we take two who are brought into direct contrast by Christ Himself,
the one the type of human, the other that of divine excellence, the
Son of Man and John the Baptist, this becomes clearly manifest.
John's life had a certain rude, rugged goodness, on which was
written, in characters which required no magnifying-glass to read,
spiritual excellence. The world, on the whole, accepted him.
Pharisees and Sadducees went to his baptism. The people idolized
him as a prophet; and, if he had not chanced to cross the path
of a weak prince and a revengeful woman, we can see no reason why
John might not have finished his course with joy, recognized as
irreproachable. If we inquire why it was that the world accepted
John and rejected Christ, one reply appears to be, that the life
of the one was infinitely simple and one-sided, that of the other
divinely complex. In physical nature, the naturalist finds no
difficulty in comprehending the simple structure of the lowest
organizations of animal life, where one uniform texture, and one
organ performing the office of brain and heart and lungs, at once,
leave little to perplex. But when he comes to study the complex
anatomy of men, he has the labor of a lifetime before him. It is not
difficult to master the constitution of a single country; but when
you try to understand the universe, you find infinite appearances
of contradiction: law opposed by law; motion balanced by motion;
happiness blended with misery; and the power to elicit a divine
order and unity out of this complex variety is given to only a
few of the gifted of the race. That which the structure of man is
to the structure of the limpet, that which the universe is to a
single country, the complex and boundless soul of Christ was to the
souls of other men. Therefore, to the superficial observer, His
life was a mass of inconsistencies and contradictions. All thought
themselves qualified to point out the discrepancies. The Pharisees
could not comprehend how a holy Teacher could eat with publicans
and sinners. His own brethren could not reconcile His assumption
of a public office with the privacy which He aimed at keeping. "If
thou doest these things, show thyself to the world." Some thought He
was "a good man"; others said, "Nay, but he deceiveth the people."
And hence it was that He lived to see all that acceptance which
had marked the earlier stage of His career--as, for instance, at
Capernaum--melt away. First, the Pharisees took the alarm; then
the Sadducees; then the political party of the Herodians; then the
people. That was the most terrible of all: for the enmity of the
upper classes is impotent; but when that cry of brute force is
stirred from the deeps of society, as deaf to the voice of reason as
the ocean in its strength churned into raving foam by the winds, the
heart of mere earthly oak quails before that. The apostles, at all
events, did quail. One denied; another betrayed; all deserted. They
"were scattered, each to his own": and the Truth Himself was left
alone in Pilate's judgment hall.
Now learn from this a very important distinction. To feel solitary
is no uncommon thing. To complain of being alone, without sympathy,
and misunderstood, is general enough. In every place, in many a
family, these victims of diseased sensibility are to be found, and
they might find a weakening satisfaction in observing a parallel
between their own feelings and those of Jesus. But before that
parallel is assumed, be very sure that it is, as in His case, the
elevation of your character which severs you from your species. The
world has small sympathy for divine goodness; but it also has little
for a great many other qualities which are disagreeable to it. You
meet with no response; you are passed by; find yourself unpopular;
meet with little communion. Well! Is that because you are above
in the world--nobler, devising and executing grand plans, which
they can not comprehend; vindicating the wronged; proclaiming and
living on great principles; offending it by the saintliness of your
purity, and the unworldliness of your aspirations? Then yours is
the loneliness of Christ. Or is it that you are wrapped up in self,
cold, disobliging, sentimental, indifferent about the welfare of
others, and very much astonished that they are not deeply interested
in you? You must not use these words of Christ. They have nothing to
do with you.
Let us look at one or two of the occasions on which this loneliness
was felt.
The first time was when He was but twelve years old, when His
parents found Him in the temple, hearing the doctors and asking them
questions. High thoughts were in the Child's soul: expanding views
of life; larger views of duty, and His own destiny.
There is a moment in every true life--to some it comes very
early--when the old routine of duty is not large enough; when the
parental roof seems too low, because the Infinite above is arching
over the soul; when the old formulas, in creeds, catechisms, and
articles, seem to be narrow, and they must either be thrown aside,
or else transformed into living and breathing realities; when the
earthly father's authority is being superseded by the claims of a
Father in Heaven.
That is a lonely, lonely moment, when the young soul first feels
God--when this earth is recognized as an "awful place, yea, the very
gate of heaven"; when the dream-ladder is seen planted against the
skies, and we wake, and the dream haunts us as a sublime reality.
You may detect the approach of that moment in the young man or
the young woman by the awakened spirit of inquiry; by a certain
restlessness of look, and an eager earnestness of tone; by the
devouring study of all kinds of books; by the waning of your own
influence, while the inquirer is asking the truth of the doctors
and teachers in the vast temple of the world; by a certain
opinionativeness, which is austere and disagreeable enough; but
the austerest moment of the fruit's taste is that in which it is
passing from greenness into ripeness. If you wait in patience, the
sour will become sweet. Rightly looked at, that opinionativeness is
more truly anguish; the fearful solitude of feeling the insecurity
of all that is human; the discovery that life is real, and forms of
social and religious existence hollow. The old moorings are torn
away, and the soul is drifting, drifting, drifting, very often
without compass, except the guidance of an unseen hand, into the
vast infinite of God. Then come the lonely words, and no wonder.
"How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my
Father's business?"
That solitude was felt by Christ in trial. In the desert, in
Pilate's judgment hall, in the garden, He was alone; and alone must
every son of man meet his trial-hour. The individuality of the soul
necessitates that. Each man is a new soul in this world: untried,
with a boundless "Possible" before him. No one can predict what
he may become, prescribe his duties, or mark out his obligations.
Each man's own nature has its own peculiar rules; and he must take
up his life-plan alone, and persevere in it in a perfect privacy
with which no stranger intermeddleth. Each man's temptations are
made up of a host of peculiarities, internal and external, which no
other mind can measure. You are tried alone; alone you pass into
the desert; alone you must bear and conquer in the agony; alone
you must be sifted by the world. There are moments known only to a
man's own self, when he sits by the poisoned springs of existence,
"yearning for a morrow which shall free him from strife." And there
are trials more terrible than that. Not when vicious inclinations
are opposed to holy, but when virtue conflicts with virtue, is
the real rending of the soul in twain. A temptation, in which the
lower nature struggles for mastery, can be met by the whole united
force of the spirit. But it is when obedience to a heavenly Father
can be only paid by disobedience to an earthly one; or fidelity to
duty can be only kept by infidelity to some entangling engagement;
or the straight path must be taken over the misery of others; or
the counsel of the affectionate friend must be met with a "Get
thee behind me, Satan":--Oh! it is then, when human advice is
unavailable, that the soul feels what it is to be alone.
Once more: the Redeemer's soul was alone in dying. The hour had
come--they were all gone, and He was, as He predicted, left alone.
All that is human drops from us in that hour. Human faces flit and
fade, and the sounds of the world become confused. "I shall die
alone"--yes, and alone you live. The philosopher tells us that no
atom in creation touches another atom; they all approach within
a certain distance; then the attraction ceases, and an invisible
something repels--they only seem to touch. No soul touches another
soul except at one or two points, and those chiefly external--a
fearful and lonely thought, but one of the truest of life. Death
only realizes that which has been fact all along. In the central
deeps of our being we are alone.
II. The spirit or temper of that solitude.
Observe its grandeur. I am alone, yet not alone. This is a feeble
and sentimental way in which we speak of the Man of sorrows. We
turn to the cross, and the agony, and the loneliness, to touch the
softer feelings, to arouse compassion. You degrade that loneliness
by your compassion. Compassion! compassion for Him! Adore if you
will--respect and reverence that sublime solitariness with which
none but the Father was--but no pity; let it draw out the firmer and
manlier graces of the soul. Even tender sympathy seems out of place.
For even in human beings, the strength that is in a man can only be
learnt when he is thrown upon his own resources and left alone. What
a man can do in conjunction with others does not test the man. Tell
us what he can do alone. It is one thing to defend the truth when
you know that your audience are already prepossest, and that every
argument will meet a willing response; and it is another thing to
hold the truth when truth must be supported, if at all, alone--met
by cold looks and unsympathizing suspicion. It is one thing to rush
on to danger with the shouts and the sympathy of numbers; it is
another thing when the lonely chieftain of the sinking ship sees
the last boat-full disengage itself, and folds his arms to go down
into the majesty of darkness, crushed, but not subdued.
Such and greater far was the strength and majesty of the Savior's
solitariness. It was not the trial of the lonely hermit. There is a
certain gentle and pleasing melancholy in the life which is lived
alone. But there are the forms of nature to speak to him; and he has
not the positive opposition of mankind, if he has the absence of
actual sympathy. It is a solemn thing, doubtless, to be apart from
men, and to feel eternity rushing by like an arrowy river. But the
solitude of Christ was the solitude of a crowd. In that single human
bosom dwelt the thought which was to be the germ of the world's
life, a thought unshared, misunderstood, or rejected. Can you not
feel the grandeur of those words, when the Man, reposing on His
solitary strength, felt the last shadow of perfect isolation pass
across His soul:--"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Next, learn from these words self-reliance. "Ye shall leave me
alone." Alone, then, the Son of Man was content to be. He threw
Himself on His own solitary thought: did not go down to meet the
world; but waited, tho it might be for ages, till the world should
come round to Him. He appealed to the future, did not aim at seeming
consistent, left His contradictions unexplained: I came from the
Father: I leave the world, and go to the Father. "Now," said they,
"Thou speakest no proverb"; that is enigma. But many a hard and
enigmatical saying before He had spoken, and He left them all. A
thread runs through all true acts, stringing them together into one
harmonious chain: but it is not for the Son of God to be anxious to
prove their consistency with each other.
This is self-reliance, to repose calmly on the thought which is
deepest in our bosoms, and be unmoved if the world will not accept
it yet. To live on your own convictions against the world, is to
overcome the world--to believe that what is truest in you is true
for all: to abide by that, and not be over-anxious to be heard or
understood, or sympathized with, certain that at last all must
acknowledge the same, and that, while you stand firm, the world will
come round to you, that is independence. It is not difficult to get
away into retirement, and there live upon your own convictions; nor
is it difficult to mix with men, and follow their convictions; but
to enter into the world, and there live out firmly and fearlessly
according to your own conscience--that is Christian greatness.
There is a cowardice in this age which is not Christian. We shrink
from the consequences of truth. We look round and cling dependently.
We ask what men will think; what others will say; whether they will
stare in astonishment. Perhaps they will; but he who is calculating
that will accomplish nothing in this life. The Father--the Father
which is with us and in us--what does He think? God's work can not
be done without a spirit of independence. A man has got some way
in the Christian life when he has learned to say humbly, and yet
majestically, "I dare to be alone."
Lastly, remark the humility of this loneliness. Had the Son of Man
simply said, I can be alone, He would have said no more than any
proud, self-relying man can say; but when He added, "because the
Father is with me," that independence assumed another character,
and self-reliance became only another form of reliance upon God.
Distinguish between genuine and spurious humility. There is a false
humility which says, "It is my own poor thought, and I must not
trust it. I must distrust my own reason and judgment, because they
are my own. I must not accept the dictates of my own conscience; for
is it not my own, and is not trust in self the great fault of our
fallen nature?"
Very well. Now, remember something else. There is a Spirit which
beareth witness in our spirits; there is a God who "is not far from
any one of us"; there is a "Light which lighteth every man which
cometh into the world." Do not be unnaturally humble. The thought of
your own mind perchance is the thought of God. To refuse to follow
that may be to disown God. To take the judgment and conscience of
other men to live by, where is the humility of that? From whence did
their conscience and judgment come? Was the fountain from which they
drew exhausted for you? If they refused like you to rely on their
own conscience, and you rely upon it, how are you sure that it is
more the mind of God than your own which you have refused to hear?
Look at it in another way. The charm of the words of great
men--those grand sayings which are recognized as true as soon as
heard--is this, that you recognize them as wisdom which passed
across your own mind. You feel that they are your own thoughts
come back to you, else you would not at once admit them: "All that
floated across me before, only I could not say it, and did not feel
confident enough to assert it, or had not conviction enough to put
into words." Yes, God spoke to you what He did to them: only they
believed it, said it, trusted the Word within them, and you did not.
Be sure that often when you say, "It is only my own poor thought,
and I am alone," the real correcting thought is this, "Alone,
but the Father is with me,"--therefore I can live by that lonely
conviction.
There is no danger in this, whatever timid minds may think--no
danger of mistake, if the character be a true one. For we are not
in uncertainty in this matter. It has been given us to know our
base from our noble hours: to distinguish between the voice which
is from above, and that which speaks from below, out of the abyss
of our animal and selfish nature. Samuel could distinguish between
the impulse--quite a human one--which would have made him select
Eliab out of Jesse's sons, and the deeper judgment by which "the
Lord said, Look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his
stature, for I have refused him." Doubtless deep truth of character
is required for this: for the whispering voices get mixed together,
and we dare not abide by our own thoughts, because we think them our
own, and not God's: and this because we only now and then endeavor
to know in earnest. It is only given to the habitually true to know
the difference. He knew it, because all His blessed life long He
could say, "My judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but
the will of him who sent me."
The practical result and inference of all this is a very simple,
but a very deep one: the deepest of existence. Let life be a life
of faith. Do not go timorously about, inquiring what others think,
and what others believe, and what others say. It seems the easiest,
it is the most difficult thing in life to do this. Believe in God.
God is near you. Throw yourself fearlessly upon Him. Trembling
mortal, there is an unknown light within your soul, which will wake
when you command it. The day may come when all that is human, man
and woman, will fall off from you; as they did from Him. Let His
strength be yours. Be independent of them all now. The Father is
with you. Look to Him, and He will save you.
HITCHCOCK
ETERNAL ATONEMENT
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ROSWELL DWIGHT HITCHCOCK was born at East Machias, Maine, in 1817.
To his pulpit delivery, which was direct, fluent and impressive,
he brought the results of profound Bible research. He was an
evangelical transcendentalist, and for many years addressed large
and cultured congregations in New York City. As a teacher he was
clear and inspiring, particularly in historical theology. In 1880 he
was made president of the Union Theological Seminary. His best-known
work is the "Complete Analysis of the Bible." He died in 1887.
HITCHCOCK
1817-1887
ETERNAL ATONEMENT[2]
[2] From Dr. Hitchcock's book of the same title by permission of the
publishers. Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.
_And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose
names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world_.--Revelation xiii., 8.
My subject is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
My text is Revelation xiii., 8, the precise import of which is
disputed; and I will therefore give you the rival renderings. As we
have been used to it in the Authorized Version, it reads: "Written
in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world." The Anglican revisers, following the lead of Alford, make no
essential change: "Written in the book of life of the Lamb that hath
been slain from the foundation of the world." The American revisers,
following the lead of Bengel, De Wette, and many others, would have
it: "Written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of
the Lamb that hath been slain." The American rendering makes the
election eternal. The Anglican rendering makes the atonement eternal.
The prevalent opinion no doubt has been that the atonement is simply
an historic fact, dating back now some nineteen hundred years; and
that only the purpose of it is eternal. But Johann Wessel, the great
German theologian, who died only six years after Martin Luther was
born, got hold of the idea that not election only, but atonement
also, is an eternal act. And this, it seems to me, is both rational
and scriptural. Eternal election, profoundly considered, requires
eternal atonement for its support. Both are eternal, as all divine
realities are eternal. If the passage in Revelation were given up,
we should still have to deal with 1 Peter i., 19, 20, where the
Lamb is spoken of as foreknown before the foundation of the world,
but manifested at the end of the times; eternal reality becoming
temporal fact. We should still have to deal with John xvii., 24,
which also carries back into eternity the redeeming relationship
between the Father and the Son. Even on Calvary, as temporal
actuality, the Lamb slain is only a figure of speech, and, of
course, it can be no more than a figure of speech as eternal reality
in the bosom of God. But whether in time, or in eternity--whether
on Calvary or in the bosom of God, the figure must stand for
something. For us the meaning is, and must be, that not election
only, but atonement also, is eternal. And so the relationship of
God to moral evil stands forth as an eternal relationship. Not that
evil is itself eternal; but God always knew it and always felt it.
It may help our thinking in this direction to remember that there
is a sense in which creation itself is eternal; not independently
eternal, but, of God's will, dependently eternal.
There must nothing be said, or thought, in mitigation of the ethical
verdict against moral evil. The hatefulness of it, no matter what
its chronology may be, is simply unspeakable. Violated law is
monstrous. Unmindfulness of God, who has always been so mindful
of us, is mean. Never to pray, either in one's closet or in one's
family, is against all the proprieties. Idolatry is childish and
contemptible. Profaneness of speech is scandalous. Neglect of
holy time is robbery. Disobedience to parents is shameful. Murder
is hideous. Unchastity murders the soul, is indeed both murder
and suicide. And so of all the rest. Theft, falsehood, and even
inordinate desire are abominable. Imagine a community, larger or
smaller--a family, a township, a state, or a nation--where the
Ten Commandments are persistently trampled under foot, and you
will have imagined a community intolerable even to itself. And
if this be our human judgment, what must the divine judgment be?
The more pure and righteous a moral being is, the more squarely
he must antagonize, more intensely he must hate, the more surely
he must punish impurity and unrighteousness. Volcanic fire inside
the globe, forked lightning outside of it, are faint emblems of
holy wrath. Wrong doing is the one thing nowhere, and never, to be
either condoned or endured. Physical accident, bodily sickness,
financial disaster, social bereavement, may all be pitied. But when
a thoroughly bad man stands revealed, only lightning is logical.
He that sows the wind ought to reap the whirlwind. It was a great
philosopher who stood amazed at the starry sky, and at the moral
sense in man. Well he might. There is no softness in the midnight
sky; only cold blue marble, and a steady blaze that never relents,
and is never tired. You can not endure that blaze, you dare not risk
yourself out alone among those gleaming orbs with a guilty secret in
your bosom. The universe is instinct with law that never abdicates.
Remorse is not repentance; and even repentance washes out no stain.
Self-forgiveness is impossible. The trumpet is always sounding;
every day is a judgment-day; and every one of us goes to the left.
Gehenna is the only logical goal of sin.
Nor should any attempt be made to get at the genesis of moral evil.
The beginning of it is simply inconceivable. The whole thing is a
mystery and must be let alone. Moral evil is not eternal; or there
would be two infinities. Nor is it a creature of God; or God would
be divided against Himself. And yet it had the divine permission,
whatever that may be imagined to have been. With every attribute
roused and alert--infinity of power, infinity of wisdom, infinity
of holiness--God stood by and let evil enter. Angels revolted
first, somewhere among the stars. Mankind revolted. Was evil
really unavoidable in a proper moral system? If so, immorality is
not immoral. Evil that is really essential to good should not be
considered evil. It would be only the bitter bud of the fragrant
blossom and the luscious fruit. Or, putting it in another form,
will you say that God could not have prevented evil? He certainly
could have prevented it. In Heaven to-day, what is the security
of saints and angels, of your own dear sainted mother, of Gabriel
himself, but God's own grace constraining the will of every saint,
constraining the will of every seraph? What is human sin but the
abuse of human appetites, of human passions, of human faculties, in
themselves all innocent? Study the lesson of our Lord's temptation
in the desert. Certainly, He was not tempted as we are, by inflamed
appetites and passions, by impaired and disordered faculties. But He
possest all these natural appetites, passions, and faculties; and
they were put to a real and a tremendous strain. That "great duel,"
as Milton calls it, was no sham fight; one or the other had to go
down. Christ was gnawed by hunger, but refused to eat. He saw what
might be done by a brilliant miracle towards inaugurating His Jewish
ministry, but refused to work it. He saw the short, Satanic path
to Messianic dominion, but chose Gethsemane and Calvary. Now the
first Adam was just as cool and just as innocent as the second Adam.
And, with more of grace to strengthen him, he too might have stood.
There was no real necessity for that first human disobedience. It
was sheer, wanton, gratuitous, inexplicable apostasy. Somewhat more
of divine constraint, and the catastrophe would certainly have
been averted. Call it non-prevention, call it permission, call it
anything you please, somehow sin entered in spite of God's hating
it. It came knocking for admission, and God's shoulder was not
against the gate. For some reason, or reasons, not revealed, perhaps
not revealable, God thought it best not to put His shoulder against
the gate. The hateful and hated thing pushed through. Ormuzd let
in Ahriman. I thank the Persian for these two words. They embody
and emphasize the historic dualism of good and evil. The historic
dualism, you will observe I say; there is no other dualism. God is
One; and Master of all. The divine permission of hateful and hated
evil, when we fairly apprehend it, is a tremendous statement, which
might well be challenged, were not the thing itself so undeniably
a fact. This is as far as we can go. Here we halt, with our bruised
and throbbing foreheads hard up against the granite cliff.