidel feeling with

which he would look round, and find himself drifted away from his

anchorage of ceremony;--the sinking heart with which he would hear the

reproaches of his countrymen against his apostasy. Every authoritative

ritual draws towards itself an attachment too strong for reason and the

sense of right; and transfers the feeling of obligation from realities

to symbols. Among the Hebrews this effect was the more marked and the

more pernicious, because their ceremonies were in many instances only

remotely connected with any important truth or excellent end; they were

separated by several removes from any spiritual utility. Rites were

enacted to sustain other rites; institution lay beneath institution,

through so many successive steps, that the crowning principle at the

summit easily passed out of sight. To keep alive the grand truth of the

Divine Unity, there was a gorgeous temple worship; to perform this

worship there was a priesthood; to support the priesthood there were

(among other sources of income) dues paid in the form of sacrifice; to

provide against the non-payment of dues there were penalties; to prevent

an injurious pressure of these penalties, there were exemptions, as in

cases of sickness; and to put a check on trivial claims of exemption, it

must be purchased by submission to a fee, under name of an atonement.

Wherever such a system is received as divine, and based on the same

authority with the great law of duty, it will always, by its

definiteness and precision, attract attention from graver moral

obligations. Its materiality renders it calculable: its account with the

conscience can be exactly ascertained: as it has little obvious utility

to men, it appears the more directly paid to God: it is regarded as the

special means of pleasing him, of placating his anger, and purchasing

his promises. Hence it may often happen, that the more the offences

against the spirit of duty, the more are rites multiplied in

propitiation; and the harvest of ceremonies and that of crimes ripen

together.

At a state not far from this had the Jews arrived when Christianity was

preached. Their moral sentiments were so far perverted, that they valued

nothing in themselves, in comparison with their legal exactitude, and

hated all beyond themselves for their want of this. They were eagerly

expecting the Deliverer's kingdom, nursing up their ambition for his

triumphs; curling the lip, as the lash of oppression fell upon them, in

suppressed anticipation of vengeance; satiating a temper, at once fierce

and servile, with dreams of Messiah's coming judgment, when the blood of

the patriarchs should be the title of the world's nobles, and the

everlasting reign should begin in Jerusalem. Why was the hour delayed?

they impatiently asked themselves. Was it that they had offended

Jehovah, and secretly sinned against some requirement of his law? And

then they set themselves to a renewed precision, a more slavish

punctiliousness than before. Ascribing their continued depression to

their imperfect legal obedience, they strained their ceremonialism

tighter than ever; and hoped to be soon justified from their past sins,

and ready for the mighty prince and the latter days.

What, then, must have been the feeling of the Hebrew, when told that

all his punctualities had been thrown away,--that, at the advent,

faith in Jesus, not obedience to the law, was to be the title to

admission,--and that the redeemed at that day would be, not the

scrupulous Pharisee, whose dead works would be of no avail, but all

who, with the heart, have worthily confessed the name of the Lord

Jesus? What doctrine could be more unwelcome to the haughty Israelite?

it dashed his pride of ancestry to the ground. It brought to the same

level with himself the polluted Gentile,--whose presence would alone

render all unclean in the Messiah's kingdom. It proved his past ritual

anxieties to have been all wasted. It cast aside for the future the

venerated law; left it in neglect to die; and made all the apparatus

of Providence for its maintenance end in absolutely nothing. Was then

the Messiah to supersede, and not to vindicate, the law? How different

this from the picture which prophets had drawn of his golden age, when

Jerusalem was to be the pride of the earth, and her temple the praise

of nations, sought by the feet of countless pilgrims, and decked with

the splendor of their gifts! How could a true Hebrew be justified in a

life without law? How think himself safe in a profession, which was

without temple, without priest, without altar, without victim?

Not unnaturally, then, did the Hebrews regard with reluctance two of the

leading features of Christianity; the death of the Messiah, and the

freedom from the law. The Epistle addressed to them was designed to

soothe their uneasiness, and to show that, if the Mosaic institutions

were superseded, it was in conformity with principles and analogies

contained within themselves. With great address, the writer links the

two difficulties together, and makes the one explain the other. He finds

a ready means of effecting this, in the sacrificial ideas familiar to

every Hebrew; for by representing the death of Jesus as a commutation

for legal observances, he is only ascribing to it an operation

acknowledged to have place in the death of every lamb slain as a

sin-offering at the altar. These offerings were a distinct recognition,

on the part of the Levitical code, of a principle of _equivalents_ for

its ordinances; a proof that, under certain conditions, they might

yield: nothing more, therefore, was necessary, than to show that the

death of Christ established those conditions. And such a method of

argument was attended by this advantage, that, while the _practical end_

would be obtained of terminating all ceremonial observance, the law was

yet treated as _in theory_ perpetual; not as ignominiously abrogated,

but as legitimately commuted. Just as the Israelite, in paying his

offering at the altar to compensate for ritual omissions, recognized

thereby the claims of the law, while he obtained impunity for its

neglect; so, if Providence could be shown to have provided a legal

substitute for the system, its authority was acknowledged at the moment

that its abolition was secured.

Let us advert, then, to the functions of the Mosaic sin-offerings, to

which the writer has recourse to illustrate his main position. They

were of the nature of a _mulct or acknowledgment rendered for

unconscious or inevitable disregard of ceremonial liabilities, and

contraction of ceremonial uncleanness_. Such uncleanness might be

incurred from various causes; and, while unremoved by the appointed

methods of purification, disqualified from attendance at the

sanctuary, and "cut off" "the guilty" "from among the congregation."

To touch a dead body, to enter a tent where a corpse lay, rendered a

person "unclean for seven days"; to come in contact with a forbidden

animal, a bone, a grave, to be next to any one struck with sudden

death, to be afflicted with certain kinds of bodily disease and

infirmity, unwittingly to lay a finger on a person unclean, occasioned

defilement, and necessitated a purification or an atonement.

Independently of these offences, enforced upon the Israelite by the

accidents of life, it was not easy for even the most cautious

worshipper to keep pace with the complicated series of petty debts

which the law of ordinances was always running up against him. If his

offering had an invisible blemish; if he omitted a tithe, because "he

wist it not"; or inadvertently fell into arrear, by a single day, with

respect to a known liability; if absent from disease, he was compelled

to let his ritual account accumulate; "though it be hidden from him,"

he must "be guilty, and bear his iniquity," and bring his victim. On

the birth of a child, the mother, after the lapse of a prescribed

period, made her pilgrimage to the temple, presented her sin-offering,

and "the priest made atonement for her." The poor leper, long banished

from the face of men, and unclean by the nature of his disease, became

a debtor to the sanctuary, and on return from his tedious quarantine

brought his lamb of atonement, and departed thence, clear from

neglected obligations to his law. It was impossible, however, to

provide by specific enactment for every case of ritual transgression

and impurity, arising from inadvertence or necessity. Scarcely could

it be expected that the courts of worship themselves would escape

defilement, from imperfections in the offerings, or unconscious

disqualification in people or in priest. To clear off the whole

invisible residue of such sins, an annual "day of atonement" was

appointed; the people thronged the avenues and approaches of the

tabernacle; in their presence a kid was slain for their own

transgressions, and for the high-priest the more dignified expiation

of a heifer; charged with the blood of each successively, he sprinkled

not only the exterior altar open to the sky, but, passing through the

first and holy chamber into the Holy of Holies (never entered else),

he touched, with finger dipped in blood, the sacred lid (the

Mercy-seat) and foreground of the Ark. At that moment, while he yet

lingers behind the veil, the purification is complete; on no

worshipper of Israel does any legal unholiness rest; and were it

possible for the high-priest to remain in that interior retreat of

Jehovah, still protracting the expiatory act, so long would this

national purity continue, and the debt of ordinances be effaced as it

arose. But he must return; the sanctifying rite must end; the people

be dismissed; the priests resume the daily ministrations; the law open

its stern account afresh; and in the mixture of national exactitude

and neglects, defilements multiply again till the recurring

anniversary lifts off the burden once more. Every year, then, the

necessity comes round of "making atonement for the holy sanctuary,"

"for the tabernacle," "for the altar," "for the priests, and for all

the people of the congregation." Yet, though requiring periodical

renewal, the rite, so far as it went, had an efficacy which no Hebrew

could deny; for ceremonial sins, unconscious or inevitable (to which

all atonement was limited[19]), it was accepted as an indemnity; and

put it beyond doubt that Mosaic obedience was commutable.

Such was the system of ideas, by availing himself of which the author

of the Epistle to the Hebrews would persuade his correspondents to

forsake their legal observances. "You can look without uneasiness," he

suggests, "on your ritual omissions, when the blood of some victim

has been presented instead, and the penetralia of your sanctuary have

been sprinkled with the offering: well, on no other terms would I

soothe your anxiety; precisely such equivalent sacrifice does

Christianity exhibit, only of so peculiar a nature, that, for _all_

ceremonial neglects, intentional no less than inadvertent, you may

rely upon indemnity." The Jews entertained a belief respecting their

temple, which enabled the writer to give a singular force and

precision to his analogy. They conceived that the tabernacle of their

worship was but the copy of a divine structure, devised by God

himself, made by no created hand, and preserved eternally in heaven:

this was "the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man";

which no mortal had beheld, except Moses in the mount, that he might

"make all things according to that pattern"; within whose Holy of

Holies dwelt no emblem or emanation of God's presence, but his own

immediate Spirit; and the celestial furniture of which required, in

proportion to its dignity, the purification of a nobler sacrifice, and

the ministrations of a diviner priest, than befitted the "worldly

sanctuary" below. And who then can mistake the meaning of Christ's

departure from this world, or doubt what office he conducts above? He

is called by his ascension to the pontificate of heaven; consecrated,

"not after the law of any carnal commandment, but after the power of

an endless life"; he drew aside the veil of his mortality, and passed

into the inmost court of God: and as he must needs "have somewhat to

offer," he takes the only blood he had ever shed,--which was his

own,--and, like the High-Priest before the Mercy-seat, sanctifies

therewith the people that stand without, "redeeming the

transgressions" which "the first covenant" of rites entailed. And he

has not returned; still is he hid within that holiest place; and still

the multitude he serves turn thither a silent and expectant gaze; he

prolongs the purification still; and while he appears not, no other

rites can be resumed, nor any legal defilement be contracted. Thus,

meanwhile, ordinances cease their obligation, and the sin against them

has lost its power. How different this from the offerings of

Jerusalem, whose temple was but the "symbol and shadow" of that

sanctuary above. In the Hebrew "sacrifices there was a remembrance

again made of sins every year"; "the high-priest annually entered the

holy place"; being but a mortal, he could not go in with his own blood

and _remain_, but must take that of other creatures and _return_; and

hence it became "not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats

should _take away_ sins," for instantly they began to accumulate

again. But to the very nature of Christ's offering a perpetuity of

efficacy belongs; bearing no other than "_his own_ blood," he was

immortal when his ministration began, and "ever liveth to make his

intercession"; he could "not offer himself often, for then must he

often have suffered since the foundation of the world,"--and "it is

appointed unto men _only once_ to die"; so that "_once for all_ he

entered into the holy place, and obtained a redemption that is

_perpetual_"; "_once_ in the end of the world hath he appeared, and by

sacrificing himself hath absolutely _put away_ sin"; "this man, after

he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right

hand of God," "for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them

that are sanctified." The ceremonial, then, with its periodical

transgressions and atonements, is suspended; the services of the outer

tabernacle cease, for the holiest of all is made manifest; one who is

"priest for ever" dwells therein;--one "consecrated for evermore,"

"holy, harmless, undefiled, in his celestial dwelling quite separate

from sinners; who needeth not _daily_, as those high-priests, to offer

up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's; for

this he did _once for all_ when he offered up himself."[20]

Nor is it in its perpetuity alone that the efficacy of the Christian

sacrifice transcends the atonements of the law; it removes a higher

order of ritual transgressions. It cannot be supposed, indeed, that

Messiah's life is no nobler offering than that of a creature from the

herd or flock, and will confer no more immunity. Accordingly, it goes

beyond those "_sins of ignorance_," those ceremonial inadvertences,

for which alone there was remission in Israel; and reaches to

_voluntary_ neglects of the sacerdotal ordinances; insuring indemnity

for legal omissions, when incurred not simply by the accidents of the

flesh, but even by intention of the conscience. This is no greater

boon than the dignity of the sacrifice requires; and does but give to

his people below that living relation of soul to God which he himself

sustains above. "If the blood of bulls and of goats ... sanctifieth to

the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ,

who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God,

purify (even) your conscience from dead works (ritual observances) to

serve the living God!" Let then the ordinances go, and the Lord "put

his laws _into the mind_, and write them _in the heart_"; and let all

have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by

this new and living way which he hath consecrated for us"; "provoking

each other to love and to good works."

See, then, in brief, the objection of the Hebrews to the Gospel; and the

reply of their instructor. They said: "What a blank is this; you have no

temple, no priest, no ritual! How is it that, in his ancient covenant,

God is so strict about ceremonial service, and permits no neglect,

however incidental, without atonement; yet in this new economy throws

the whole system away, letting us run up an everlasting debt to a law

confessedly unrepealed, without redemption of it or atonement for it?"

"Not without redemption and atonement," replies their evangelical

teacher; "temple, sacrifice, priest, remain to us also, only glorified

into proportions worthy of a heavenly dispensation; our temple, in the

skies; our sacrifice, Messiah's mortal person; our priest, his

ever-living spirit. How poor the efficacy of your former offerings!

year after year, your ritual debt began again: for the blood dried and

vanished from the tabernacle which it purified; the priest returned

from the inner shrine; and when there, he stood, with the interceding

blood, before the emblem, not the reality, of God. But Christ, not at

the end of a year, but at the end of the great world-era of the Lord,

has come to offer up himself,--no lamb so unblemished as he; his

voluntary and immortal spirit, than which was nothing ever more

divinely consecrate, becomes officiating priest, and strikes his own

person with immolating blow; it falls and bleeds on earth, as on the

outer altar, standing on the threshold of the sanctuary of heaven:

thither he ascends with the memorials of his death, vanishes into the

Holy of Holies of the skies, presents himself before the very living

God, and sanctifies the temple there and worshippers here; saying to

us, 'Drop now for ever the legal burdens that weigh you down; doubt

not that you are free, as my glorified spirit here, from the

defilements you are wont to dread; I stay behind this veil of visible

things, to clear you of all such taint, and put away such sin

eternally. Trust, then, in me, and take up the freedom of your souls:

burst the dead works, that cling round your conscience like cerements

of the grave; and rise to me, by the living power of duty, and a

loving allegiance to God.'"

So far, then, as the death of Christ is treated in Scripture

dogmatically, rather than historically, its effects are viewed in

contrast with the different order of things which must have been

expected, had he, as Messiah, _not_ died. And thus regarded, it

presented itself to the minds of the Apostles in three relations:--

First, to the Gentiles, whom it drew in to be subjects of the Messiah,

by breaking down the barriers of his Hebrew personality, and

rendering him spiritual as well as immortal.

Secondly, to the unbelieving Jews; whom his retirement from this world

delivered from the judgment due to them, on the principles of their own

law, both for their _general_ violation of the _conditions_ of their

covenant, and for their positive rejection of him. His absence reopened

their opportunities; and to tender them this act of long-suffering, he

took on himself the death which had been incurred by them.

Thirdly, to the believing Jews; the terms of whose discipleship the

Messiah's death had changed, destroying all the benefits of their

lineage, and substituting an act of the mind, the simpler claim of

faith. It was therefore a commutation for the Ritual Law, and gave

them impunity and atonement for all its violations.

With the last two of these relations, beyond their remarkable

historical interest, we have no personal concern. The first remains,

and ever will remain, worthy of the glorious joy with which Paul

regarded and expounded it. God has committed the rule of this world to

no exclusive prince, and no sacerdotal power, and no earthly majesty;

but to one whose spirit, too divine to be limited to place and time,

broke through clouds of sorrow into the clearest heaven; and thither

has since been drawing our human love, though for ages now he has been

unseen and immortal. An impartial God, a holy and spiritual law, an

infinite hope for all men, are given to us by that generous cross.

It is evident that all three of the relations which I have described

belonged to the death of Jesus, _in his capacity of Messiah_; and could

have had no existence if he had not borne this character, but had been

simply a private martyr to his convictions. The foregoing exposition

gives a direct answer to the inquiry, pressed without the slightest

pertinence upon the Unitarian, why the phraseology of the cross is never

found applied to Paul or Peter, or any other noble confessor, who died

in attestation of the truth; why "no record is given that we are

justified by the blood of Stephen; or that he bare our sins in his own

body, and made reconciliation for us."[22] I know not why such a

question should be submitted to us; we have assuredly no concern with

it; having never dreamt that the Apostles could have written as they did

respecting the death on Calvary, if they had thought of it only as a

scene of martyrdom. We have passed under review the whole language of

the New Testament on this subject; and in the interpretation of it have

_not even once_ had recourse to this, which is said to be our only view

of the cross. We have seen the Apostles justly announcing their Lord's

death as a _proper propitiation_; because it placed whole classes of

men, without any meritorious change in their character, in saving

relations: declaring it a _strict substitute_ for others' punishment; on

the ground that there were those who must have perished, if he had not;

and that he died and retired, that they might remain and live:

describing it as a _sacrifice which put away sin_; because it did that

for ever, which the Levitical atonements achieved for a day: but we have

not found them ever appealing to it either as a satisfaction to the

justice of God, or an example of martyrdom to men. The Trinitarians have

one idea of this event themselves; and their fancy provides their

opponents with one idea of it; of the former not a trace exists, on any

page of Scripture; and of the latter the Unitarian need not avail

himself at all, in explaining the language whereof it is said to be his

solitary key.

Nowhere, then, in Scripture do we meet with anything corresponding

with the prevailing notions of vicarious redemption; everywhere, and

most emphatically in the personal instructions of our Lord, do we find

a doctrine of forgiveness, and an idea of salvation, utterly

inconsistent with it. He spake often of the unqualified clemency of

God to his returning children; never once of the satisfaction demanded

by his justice. He spake of the joy in heaven over one sinner that

repenteth; but was silent on the sacrificial faith, without which

penitence is said to be unavailing. Nor did he, like his modern

disciples, teach that there are _two separate salvations_, which must

follow each other in a fixed order: first, redemption from the

penalty, secondly, from the spirit, of sin; pardon for the past,

before sanctification in the present; a removal of the "hinderance in

God," previous to its annihilation in ourselves. If indeed there were

in Christianity two deliverances, discriminated and successive, it

would be more in accordance with its spirit to invert this order;--to

recall from alienation first, and announce forgiveness afterwards; to

restore from guilt, before cancelling the penalty; and permit the

_healing_ to anticipate the _pardoning_ love. At least, there would

seem, in such arrangement, to be a greater jealousy for the holiness

of the divine law, a severer reservation of God's complacency for

those who have broken from the service of sin, than in the system

which proclaims impunity to the rebel will, ere yet its estrangement

is renounced. If the outward remission precedes the inward

sanctification, then does God admit to favor the yet unsanctified;

guilt keeps us in no exile from him: and though the Holy Spirit is to

follow afterwards, it becomes the peculiar office of the cross to lift

us as we are, with every stain upon the soul and every vile habit

unretraced, from the brink of perdition to the assurance of glory: the

divine lot is given to us, before the divine love is awakened in us;

and the heirs of heaven have yet to become the children of holiness.

With what consistency can the advocates of such an economy accuse its

opponents of dealing lightly with sin, of deluding men into a false

trust, and administering seductive flatteries to human nature?[23]

What! shall we, who plant in every soul of sin a hell, whence no

foreign force, no external God, can pluck us, any more than they can

tear us from our identity,--we, who hide the fires of torment in no

viewless gulf, but make them ubiquitous as guilt,--we, who suffer no

outward agent from Eden, or the Abyss, or Calvary, to encroach upon

the solitude of man's responsibility, and confuse the simplicity of

conscience,--we, who teach that God will not, and even cannot, spare

the froward, till they be froward no more, but must permit the burning

lash to fall, till they cry aloud for mercy, and throw themselves

freely into his embrace;--shall we be rebuked for a lax administration

of peace, by those who think that a moment may turn the alien into the

elect? It is no flattery of our nature, to reverence deeply its moral

capacities: we only discern in them the more solemn trust, and see in

their abuse the fouler shame. And it is not of what men _are_, but of

what they _might be_, that we encourage noble and cheerful thoughts.

Doubtless, we think exaggeration possible (which our opponents

apparently do not) even in the portraiture of their actual character:

and perhaps we are not the less likely to awaken true convictions of

sin, that we strive to speak of it with the voice of discriminative

justice, instead of the monotonous thunders of vengeance; and to draw

its image in the natural tints provided by the conscience, rather than

in the preternatural flame-color mingled in the crucibles of hell.

In making _penal_ redemption and _moral_ redemption separate and

successive, the vicarious scheme, we submit, is inconsistent with the

Christian idea of salvation. Not that we take the second, and reject

the first, as our Trinitarian friends imagine; nor that we invert

their order. We accept them both; putting them, however, not in

succession, but in super-position, so that they coalesce. The power

and the punishment of sin perish together; and together begin the

holiness and the bliss of heaven. Whatever extracts the poison cools

the sting: nor can the divine vigor of spiritual health enter, without

its freedom and its joy. That there can be any separate dealings with

our past guilt and with our present character, is not a truth of God,

but a fiction of the schools. The sanctification of the one is the

redemption of the other. The mind given up to passion, or chained to

self, or anyhow alienated from the love and life divine, dwells,

whatever be its faith, in the dark and terrible abyss; while he, and

he only, that, in the freedom and tranquillity of great affections,

communes with God and toils for men, understands the meaning, and wins

the promises, of heaven. Am I asked: "What, then, is to persuade the

sinful heart thus to draw near to God;--what, but a proclamation of

absolute pardon, can break down the secret distrust, which keeps our

nature back, wrapped in the reserve of conscious guilt?" I reply;

however much these fears and hesitations might cling round us, and

restrain us from the mystic Deity of Nature, they can have no place in

our intercourse with the Father whom Jesus represents. It needs only

that Christ be truly his image, to know "that the hinderance is not

with him, but entirely in ourselves";[24] to see that there is no

anger in his look; to feel that he invites us to unreserved

confession, and accepts our self-abandonment to him,--that he lifts

the repentant, prostrate at his feet, and speaks the words of severe,

but truest hope. Am I told, "that only the gratitude excited by

personal rescue from tremendous danger, by an unconditional and entire

deliverance, is capable of winning our reluctant nature, of opening

the soul to the access of the Divine Spirit, and bringing it to the

service of the Everlasting Will"? I rejoice to acknowledge, that

_some_ such disinterested power must be awakened, some mighty forces

of the heart be called out, ere the regeneration can take place that

renders us children of the Highest; ere we can break, with true new

birth, from the shell of self, and try and train our wings in the

atmosphere of God. The permanent work of duty must be wrought by the

affections; not by the constraint, however solemn, of hope and fear;

no self-perfectionating process, elaborated by an anxious will, has

warmth enough to ripen the soul's diviner fruits; the walks of outward

morality, and the slopes of deliberate meditation, it may keep smooth

and trim; but cannot make the true life-blossoms set, as in a garden

of the Lord, and the foliage wave as with the voice of God among the

trees. I gladly admit that, to a believer in the vicarious sacrifice,

the sense of pardon, the love of the Great Deliverer, may well fulfil

this blessed office, of carrying him out of himself in genuine

allegiance to a being most benign and holy. And perceiving that, if

this doctrine were removed, there is not, _in the system of which it

forms a part_, and which else would be all terror, anything that could

perform the same generous part, I can understand why it seems to its

advocates an _essential_ power in the renovation of the character. But

great as it may be, within the limits of its own narrow scheme, ideas

possessed of higher moral efficacy are not wanting, when we pass into

a region of nobler and more Christian thought. Shall we say that the

view of the Infinite Ruler, given in the spoken wisdom or the living

spirit of Christ, has no sanctifying power? Yet where is there any

trace in it of the satisfactionist's redemption? When we sit at

Messiah's feet, that transforming gratitude for an extinguished

penalty, on which the prevailing theology insists, as its central

emotion, becomes replaced by a similar and profounder sentiment

towards the Eternal Father. If to rescue men from a dreadful fate in

the future be a just title to our reverence, _never to have designed_

that fate claims an affection yet more devoted; if there be a divine

mercy in annihilating an awful curse, in shedding only blessing there

is surely a diviner still. Shall the love restored to us after long

delay, and in consideration of an equivalent, work mightily on the

heart,--and shall that which asked no purchase, which has been veiled

by no cloud, which has enfolded us always in its tranquillity, nor can

ever quit the soul opened to receive it, fail to penetrate the

conscience, and dissolve the frosts of our self-love by some holier

flame? Never shall it be found true, that God must threaten us with

vengeance, ere we can feel the shelter of his grace!

In truth, the Christian idea of salvation cannot be better

illustrated, than by the doubt which has been entertained respecting

the proper translation of my text. Some, referring it to spiritual

redemption, adhere to the common version; others, seeing that the

Apostle Peter is explaining "by what power or by what name" he had

cured the lame man at the temple gate, refer the words to this miracle

of deliverance, and render them thus: "Neither is there _healing_ in

any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men,

whereby we can be _healed_." It matters little which it is; for

whether we speak of body or of mind, Jesus "_saves_" us by "_making us

whole_"; by putting forth upon us a divine and healing power, by which

past suffering and present decrepitude disappear together; which

supplies the defective elements of our nature, cools the burning of

inward fever, or calls into being new senses and perceptions, opening

a diviner universe to our experience. The deformed and crooked will,

bowed by Satan, lo! these many years, and nowise able to lift up

itself, he loosens and makes straight in uprightness. The moral

paralytic, collapsed and prostrate amid the stir of life, and

incapably gazing on the moving waters in which others find their

health, has often started up at the summons of that voice, though

perchance "he wist not who it was"; and, going his way, has found it

to be "the sabbath," and owned the "work" of one who is in the spirit

of "the Father." From the eye long dark and blind to duty and to God,

he has caused the film to pass away; and shown the solemn look of life

beneath a heaven so tranquil and sublime. Even the dead of soul, close

wrapped in bandages of selfishness,--that greediest of graves,--have

been quickened by his piercing call, and have come forth, to learn,

"when risen," that only in the meekness that can obey is there the

power to command, only in the love that serves is there the life of

heart-felt liberty. To call, then, on the name and trust in the spirit

of Christ, is to invoke the restoring power of God; to give symmetry

and speed to our lame affections, and the vigor of an athlete to our

limping wills. There is not any Christian _salvation_ that is not thus

identical with Christian _perfection_: "nor any other name under

heaven given among men, whereby we may be (thus) _made whole_." Let

all that would "be perfect be thus minded"; seek "the measure of the

stature of the fulness of Christ"; and they shall find in him a "power

to become the sons of God."