_The Nature of the Atonement, and its Relation to Remission of
Sins and Eternal Life._ By JOHN M'LEOD CAMPBELL. Cambridge:
Macmillan & Co. 1856.
This is a strange book. A Greek would have hated it. A Puritan would
have found it savory, even where it was unsound. Rosenkranz, who has
written on the _Æsthetik des Hässlichen_, would have been thankful for
such a fund of illustration. Cumbrous, tiresome, monotonous, it has
few attractions for the natural man, who may have a weakness in favor
of pure English and nice grammar. It despises the graces of carnal
literature, and treats all the color and music of language as the
Roundheads treated a cathedral, silencing the "box of whistles" and
smashing the "mighty big angels in glass." And yet, if you can get
over its grating way of delivering itself, you will find it no
barbaric product, but the utterance of a deep and practised thinker,
charged with the richest experiences of the Christian life, and
resolute to clear them from every tangle of fiction or pretence.
Beneath the uncouth form there is not only severe truth, but great
tenderness and beauty,--a fine apprehension of the real inner strife
of tempted men, and an intense faith in an open way of escape from it,
without compromise of any sanctity. The author, though not tuneful in
his speech, has the gifts of a true prophet; and often enables one to
fancy what Isaiah might have been if he had heard nothing but the
bagpipe, and had set his "burdens" to its drone. Whether Mr.
Campbell's style has been formed north of the Tweed, we know not. In
any case, it is trained in the school of Calvinism; is untouched
therefore by any feeling for art; and runs on with a sort of
extemporaneous habit, insufficiently relieved by occasional flashes of
grotesque and forcible expression. It is only in exterior aspect,
however, that he presents the features of the rugged old Calvinism:
and though the first-born of that system and its younger sons are
distinguished like Isaac's children, "Esau is a hairy man, and Jacob
is a smooth man," yet no true patriarch of the school can be so blind
as not to see beneath our author's goat-skin dress, and know that he
is other than the heir. In fact, the peculiarity of this work as a
theological phenomenon is, that it is a destruction of Calvinism
without any revolt from it,--an escape from it through its own
interior. Its postulates are not denied. Its phraseology is not
rejected. Its statement of the problem of redemption is in the main
accepted. Its provision for the solution,--the Incarnation of the
Son,--is sacredly preserved. Yet these elements are put into such play
as to make it checkmate itself on its own area. Its definitions are
shown to be suicidal; and its sharp-edged logic is used to cut through
the ligaments that constrain and shape it.
We have spoken first of the _style_ of this book, because it strikes
the reader at the outset, and is not unlikely to repel him if he is
not warned. Of one other feature, derived from the same school, we
must say a word, to qualify the admiration and gratitude which we
shall then ungrudgingly tender to the author. In common with all the
great masters of the "Evangelical" school, he is too much at home with
the Divine economy; knows too well how the same thing appears from the
finite and the infinite point of view; can tell too surely how a mixed
nature, both divine and human, would feel on looking from both ends at
once; and altogether goes with too close a search to the "secret place
of the Most High." Not that he speaks unworthily on these high themes;
we have nothing truer to suggest, except more silence. But we must
confess that when a teacher lays down the conditions of divine
possibility, expatiates psychologically on the sentiments of the
Father and the Son, and seems as though he had been allowed a peep
into the autobiography of God, we shrink from the sharp outlines, and
feel that we shall believe more if we are shown less. With so many
soundings taken, and so many channels buoyed, the sense of the
shoreless sea is gone, and we find only a port of traffic, with
coast-lights instead of stars. The temptation to this theological
map-making has always proved peculiarly strong among the disciples of
Geneva: and the reason is to be found in the very nature of the
problem they have attempted to resolve. Religion has two foci to
determine,--the divine nature and the human. Athanasius and the Greek
influence fixed the doctrine of the Godhead: Augustine and the Latin
Church defined the spiritual state of man. The one, it has been said,
produced a theology; the other, an anthropology. In the construction
of the former, it is obvious that the appeal could be made only to
positive authority, whether of Scripture or the Church. On the Nicene
question no one could pretend to have personal insight or scientific
data: it must be decided by arbitrary vote on impressions of
testimony. But for establishing a doctrine of humanity, the living
resources of consciousness and experience were present with perpetual
witness; every proposition advanced could be confronted with its
corresponding reality: the disciple could not help carrying the dogma
inward to the test of his self-knowledge. The scheme of the Trinity
partook of the nature of a _Gnosis_, which dwelt apart from the stir
of phenomena, and, having once set and crystallized, could only be
hung up for preservation. The dogmas of human depravity and
helplessness partook of the nature of a _Science_, coming in contact
with the facts of life and character at every point. Moral experience
had something to say to them: and unless they could keep good terms
with it, they could not hope to hold their ground. Hence the
Augustinian divines have been constrained to seek a _philosophy_ of
religion, and to collate the text of their Scriptural system with the
running paraphrase of actual life. No writers have contributed so much
to lay bare the inmost springs of human action and emotion; have
tracked with so much subtilty the windings of guilty self-deception,
or so found the secret sorrow that lies at the core of every
unconsecrated joy. If we must concede to the Roman Catholic casuists
and the problems of the confessional the merit of creating an ethical
Art embodied in systems of rules, we owe to the deeper Evangelical
spirit, whether in its action or its reaction, the ground-lines of an
ethical Philosophy;--or, if you deny that such a thing as yet exists,
at least the true idea and undying quest of it. The disciples of
Augustine, belonging to an anthropological school, have been naturally
distinguished by a reflective and psychologic habit.
If it was the function of the Greek period to settle the doctrine of
God, and of its Latin successor to define the nature of man, it was the
aim of the _Reformation_, leaving these two extremes undisturbed, to
find the way of mediation between them. So long as the great sacerdotal
Church, living continuator of Christ's presence, was intrusted with the
business, private Christians wanted no theory on the subject; all nice
questions went into the ecclesiastical closet and disappeared. But as
soon as ever the hierarchy fell out of this position, there was an
immense void left to be filled. On the one hand, Infinite Holiness,
quite alienated; on the other, Human Pravity, quite helpless: how was
any approximation to be rendered conceivable? True, the great original
Mediation on Calvary, which the papal priesthood pretended to prolong,
remained; for it was fixed in history. But it lay a great way off, a
fact in the old past; and its intervention was required to-day by
Melancthon, and Carlstadt, and a whole generation quite remote from it.
How was its power to be fetched into the present? how applied to men
walking about in Wittenberg or Zürich? This was the problem which flew
open by the cancelling of the Romish credentials: and the various
answers to it constitute the body of Protestant theology. In one point
they all agree, that, to replace the priestly media that are thrust out,
_Personal Faith_ is the element that must be brought in. In what way
this subjective state of the individual mind draws or appropriates the
efficacy of the Incarnation; in what _order_ the redeeming process runs
among the three given terms,--the alienated Father, the mediating Son,
the believing disciple; whether any part of the process is moral and
real, or all is legal and virtual;--these are questions which the
Reformation has found it easier to open than to close. But answer them
as you will, they entangle your thoughts in the mutual relations and
sentiments of three persons; and cannot be discussed without
establishing some principles of moral psychology, as the common grounds
of intercommunion between minds finite and infinite, and dealing with
hypothetical problems of divine as well as human casuistry. Hence the
inevitable tendency of the doctrine of Mediation to venture on a natural
history of the Divine Mind,--to construct a drama of Providence and
Grace, with plot too artfully wrought for the free hand of Heaven, and
traits too specific and minute for reverent contemplation.
It is deeply instructive to observe the pulsation of religious thought
in men. Revealed religion is ever passing into natural, and natural
returning to re-interpret the revealed. We can almost see the steps by
which sacred history was converted into dogma; while dogma, assumed in
turn as the starting-point, is ever producing new readings of the
history. This world may be regarded as a _human theatre_, where the
Wills of men perform the parts; or as the stage of _Divine agency_,
using the visible actors as the executants of an invisible thought.
Its vicissitudes, presented in the former aspect, yield only history;
in the latter, give rise to doctrine. Noticed by Tacitus, the life of
Christ is a provincial incident of Tiberius's reign, and his death a
judicial act of Pontius Pilate's government. In the three first
Gospels and the book of Acts, the crucifixion is still the act of
wicked or misguided men, inflicted on an expostulating victim; not,
however, without being _foreseen_ as the appointed precursor of a
resurrection. The event is thus in the main simply historical; but
with a divine comment which gives it an incipient theological
significance. It appears under another aspect in the Gospel of John;
there, Christ not only foresaw, but _determined_ his own death: his
life "no man taketh it from him," but he "lays it down of himself"; he
is not merely the submissive medium, but the spontaneous co-agent of a
Divine intent. Finally, in St. Paul,--to whom the person and ministry
of Christ were unfamiliar, who, as a disciple of his heavenly life,
looked back upon them from a higher point,--the historical aspect
almost wholly disappears in the ideal; and the cross becomes the
Gospel, the wisdom of God and the power of God, the self-sacrifice of
the Son the reconciling way to the Father, the very focus and symbol
of all the mystery and mercy comprised in humanity. The movement of
thought through these successive stages is obvious. An event is at
first accepted as it arises. But in proportion as its concrete
impression retires, the need becomes more urgent to find its function:
instinctive search is made for all those elements, accessories, and
effects of it, which promise to bring out its meaning and idea, until
at last its doctrine absorbs itself, and enters the human mind as a
permanent factor of positive religion. It is thus that the great
antitheses, of Law and Gospel, of the Natural and the Spiritual man,
of dead Works and living Faith, of self-seeking enmity and
self-surrendering reconciliation with God, have settled upon the
consciousness of Christendom, and grown into the very substance of its
experience. They have become part of its natural religion. But in this
character they may, conversely, be taken as the initiative of a new
version of the history whence they sprung. They could not be born into
unmixed and formed existence at once; but, like all new affections,
must feel their way out of an early indeterminate state, into clear
self-apprehension and settled purity. The testimony of the Christian
conscience needs time to become articulate and collected. The shadow
of human guilt may lie so dark upon the mind, the dawn of the divine
holiness may so dazzle the inward vision, that blindness in part may
linger for a while; and the eye, in very opening to Christ's healing
touch, may fail to see. Once accustomed to the new light of life, men
are no longer occupied with it alone, but find in it a medium for
truer discernment of objects around. The special sentiments awakened
by the Gospel test themselves afresh, like any other theory, by being
fully lived out, and tried as experiments upon the soul. The type of
character,--the edition of human nature,--in which they take
embodiment, becomes a distinct object of critical appreciation; and
while all its deep expressive traits speak for the inner truth whence
they are moulded, every mixture of disharmony or defect calls for some
revision of idea. In the thirsty spiritual state to which men were
reduced on the eve of the Reformation, they drank up with intense
eagerness the most turbid supplies of evangelical doctrine. With purer
health and finer perception they become aware that not all was water
of life; and that coarse notions of the nature of justice, the
conditions of mercy, and the measurement of sin, were intermixed and
must become mere sediment. Cleared of these, the theory is taken back
to the facts of revelation, and so washed through them, that they may
also emerge as from a sprinkling of regeneration. Through such
re-baptism does our author, furnished with a purified conception of
"atonement," pass the history of Christ.
In looking for the whereabouts of the atonement, we are guided, as in
search for the pole-star, by two pointers whose indications we are to
follow. Its function was double,--to cancel a guilty past, to make a
holy future: and it must be of such a nature as to disappoint neither
of these conditions. In determining its form, the great anxiety of
theologians hitherto has been to fit it for its _retrospective_
action, and disembarrass the problem of salvation of the burden of
accumulated sin. It is Mr. Campbell's distinction that he lays the
superior stress on its _prospective_ action, and requires that it
shall positively heal the sickness of our nature, and evolve thence a
real and living righteousness. God's moral perfectness could be
satisfied with nothing less. If, indeed, He looked on our guilt
merely as an obstacle to our "salvation," and desired to remove it as
a hinderance out of the way,--if He rather sought a pretext for making
us happy than a provision for drawing us to goodness,--then the work
of Christ might be so devised as simply to tear out the defiled page
of the past, and register an infinite credit not our own, without
inherent care for ulterior personal holiness. But were it so, the
divine _love_ would amount only to an unrighteous desire for our
happiness, and the divine _righteousness_ to an unloving repulsion
from our sin. Such spurious analysis corresponds with no reality; and
in the truth of things there can be no heavenly affection that is not
holy, nor any holiness that is not affectionate.
"While in reference to the not uncommon way of regarding this subject
which represents righteousness and holiness as opposed to the sinner's
salvation, and mercy and love as on his side, I freely concede that
all the Divine attributes were, in one view, against the sinner, in
that they called for the due expression of God's wrath against sin in
the history of redemption: I believe, on the other hand, that the
justice, the righteousness, the holiness of God, have an aspect
according to which they, as well as his mercy, appear as intercessors
for man, and crave his salvation. Justice may be contemplated as
according to sin its due; and there is in righteousness, as we are
conscious to it, what testifies that sin should be miserable. But
_justice_, looking at the sinner not simply as the fit subject of
punishment, but as existing in a moral condition of unrighteousness,
and so its own opposite, must desire that the sinner should cease to
be in that condition; should cease to be unrighteous, should become
righteous: righteousness in God craving for righteousness in man, with
a craving which the realization of righteousness in man alone can
satisfy. So also of holiness. In one view it repels the sinner, and
would banish him to outer darkness, because of its repugnance to sin.
In another, it is pained by the continued existence of sin and
unholiness, and must desire that the sinner should cease to be sinful.
So that the sinner, conceived of as awakening to the consciousness of
his own evil state, and saying to himself, 'By sin I have destroyed
myself. Is there yet hope for me in God?'--should hear an encouraging
answer, not only from the love and mercy of God, but also from his
very righteousness and holiness. We must not forget, in considering
the response that is in conscience to the charge of sin and guilt,
that, though the fears which accompany that response are partly the
effect of a dawning of light, they also in part arise from remaining
darkness. He who is able to interpret the voice of God within him
truly, and with full spiritual intelligence will be found saying, not
only, 'There is to me cause for fear in the righteousness and holiness
of God,' but also, 'There is room for hope for me in the Divine
righteousness and holiness.' And when gathering consolation from the
meditation of the name of the Lord, that consolation will be not only,
'Surely the Divine mercy desires to see me happy rather than
miserable,' but also, 'Surely the Divine righteousness desires to see
me righteous,--the Divine holiness desires to see me holy,--my
continuing unrighteous and unholy is as grieving to God's
righteousness and holiness as my misery through sin is to his pity and
love.' 'Good and righteous is the Lord, therefore will he teach
sinners the way which they should choose.' 'A just God and a Saviour';
not as the harmony of a seeming opposition, but 'a Saviour, _because_
a just God.'"--p. 29.
From this justly-conceived passage the characteristics of Mr.
Campbell's theory may already be divined. He sets his faith on a
concrete, living, indivisible God, whom you can never understand by
laying out His abstract attributes one by one, with their separate
requirements, and then putting them together again to compute the
resultant. He insists on the absolute dominance of a moral and
spiritual idea throughout the revealed economy: of this nature is the
evil to be met,--sin and estrangement; of this nature is the good to
be reached,--righteousness and reconciliation; and only of this nature
can be the mediation which effects the change; related upward to the
Father and downward to men, in a way accordant with the laws of
conscience, and intelligible by its self-light. He craves, therefore,
a natural juncture, a real causal nexus, between the several parts of
the process, to the exclusion of all forensic fictions and arbitrary
scene-shifting and sovereign _tours-de-force_. In short, he will have
no tricks passed off, no _quasi_-transformations upon the conscience;
he feels the moral world to be above the range of mere miracle; any
change in it irreducible to its solemn laws would _ipso facto_ fall
out of it and become a mere dynamical surprise. Of _physical_ miracle
our author avails himself to the full amount; the incarnation of the
Son of God being, with him, as with others, the central fact and
essential medium of Christian redemption. But the august power thus
_super_naturally set up--the Person at once divine and human--works
out his great problem _naturally_, without requiring the suspension of
one rule of right, or holding any magical dealings with the character
of God or man. His problem, therefore, is to show how the life and
death of Christ--considered as God in humanity--were fitted, and alone
fitted, to blot out the sins of the world before God, and to introduce
among men a new state of real righteousness and eternal life.
The common Evangelical scheme of redemption so far affects to be
deduced from certain general principles, and to render the way of
redemption _conceivable_, that it is stigmatized as _rationalistic_ by
Catholics and Anglicans. It is so, however, only in the sense of
hanging well together, and serving the purpose of a _theological
Mnemonic_ to those who want a religion ready more than deep. In the
higher sense, of occupying any natural ground of reason, it does not
earn its reproach. The propositions which it lays down, as to the
inability of a holy nature to forgive unless circuitously and with
compensation, and as to the commutability of either penal liabilities
or moral attributes, are without any support from our primary
sentiments of right and wrong, and could be carried out by no sane man
in the conduct of life. The doctrine is taught in two principal
forms;--the earlier and more exact scheme of "_Satisfaction_,"
elaborated by Anselm of Canterbury, and perfected by Owen and
Edwards; and the modern theory of "_Public Justice_," maintained in
the writings of Dr. Pye Smith and Dr. Payne, and prevailing wherever
the first decadence from the old Calvinism is going on. The first of
these prepares its ground by laying down these principles as
fundamental;--that the connection between sin and suffering is
inviolably secured on the veracity of God; that "when we have done
all, we are unprofitable servants," and have only rendered our strict
due; that, far from "doing all," we have done and can do nothing,
except accumulate guilt, which, measure it as you will,--by the
majesty of the authority defied, or the multitude of the offenders and
their sins,--is practically of infinite amount. Here, then, is a case
of utter despair: infinite debt; nothing to pay; remission impossible;
punishment eternal; death unattainable. But we are brought into the
labyrinth on one side, to emerge from it on the other. While _men_ can
only multiply demerit, there are natures conceivable to which merit is
possible. A Divine Person, laying aside a blessedness inherently his,
and assuming sorrow not his own, and doing this out of a pure love,
fulfils the conditions; and when the Son takes on him our humanity,
the act, carried out unto the end, has a merit in it which in amount
is a full set-off against the guilt of men. Still, this only leaves us
with two opposite funds--of infinite good desert and infinite ill
desert--which sit apart and unrelated. In due course, the one ought to
have a boundless reward, the other a boundless punishment. But to
render his affluence available for our debt, the Son consummates his
self-sacrifice, substitutes himself for us as the object of
retribution, and dies once for all,--one infinite death for many
finite hereafters of woe. The Father's justice is satisfied; the
allotment of suffering to sin has been accurately observed; His desire
to pardon is released from its restraint. Having dealt with the person
of the Son as if it were mankind, He may deal with mankind as if they
were the Son, and look upon them as clothed with a perfect obedience.
The wholly artificial structure of this scheme, which is its greatest
condemnation, has been its chief security. It is by approaching within
conducting-distance of reality, that a doctrine elicits resistance and
meets the stroke of natural objection; and if it only keeps far enough
aloft in the metaphysic atmosphere, it may float along unarrested from
zone to zone of time. Men know not what to make of propositions so
much out of their sphere, so evasive of any real encounter with their
consciousness, and are apt to let them pass for their very
strangeness' sake. But surely we are bound to demand for them some
"response of conscience," and, with Mr. Campbell, to demur to such of
them as will not bear this test. Limiting ourselves to the
_mediatorial_ part of the theory, we will assume the problem of moral
evil to be correctly stated, and only ask whether, from the supposed
case of despair, the offered solution affords any real exit of relief.
Nor do we assume this for argument's sake alone. We can perfectly
understand any remorseful sense, however deep, of human unworthiness;
any appreciative reverence, however intense, of Christ's
self-sacrifice. Set the one under the shadow of the Father's infinite
disapproval, the other in the light of His infinite complacency; so
far we go; there let them lie. But what next? Here, on the left hand,
is Sin with its need of punishment; there, on the right, a perfect
Holiness with its merits. While they are thus spread beneath the
Father's eye, they break up their inviolable alliances; each moral
cause crosses over and takes the opposite effect. If such change took
place, the _seat_ of the fact must be sought partly in the
consciousness of Christ, partly in the Father's view of things. In
reference to the first, must we say that the Crucified _felt himself_
under Divine wrath and punishment, and esteemed that wrath to be
_just_,--the fitting expression of his own inward _remorse_? If so,
can we affirm that his consciousness was veracious? or did he not
feel, in regard to _others'_ sins, sentiments and experiences that are
false except in relation to _one's own_? And, ascending to the other
point of view, shall we affirm that the Father _saw sin_ in the Son
and was angry with him; so that, in the hour of sublimest obedience,
the words ceased to be true, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased"? And on the other hand, what is meant when it is said
that beneath the Divine eye men in their guilt are seen "clothed with"
a perfect righteousness? Is such an aspect of them _true_? or is it
akin to an ocular deception? We seem to be reduced to this
dilemma;--the change of apparent moral place implied in "imputation"
is either a faithful representation, or a _quasi_-representation, of
the reality of things. If the latter, then the Divine consciousness is
illusory, and the world is administered on a fiction; if the former,
then the moral law, in assuring us of the personal and inalienable
nature of sin, gives a false report, and there is nothing to prevent a
circulating medium of merit from passing current through the universe.
Mr. Campbell's deference for the great advocates of this marvellous
doctrine does not obstruct his perception of its difficulties.
"I freely confess," he says, "that to my own mind it is a relief, not
only intellectually, but also morally and spiritually, to see that there
is no foundation for the conceptions that when Christ suffered for us,
the just for the unjust, he suffered either 'as by imputation unjust,'
or 'as if he were unjust.' I admit that _intellectually_ it is a relief
not to be called to conceive to myself a double consciousness, both in
the Father and in the Son, such as seems implied in the Father's seeing
the Son at one and the same time, though it were but for a moment, as
the well-beloved Son, to whom infinite favor should go forth, and also
as worthy, in respect of the imputation of our sins to him, of being the
object of infinite wrath, he being the object of such wrath accordingly;
and in the Son's knowing himself the well-beloved of the Father, and yet
having the consciousness of being personally, through imputation of our
sin, the object of the Father's wrath. I feel it intellectually a relief
neither to be called to conceive this, nor to assume it as an
unconceived mystery. Still more do I feel it _morally_ and _spiritually_
a relief, not to be required to recognize legal fictions as having a
place in this high region, in which the awful realities of sin and
holiness, spiritual death and spiritual life, are the objects of a
transaction between the Father and the Son in the Eternal Spirit."--p.
310.
The second form of mediatorial doctrine, to which we have referred as
the modern type of Calvinism, has arisen from the endeavor to evade some
of these perplexities. The riddle that haunts its teachers is still the
same,--how it can become possible to show mercy to sinners; but the
difficulty in the way is differently conceived, and therefore met by a
different expedient. It is not an obstacle in God, arising from his
personal sentiment of equity, which must be satisfied; but springs out
of the necessity of consistent rectitude, and adherence to law in his
administrative government. The Father himself, it is intimated, would be
quite willing to forgive, were there nothing to consult except his own
disposition. But it would never do to play fast and loose with the
criminal law of the universe, and, notwithstanding the most solemn
enactments, let off delinquents on mere repentance, as if nothing were
the matter beyond a personal affront. Something more is due to _Public
Justice_. If the due course of retribution is to be turned aside, it
must be in such a way and at such a cost as to proclaim aloud the
awfulness of the guilt remitted. This, we are told, is accomplished by
the sufferings and death of the Son of God, which were substituted for
our threatened punishment, not as its quantitative equal paid to the
Father, but as a moral equivalent in the eyes of men. Their validity is
thus conceived to depend by no means on their particular measure, but on
the meritorious obedience of love which was their sustaining and
animating soul, and which, being on the scale of a Divine nature, gave
infinite value to the smallest sorrow. Within the casket of his grief
was held such a priceless righteousness, that, on beholding it, the
Father might regard it as an adequate plea for acts of mercy to sinners.
He does not indeed impute to them the actual moral perfectness of
Christ, so as to see them invested with it, any more than he imputed to
Christ their guilt, and frowned on Calvary. It is the _effects_ only of
that holiness which he imputes; he offers to men the benefits of it,
without reckoning it as really theirs, and giving them the _legal
standing_ which its possession would bestow.
No doubt this scheme gets rid of the penal mensuration and moral
conveyancing of the older Calvinism. It shifts also the bar to free
mercy away from the inner personality of God, and sets it in his outer
government. But when we again attempt to seize the _mediatorial
expedient_, what is it? It is said to be a display of the enormity of
that guilt which needs to be redeemed at such a cost. But is that need
_real_? Have we not been told that it has no place in God? Does he
then hang out a profession that is not true to the kernel of things,
but only a show-off for impression's sake? If Eternal Justice in its
inner essence does _not_ require the expiation provided, why in its
outer manifestation pretend that it _does_? As nothing can become
right for "the sake of good example" that is not right in itself, so
is "Public Justice," unsustained by the sincere heart of reality, a
mere dramatic imposture. Mr. Campbell has supplied us with a forcible
statement of this truth:--
"Surely rectoral or public justice, if it is to have any moral
basis,--any basis other than expediency,--must rest upon, and refer
to, distributive or absolute justice. In other words, unless there be
a rightness in connecting sin with misery, and righteousness with
blessedness, looking at individual cases simply in themselves, I
cannot see that there is a rightness in connecting them as a rule of
moral government. 'An English judge once said to a criminal before
him: You are condemned to be transported, not because you have stolen
these goods, but that goods may not be stolen.' (_Jenkyns_, 175, 176.)
This is quoted in illustration of the position, that 'the death of
Christ is an honorable ground for remitting punishment,' because 'his
sufferings answer the same ends as the punishment of the sinner.' I do
not recognize any harmony between this sentiment of the English judge
and the voice of an awakened conscience on the subject of sin. It is
just because he has sinned and deserves punishment, and not because he
says to himself that God is a moral governor, and must punish him to
deter others, that the wrath of God against sin seems so
terrible,--and as just as terrible."--p. 79.
Even were the expression backed up by reality, we cannot but ask about
the fitness of the medium for the thought to be conveyed. God's horror
at guilt is publicly proclaimed by the most awful crime in human
history! To explain the difficulty of letting off the offender, he
exhibits the anguish of the innocent! The spectacle would seem in
danger of suggesting the wrong lesson to the terrified observer,--of
raising to intensity the doubt whether, in a world that gives its
silver to a Judas, its judgment-seat to a Pilate, and the cross to the
Son of God, any Providence can care for rectitude at all. Even when
the death of Christ is contemplated exclusively as a _self_-sacrifice,
without remembering the guilt which compassed it, we are at a loss to
understand how it could be "an honorable ground for remitting
punishment." What difference did it make in the previous reasons of
the Divine government, so that penalties right before should be less
right afterwards? If Catiline were undergoing his just retribution at
the date of the Last Supper, what plea was there for releasing him at
or before the date of the resurrection? That obedience rendered and
suffering endured by one soul should dispense with the liabilities of
another, is a supposition at variance with the personal and
inalienable nature of all sin; and to say that God "imputes the
_effects_" of Christ's holiness to those who are not partakers in the
cause, is to accuse the Divine government of total disregard to
character and evasion of moral reality. The old Calvinism represents
the Father as having an illusory _perception_ of men, _as if_ they
were clad in a divine righteousness. The new Calvinism represents him
as having indeed a true perception of their unrighteousness, but,
notwithstanding this, falsifying the truth _in action_, and proceeding
as if the facts were quite other than they are. Inasmuch as
unveracious vision is intellectual, while unveracious practice is
moral, the younger doctrine appears to us a positive degradation of
the elder, not only in logical completeness, but in religious worth.
Both of them make the redeeming economy proceed upon a _fiction_; but
there is all the difference between unconscious and conscious fiction;
between an inner "satisfaction" brought about by an optical
displacement of merit, and an outward "exhibition" set up for the sake
of impression. The theory of Owen, stern as it is, bears the stamp of
resolute meaning consistently carried through into the inmost recess
of the Divine nature. The newer doctrine is the production of a
platform age, which obtrudes considerations of _effect_ even into its
thoughts of God and his government, and can scarce refrain from
turning the universe itself into pathos and _ad captandum_ display.
With good reason, therefore, does our author feel that this whole
subject is in need of reconsideration. His own doctrine diverges from
its predecessors at a very early point, and is seen at its source in
the following proposition of Edwards, as cited by Mr. Campbell:--
"In contending that sin must be punished with an infinite punishment,
President Edwards says, 'that God could not be just to himself without
this vindication, unless there could be such a thing as a repentance,
humiliation, and sorrow for this (viz. sin) proportionable to the
greatness of the Majesty despised,'--for that there must needs be
'either an equivalent punishment, or an equivalent sorrow and
repentance'; 'so,' he proceeds, 'sin must be punished with an infinite
punishment'; thus assuming that the alternative of 'an equivalent
sorrow and repentance' was out of the question. But, upon the
assumption of that identification of himself with those whom he came
to save, on the part of the Saviour, which is the foundation of
Edwards's whole system, it may at the least be said, that the Mediator
had the two alternatives open to his choice,--either to endure for
sinners an equivalent punishment, or to experience in reference to
their sin, and present to God on their behalf, an adequate sorrow and
repentance. Either of these courses should be regarded by Edwards as
equally securing the vindication of the majesty and justice of God in
pardoning sin."--p. 136.
The side of the alternative which Edwards abandoned, our author takes
up and follows out. The work of Christ, as a ground of remission,
consisted in the offering on behalf of humanity of an adequate
repentance. Adequate it could not have been but for his Divine nature;
which attaches to his holy sorrow an infinite moral value, to balance
the infinite heinousness of the sin deplored. The only reason why
human penitence does not in itself avail to restore, lies in its
imperfect purity and depth. Through the cloud of evil, and with the
eye of self, we are disqualified for true discernment of sin as it is:
both the limits of a finite nature, and the delusions of a tempted and
fallen one, hinder us from appreciating the measure of our guilt and
misery. Even when our better mind reasserts itself, our very
compunction carries in it many a speck of ill, and our repentance
needs to be repented of. But were it not for this, there would be
"more atoning worth in one tear of the true and perfect sorrow which
the memory of the past would awaken," "than in endless ages of penal
woe." It is not the inefficacy, but the impossibility, of due
penitence that constitutes our fatal disability; to be relieved from
which we need to be taken out of ourselves, to be identified with a
perfect spirit; our humanity must cease to be human, and become one
with the Divine nature. This is precisely the condition which realized
itself in Christ. As God in humanity, he had perfect sympathy with the
holiness of one sphere, and the infirmities of the other; he saw the
whole amount of the world's moral estrangement, not only with infinite
pity for its misery, but with infinite horror at its guilt. He could
both make a plenary confession for us, and respond unreservedly to the
Father's righteous judgment; could bear our burden on his heart before
heaven, and utter the _Miserere_ of holy sorrow, which our most
plaintive cry can never approach. This is the true nature of his
sufferings. He "made his soul an offering for sin," yielded it up to
be filled with a sense of our real aspect beneath the Omniscient eye,
and an Amen to its condemning look. Hence his sorrows had nothing
_penal_ in them, any more than the tears of a devout parent over a
prodigal child are penal. They are incident to that attitude of soul
which a perfect nature cannot but have in the presence of a brother's
sin. They are altogether moral and spiritual; and their efficacy as an
expiation is that of true repentance; expressing at once our entire
confession, acceptance of the Father's just displeasure, and sympathy
with his compassionate grieving at our alienation.
At the same time, this mere retrospective confession would not of itself
avail, were there no better hope for the future of mankind. But our
Mediator's own experience in humanity, his consciousness of intimate
peace and communion with the Father, opened to him the other side of our
nature, assured him of its secret capacity for good, and filled him with
hope in the very moment of contrition. As his sympathy could have
fellowship with our temptations, so could ours have fellowship with his
righteousness; and the light of Divine love that rested actually on
himself was thereby a possibility for the universal human soul, and was
already hovering round with longing to descend. It was on the strength
of this assurance that his intercession on our behalf was presented; it
would never have pleaded for indemnity in relation to the past, but as
the prelude to a real righteousness, a true partnership in his life of
filial harmony with God. The validity of his transaction on our behalf
consisted in its perfect seizure of the whole reality, its entire
"response to the mind of the Father in relation to men"; sorrow for
their estrangement, conviction of their possible return, and desire to
draw them into the spirit of genuine Sonship.
It was needful, then,--so we conceive our author's meaning,--that the
sentiments of God towards the world's sin and misery should quit their
absolute position, and should come and take their station in humanity;
and from that field should turn their gaze and expression upward to meet
the Father's downward and accordant look. As this "Amen of the Son to
the mind of the Father" constitutes the essence of the atonement on the
Divine side, so does it consist on the human side in "the Amen of each
individual soul to the Amen of the Son." The reproduction in us of the
filial spirit of Christ,--his confession, his pleading, his trust,--is
our fellowship with him and reconciliation with God.
"This is saving faith,--true righteousness,--being the living action,
and true and right movement of the spirit of the individual man in the
light of eternal life. And the certainty that God has accepted that
perfect and divine Amen as uttered by Christ in humanity is necessarily
accompanied by the peaceful assurance that, in uttering, in whatever
feebleness, a true Amen to that high Amen, the individual who is
yielding himself to the spirit of Christ to have it uttered in him is
accepted of God. This Amen in man is the due response to that word, 'Be
ye reconciled to God'; for the gracious and Gospel character of which
word, as the tenderest pleading that can be addressed to the most
sin-burdened spirit, I have contended above. This Amen is sonship; for
the Gospel call, 'Be ye reconciled to God,' when heard in the light of
the knowledge that 'God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that
we might be made the righteousness of God in him,' is understood to be
the call to each one of us on the part of the Father of our spirits, 'My
son, give me thine heart,' addressed to us on the ground of that work by
which the Son had declared the Father's name, that the love wherewith
the Father hath loved him may be in us, and he in us. In the light
itself of that Amen to the mind of the Father in relation to man which
shines to us in the atonement, we see the _righteousness of God in
accepting the atonement_, and in that same light the Amen of the
individual human spirit to that divine Amen of the Son of God is seen to
be what the Divine righteousness will necessarily acknowledge as the
_end of the atonement accomplished_."--p. 225.
In this view, it is not the rescue from punishment, not any favorable
change in our legal standing, not any imputed righteousness, that
Christ's mediation obtains, but a real transformation of soul and
character through the divine infection and infusion of his own filial
spirit. Only in so far as his mind thus spreads to us are we united to
him, or in any way partakers of his gift of life. Personal alienation
can have no reversal but in personal return; nor can anything
"extraneous to the nature of the Divine will itself, to which we are
to be reconciled, have part in reconciling us to that will." The fear
of hell is not repentance; the assurance of heaven is not salvation;
nor under any modification can the desire of safety, or the
consciousness of its attainment, constitute the least approach to
holiness. The good alone can touch the springs of goodness; and the
divine and trustful life of Christ must speak to us on its own
account, and win us by its own power, or not at all. Not that it acts
on us merely in the way of _example_. We do not so stand apart from
him in our independent individuality, that by an external imitation we
can copy him, and become, as it were, each another Christ, repeating
in ourselves his offering of propitiation. He is the Vine, of which we
are the branches. The sap is from him, drawn through the eternal root
of righteousness, and does but flow as a derived life into us. The Son
of God is not a mere historical personage, to be contemplated at a
distance in the past, but ever with us in the power of an endless
life; still succoring us when we are tempted, and ministering to
conscience a present help and peace. It is not, therefore, by
_following_ him, but by _abiding in_ him, that we have our fellowship
in his harmony with God.
The essence, then, of the scheme of redemption, in the view of our
author, seems to be this: that the Divine nature entered humanity to
open the Fatherliness of God by living the life of perfect Sonship; and
that, having awakened that life in us by this its visible realization,
he sustains it by the inner presence of his Spirit. It is one of the
obvious consequences of this doctrine, that no exclusive or exceptional
value is to be ascribed to the _death_ of Christ. It is simply the final
and crowning expression of the same filial mind which is the continuous
essence of his whole existence upon earth. Nor does the theory attach
importance to any _sufferings_ of Christ, as such; but only as media and
measures of moral expression. Had men sinned _as spirits_, his
reconciling work would not have involved death at all: but since in our
constitution mortality is "the wages of sin," his response to the
Divine mind in regard to sin would have been incomplete, had he not
honored this law and tasted its realization. Not to lose sight of the
main features of the doctrine in pursuit of details, we must pass
without notice many curious and subtle thoughts of our author on this
part of his subject. Indeed, everywhere the reader who has patience with
the entangled style will find deep hints and delicate turns of
reflection. But we must withdraw to a little distance from his system,
and endeavor to look at it as a whole; fixing attention especially on
the central point of all,--the _mediatorial provision_, which replaces
the penal "satisfaction" of the elder Calvinism, and the "exhibition of
rectoral justice" of the modern divines.
Instead of an infinite punishment endured or represented, the theory
offers us an infinite _repentance_ performed. Repentance for
what?--for human sin. Repentance by whom?--by Him "who knew no sin."
Is this a thing that can be? Is vicarious contrition at all more
conceivable than vicarious retribution? It is surely one and the same
difficulty that meets them both. On what ground is the transfer of
either moral qualities or their effects regarded by our author as
impossible?--because at variance with our consciousness of the
personal and inalienable nature of sin. But not less is this truth
contradicted when we say that the guilt may be incurred by one person,
and the availing repentance take place in another. Nor can any
imagination of Christ's state of mind identify it with penitence. Mr.
Campbell himself describes it (p. 135) as having "all the elements of
a perfect repentance in humanity for all the sin of man--a perfect
sorrow--a perfect contrition,--all the elements of such a repentance,
and that in absolute perfection--all--_excepting the personal
consciousness of sin_." This exception, however, contains just the
essential element of the whole. Penitence without any personal
consciousness of sin is a contradiction in terms; and the requisition
of the Divine law is, that _the sinner_ shall turn from the evil of
his heart, not that the righteous shall make confession for him. The
entire moral value of contrition belongs to it as the sign of inner
change of character from prior evil to succeeding good; and it admits
of no transplantation from the identical personality which has been
the seat of the evil and is the candidate for the good.
Further, it seems a paradox to say, with our author, that true
repentance is impossible to man, who alone needs it; and can be
realized only by the Son of God, in whom there is no room for it. It
would indeed be a hopeless realm to live in, which should annex to all
sins both an imperative demand and an absolute disqualification for
adequate contrition, and first open the fountain of availing tears in
holy natures that have none to shed. It is, in truth, of the very
essence of repentance to have its seat in mixed and imperfect moral
beings: and our author lays upon it quite an arbitrary requisition,
when he insists that, to pass as adequate, it must contain a perfect
appreciation of the sin deplored,--a view of it coincident with that
of God. Under such an aspect as this it could never have appeared to
us, though we had remained guiltless of it, and recoiled from it: and
we can hardly be required to reach, in the rebound of recovery, a
point beyond the station which would have prevented the fall. Many
errors in theology arise from applying absolute conceptions to
relative conditions, and forgetting that religion, as realized in us,
is a life, a movement, a progress, and not an ultimate limit of
perfection. Repentance is a transitional state, to which it is absurd
to apply an infinite criterion: it is a change from the worse to the
better mind, and cannot need the resources or belong to the experience
of the best. To pronounce it impossible to the wandering and fallen,
and make it the exclusive function of the All-holy, implies the
strangest metamorphosis of its meaning.
But how, it may be asked, could a paradox so violent find favor with
an author everywhere intent on the exclusion of fiction from Christian
theology? To refer a moral act to the _wrong personality_, to toss
about a solemn change like penitence between guilty and innocent, as
if its particular seat were a matter of indifference, is so serious an
error, that it could never enter a mind like Mr. Campbell's, unless
under some plausible disguise. Can we find the shape under which it
has recommended itself to his approval?
The sentiment ascribed to the Son of God in regard to sin,--wanting as
it does the essential penitential element of personal compunction,--is
simple sorrow for others' guilt, founded on perfect apprehension of
its nature. But this attitude of soul in him awakens the conscience of
his disciples, and is reproduced in them by fellowship. Spread into
their consciousness, it is no longer clear of the immediate presence
of sin, but, falling in with it, assumes the missing element, and
becomes repentance. When the Christian sense of evil, which ever
partakes of true contrition, is thus contemplated as a transmigration
of the Mediator's own spirit into the soul, the two are so identified
in thought, that what is true only of the human effect is referred to
the Divine cause; and the moral sorrow of Christ is regarded as
_potentially_ equivalent to repentance, because that is _actually_ the
form of the corresponding phenomenon in us. If this, however,
_explains_ our author's position, it hardly _justifies_ it.
Intercession for others in their guilt may _move them_ to remorse for
their own, but is a fact of quite different nature. As attributes and
expressions of character, the two phenomena are not to be confounded;
and as affecting our relation to God, there is the obvious and
admitted distinction, that intercession avails not for those who
remain impenitent, and would not be needed for the spontaneously
penitent. The sorrowful expostulations of the Son of God have only so
far a reconciling effect as they become the medium, in the hearts of
men, of an awakened contrition, aspiration, and faith. We cannot
conceive them to have _immediately_ altered--as repentance _does_--the
personal relation between God and the transgressors of His will; else
the change would be a change in the Divine sentiment whilst its
objects still remained unchanged. The effect _waits_ for its
development in souls melted and renewed. And thus the atoning sorrow
of Christ becomes simply a provision for a healing penitence in men.
The ascription of "repentance" to Christ is curious in another point of
view. It arises from a blending together of _his_ consciousness and _his
disciples'_; from slurring the lines of personality between them; from
regarding their spiritual state as an organic extension of his, and his
as the vital root of theirs. In his endeavor to recommend it to us, our
author instinctively runs into abstract expressions in speaking of
mankind; fusing down concrete men into "_humanity_"; referring to the
Mediator as "God in _humanity_"; and so, dealing with our nature as if
it were a single existence, carrying or turning up all its individuals
as partial phenomena of one essence. On the other hand, in our endeavor
to correct his doctrine, we have had to lay stress on the inalienable
and separate character of all particular persons, taken one by one; to
insist on the solitude of each responsible agent, and the impassable
barriers which forbid the transference of moral attributes from mind to
mind. Which of these two modes of conception is the truer? For according
as we incline to the one or the other,--according as we treat _humanity_
as the organic unit of which individual samples of mankind are numerical
accidents, or take each man as an integer, of which the race is a
multiple,--shall we lean towards mediatorial or towards direct religion.
We are firmly convinced that _no_ doctrine of _mediation_--in the strict
sense implying transactions with God on behalf of men, _as well as_ in
the opposite direction--can be harmonized with the modern
_individualism_; and that it is precisely in the attempt to unite these
incompatibles, that the forensic fictions to which Mr. Campbell objects,
and the moral fiction in his own theory to which we object, have had
their origin. They are mere artificial devices to compensate the loss of
that realistic mode of conception in which alone a true atoning doctrine
can rest in peace. So long as you contemplate the Redeemer as a detached
person, not less insulated in his integrity of being than angel from
archangel or from man, the difficulty will remain insuperable of making
his moral acts avail for _other human individuals_, unless by a
fictitious transference, against which conscience protests. Punishment
by substitute, righteousness by deputy, vicarious repentance, are
notions at variance with the fundamental postulates of the Moral Sense:
and in the attempt to defend them we are liable to lose the solemn,
living, face-to-face reality of the strife within us, and to weave
around us a web of legal and formal relations, as little like any
heart-felt veracity as a chancery decree to a law of nature. In
proportion as the soul is pierced with a sharper contrition, and attains
a deeper and clearer insight into her own unfaithful disorder, will the
inherent impossibility of any foreign exchange of righteousness become
apparent, and the desire to be shielded from punishment will pass away:
nor is the conscience truly awakened which does not rather rush into the
arms of its just anguish than start back and fly away. And the more you
hold up to view the holiness of Christ, the darker will the personal
past appear to grow; for self-reproach will say: "Yes, I see him as the
holy Son of God; the guiltier am I that the vision did not keep me from
my sin." Talk to such a one of Christ's transactions on our behalf, as
"_federal head_" of a redeemed people; and his misery will take no
notice of the cold pretence, unless to think, "Whatever engagements he
made for me, I have broken them all." In short, while Christ is regarded
simply as an historical individual, with the chasm of an incommunicable
personality between him and us, no ingenuity can construct, except from
the ruins of moral law, any other bridge of mediation than the suasion
of natural reverence, by which his image passes into the heart of faith.
It is otherwise when we break through the restraints of the modern
individualism, and strive to enter into that literal identification of
Christ with Christians which is so frequent with St. Paul. If, instead
of saying that Christ _had_ our human nature, we could put our thought
into this form,--"He _was_ (and _is_) our human nature,"--if we could
suppose our type of being not merely represented in him as a sample, but
concentrated in him as a whole,--we should read its essentials and
destination in his biography: his predicates would be its predicates:
and in his sorrows and sanctity it might undergo purification. Humanity
thus made into a person would then be the corresponding fact to Deity
embodied in a person: both would be _Incarnations_,--essential Manhood
and essential Godhead,--co-present in the same manifested life. In the
ordinary conception of the doctrine of two natures, Christ is
represented, we believe, as _a_ man; in the mode of thought to which we
now refer, he appears as _Man_. The difficulties which arise in the
attempt to carry out this form of thinking are evident enough, even to
those who know nothing of the Parmenides of Plato. Indeed, they are
rendered so obtrusive by our modern habits of mind, that even a
momentary seizure, for mere purposes of interpretation, of that older
intellectual posture, scarcely remains possible to us. The apprehension
of it, however, is indispensable to one who would appreciate the
mediatorial theology of Christendom,--a theology which never could have
sprung up if our present conceptualist and nominalist notions had always
prevailed, and which, ever since their ascendency in Europe, has been
driven to deplorable shifts of self-justification. The parallel between
the first and second Adam, the fall and the restoration, the death
incurred and the life recovered, acquire new meaning for those who thus
think,--that as the incidents of Adam's existence become _generic_ by
_descent_, so the incidents of Christ's existence are generic by
_diffusion_; that if in the one we see humanity at head-quarters in
_time_, in the other we see it at head-quarters in _comprehension_; so
that, like an atmosphere which, purified at nucleus, has the taint drawn
off from its margin, our nature is freed from its sickliness in him. It
becomes intelligible to us in what sense we are to take refuge in him as
our including term, to find in him an epitome of our true existence, to
die (even to have died) with him, to suffer with him, to be risen with
him, to dwell above in him. On the assumption of such a union, his life
ceases to be an individual biography; what is manifested in him
personally, becomes true of us universally; and it is as if we were
all--like special examples in a general rule, or undeveloped truths in a
parent principle--virtually present in his dealings with evil and with
God. It is evident, that in this view his mediation has no chasm to
cross, no foreign region to enter, but is an inseparable predicate of
his own personal acts. The facility of conception afforded by this
method is betrayed by Mr. Campbell's resort to an analogous hypothesis
as a mere illustrative help to the mind. Witness the following striking
passage:--
"That we may fully realize what manner of equivalent to the dishonor
done to the law and name of God by sin an adequate repentance and
sorrow for sin must be, and how far more truly than any penal
infliction such repentance and confession must satisfy Divine justice,
let us suppose that all the sin of humanity has been committed by one
human spirit, on whom is accumulated this immeasurable amount of
guilt; and let us suppose this spirit, loaded with all this guilt, to
pass out of sin into holiness, and to become filled with the light of
God, becoming perfectly righteous with God's own righteousness,--such
a change, were such a change possible, would imply in the spirit so
changed a perfect condemnation of the past of its own existence, and
an absolute and perfect repentance, a confession of its sin
commensurate with its evil. If the sense of personal identity
remained, it must be so. Now, let us contemplate this repentance with
reference to the guilt of such a spirit, and the question of pardon
for its past sin and admission now to the light of God's favor. Shall
this repentance be accepted as an atonement, and, the past sin being
thus confessed, shall the Divine favor flow out on that present
perfect righteousness which thus condemns the past, or shall that
repentance be declared inadequate? Shall the present perfect
righteousness be rejected on account of the past sin, so absolutely
and perfectly repented of? and shall Divine justice still demand
adequate punishment for the past sin, and refuse to the present
righteousness adequate acknowledgment,--the favor which, in respect of
its own nature, belongs to it? It appears to me impossible to give any
but one answer to these questions. We feel that such a repentance as
we are supposing would, in such a case, be the true and proper
satisfaction to offended justice. Now, with the difference of
personal identity, the case I have supposed is the actual case of
Christ, the holy one of God, bearing the sins of all men on his
spirit,--in Luther's words, 'the one sinner,'--and meeting the cry of
these sins for judgment, and the wrath due to them, absorbing and
exhausting that Divine wrath in that adequate confession and perfect
response on the part of man which was possible only to the infinite
and eternal righteousness in humanity."--p. 143.
The case which our author here presents as an aid to the imagination
was to Luther the literal reality; to whom, accordingly, Christ was
"the one sinner," _without_ "the difference of personal identity,"
which is here so innocently slipped in, as if it were of no
consequence. Christ, in the Reformer's view, _was_ humanity, _our_
humanity; and the grand function and triumph of faith is to feel
ourselves included in him, to merge our individuality, sins and all,
in his comprehending manhood and atoning obedience. Hence the stress
which Luther lays on "the well-applying the pronoun" _our_, in the
phrase, "who gave himself for our sins"; "that this one syllable being
believed may swallow up all thy sins." The effect of this realism on
the theology of Luther has not been sufficiently remarked. We believe
it to be the key to much that is obscure in his writings, and the
secret source of his antipathy to the Calvinistic type of the
Reformation. Absorption of Manhood into Christ,--distribution of
Godhead into humanity,--these were the correlative parts of his
objective belief,--Atonement and Eucharistic Real Presence: and
neither in themselves nor in their correspondence can they be
appreciated, without standing with him at the point of view which we
have endeavored to indicate.
Whether mediatorial religion shall continue to include in its scheme
some provision for _dealing with God on behalf of men_, will mainly
depend on the successful revival or the final abandonment of the old
realistic modes of thought. Mr. Campbell's compromise with them,
taking refuge with them for illustration while disowning them in
substance, answers no logical or theological purpose at all. If he
follows out the natural tendencies and affinities of his faith, he
must rest exclusively at last in the other half of the doctrine, which
exhibits the _dealing with man on behalf of God_. In this best sense
mediatorial religion is imperishable, and imperishably identified with
Christianity. The Son of God, at once above our life and in our life,
morally divine and circumstantially human, mediates for us between the
self so hard to escape, and the Infinite so hopeless to reach; and
draws us out of our mournful darkness without losing us in excess of
light. He opens to us the moral and spiritual mysteries of our
existence, appealing to a consciousness in us that was asleep before.
And though he leaves whole worlds of thought approachable only by
silent wonder, yet his own walk of heavenly communion, his words of
grace and works of power, his strife of divine sorrow, his cross of
self-sacrifice, his reappearance behind the veil of life eternal, fix
on him such holy trust and love, that, where we are denied the
assurance of knowledge, we attain the repose of faith.