been made at first to Israel; imagine that they had been informed at
the outset that God's rest is inward; that the promised land is only
found in the Jerusalem which is above--not material, but immaterial.
That rude, gross people, yearning after the fleshpots of
Egypt--willing to go back into slavery, so as only they might have
enough to eat and drink--would they have quitted Egypt on such terms?
Would they have begun one single step of that pilgrimage, which was to
find its meaning in the discipline of ages?
We are led through life as we are allured upon a journey. Could a man
see his route before him--a flat, straight road, unbroken by bush, or
tree, or eminence, with the sun's heat burning down upon it, stretched
out in dreary monotony--he could scarcely find energy to begin his
task; but the uncertainty of what may be seen beyond the next turn
keeps expectation alive. The view that may be seen from yonder
summit--the glimpse that may be caught perhaps, as the road winds
round yonder knoll--hopes like these, not far distant, beguile the
traveller on from mile to mile, and from league to league.
In fact, life is an education. The object for which you educate your
son is to give him strength of purpose, self-command, discipline of
mental energies; but you do not reveal to your son this aim of his
education; you tell him of his place in his class, of the prizes at
the end of the year, of the honours to be given at college.
These are not the true incentives to knowledge, such incentives are
not the highest--they are even mean, and partially injurious; yet
these mean incentives stimulate and lead on, from day to day and from
year to year, by a process the principle of which the boy himself is
not aware of. So does God lead on, through life's unsatisfying and
false reward, ever educating: Canaan first; then the hope of a
Redeemer; then the millennial glory.
Now what is remarkable in this is, that the delusion continued to the
last; they _all_ died in faith, not having received the promises; all
were hoping up to the very last, and all died in faith--not in
realization; for thus God has constituted the human heart. It never
will be believed that this world is unreal. God has mercifully so
arranged it, that the idea of delusion is incredible. You may tell the
boy or girl as you will that life is a disappointment; yet however you
may persuade them to adopt your _tone_, and catch the language of your
sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright distant
hope--the rapture of the next vacation, or the unknown joys of the
next season--and throwing into it an energy of expectation which only
a whole eternity is worth. You may tell the man who has received the
heart-shock which in this world, he will not recover, that life has
nothing left; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the
prize--"wealthiest when most undone:" he has reaped the whirlwind, but
he will go on still, till life is over, sowing the wind.
Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this indestructible
power of believing in spite of failure. In the first centuries, the
early Christians believed that the millennial advent was close; they
heard the warning of the apostle, brief and sharp, "The time is
short." Now suppose that, instead of this, they had seen all the
dreary page of Church history unrolled; suppose that they had known
that after two thousand years the world would have scarcely spelled
out three letters of the meaning of Christianity, where would have
been those gigantic efforts,--that life spent as on the very brink of
eternity, which characterize the days of the early Church,--and which
was after all, only the true life of man in time? It is thus that God
has led on His world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child,
when the path homeward lies over many a dreary league. He suffers him
to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside to pluck now and then
a flower, to chase now a butterfly; the butterfly is crushed, the
flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and
full of health, and scarcely wearied yet.
2. This non-fulfilment of promise fulfils it in a _deeper_ way. The
account we have given already, were it to end there, would be
insufficient to excuse the failure of life's promise; by saying that
it allures us would be really to charge God with deception. Now life
is not deception, but illusion. We distinguish between illusion and
delusion. We may paint wood so as to be taken for stone, iron, or
marble; this is delusion: but you may paint a picture, in which rocks,
trees, and sky are never mistaken for what they seem, yet produce all
the emotion which real rocks, trees, and sky would produce. This is
illusion, and this is the painter's art: never for one moment to
deceive by attempted imitation, but to produce a mental state in which
the feelings are suggested which the natural objects themselves would
create. Let us take an instance drawn from life.
To a child a rainbow is a real thing--substantial and palpable; its
limb rests on the side of yonder hill; he believes that he can
appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of gems and gold hid in
its radiant bow, he finds nothing but damp mist--cold, dreary drops of
disappointment--that disappointment tells that his belief has been
delusion.
To the educated man that bow is a blessed illusion, yet it never once
deceives; he does not take it for what it is not, he does not expect
to make it his own; he feels its beauty as much as the child could
feel it, nay infinitely more--more even from the fact that he knows
that it will be transient; but besides and beyond this, to him it
presents a deeper loveliness; he knows the laws of light, and the laws
of the human soul which gave it being. He has linked it with the laws
of the universe, and with the invisible mind of God; and it brings to
him a thrill of awe, and the sense of a mysterious, nameless beauty,
of which the child did not conceive. It is illusion still; but it has
fulfilled the promise. In the realm of spirit, in the temple of the
soul, it is the same. All is illusion; "but we look for a city which
hath foundations;" and in this the promise is fulfilled.
And such was Canaan to the Israelites. To some doubtless it was
delusion. They expected to find their reward in a land of milk and
honey. They were bitterly disappointed, and expressed their
disappointment loudly enough in their murmurs against Moses, and their
rebellion against his successors. But to others, as to Abraham, Canaan
was the bright illusion which never deceived, but for ever shone
before as the type of something more real. And even taking the promise
literally, though they built in tents, and could not call a foot of
land their own, was not its beauty theirs? Were not its trellised
vines, and glorious pastures, and rich olive-fields, ministers to the
enjoyment of those who had all in God, though its milk, and oil, and
honey, could not be enjoyed with exclusiveness of appropriation? Yet
over and above and beyond this, there was a more blessed fulfilment of
the promise; there was "a city which had foundations"--built and made
by God--toward which the anticipation of this Canaan was leading them.
The Kingdom of God was forming in their souls, for ever disappointing
them by the unreal, and teaching them that what is spiritual, and
belongs to mind and character alone can be eternal.
We will illustrate this principle from the common walks of life. The
principle is, that the reward we get is not the reward for which we
worked, but a deeper one; deeper and more permanent. The merchant
labours all his life, and the hope which leads him on is perhaps
wealth: well, at sixty years of age he attains wealth; is that the
reward of sixty years of toil? Ten years of enjoyment, when the senses
can enjoy no longer--a country seat, splendid plate, a noble
establishment? Oh, no! a reward deeper than he dreamed of. Habits of
perseverance: a character trained by industry: that is his reward. He
was carried on from year to year by, if he were wise, illusion; if he
were unwise, delusion; but he reaped a more enduring substance in
himself.
Take another instance: the public man, warrior, or statesman, who has
served his country, and complains at last in bitter disappointment,
that his country has not fulfilled his expectations in rewarding
him--that is, it has not given him titles, honours, wealth. But
titles, honours, wealth--are these the rewards of well-doing? can they
reward it? would it be well-doing if they could? To _be_ such a man,
to have the power of _doing_ such deeds, what could be added to that
reward by having? This same apparent contradiction, which was found in
Judaism, subsists too in Christianity; we will state it in the words
of an apostle: "Godliness is profitable for all things; having the
promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come."
Now for the fulfilment: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ,
then are we of all men most miserable."
Godliness is profitable; but its profit it appears, consists in
finding that all is loss: yet in this way you teach your son. You will
tell him that if he will be good all men will love him. You say that
"Honesty is the best policy." yet in your heart of hearts you know
that you are leading him on by a delusion. Christ was good. Was he
loved by all? In proportion as he--your son--is like Christ, he will
be loved, not by the many, but by the few. Honesty is _not_ the best
_policy_; the commonplace honesty of the market-place may be--the
vulgar honesty which goes no further than paying debts accurately; but
that transparent Christian honesty of a life which in every act is
bearing witness to the truth, that is not the way to _get on_ in
life--the reward of such a life is the Cross. Yet you were right in
teaching your son this: you told him what was true; truer than he
could comprehend. It _is_ better to be honest and good; better than
he can know or dream: better even in this life; better by so much as
_being_ good is better than _having_ good. But, in a rude coarse way,
you must express the blessedness on a level with his capacity; you
must state the truth in a way which he will inevitably interpret
falsely. The true interpretation nothing but experience can teach.
And this is what God does. His promises are true, though illusive; far
truer than we at first take them to be. We work for a mean, low,
sensual happiness, all the while He is leading us on to a spiritual
blessedness--unfathomably deep. This is the life of faith. We live by
faith, and not by sight. We do not preach that all is
disappointment--the dreary creed of sentimentalism; but we preach that
_nothing_ here is disappointment, if rightly understood. We do not
comfort the poor man, by saying that the riches that he has not now he
will have hereafter--the difference between himself and the man of
wealth being only this, that the one has for time what the other will
have for eternity; but what we say is, that that which you have failed
in reaping here, you never will reap, if you expected the harvest of
Canaan. God has no Canaan for His own; no milk and honey for the
luxury of the senses: for the city which hath foundations is built in
the soul of man. He in whom Godlike character dwells, has all the
universe for his own--"All things," saith the apostle, "are yours;
whether life or death, or things present, or things to come; if ye be
Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
_promise_."
VII.
_Preached June 23, 1850._
THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST.
"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge,
that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for
all that they which live should not henceforth live unto
themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again."--2
Corinthians v. 14, 15.
It may be, that in reading these verses some of us have understood
them in a sense foreign to that of the apostle. It may have seemed
that the arguments ran thus--Because Christ died upon the cross for
_all_, therefore all must have been in a state of spiritual death
before; and if they were asked what doctrines are to be elicited from
this passage they would reply, "the doctrine of universal depravity,
and the constraining power of the gratitude due to Him who died to
redeem us from it." There is, however, in the first place, this fatal
objection to such an interpretation, that the death here spoken of is
used in two diametrically opposite senses. In reference to Christ,
death literal--in reference to all, death spiritual. Now, in the
thought of St. Paul, the death of Christ was always viewed as
liberation from the power of evil: "in that he died, he died unto sin
once," and again, "he that is dead is free from sin." The literal
death then in one clause, means _freedom_ from sin; the spiritual
death of the next is _slavery_ to it. Wherein then, lies the cogency
of the apostle's reasoning? How does it follow that because Christ
died to evil, all before that must have died to God? Of course that
doctrine is true in itself, but it is _not_ the doctrine of the text.
In the next place, the ambiguity belongs only to the English word--it
is impossible to make the mistake in the original: the word which
stands for _were_, is a word which does not imply a continued state,
but must imply a single finished act. It cannot by any possibility
imply that before the death of Christ men _were_ in a state of
death--it can only mean, they became dead at the moment when Christ
died. If you read it thus, the meaning of the English will emerge--"if
one died for all, then all died;" and the apostle's argument runs
thus, that if one acts as the representative of all, then his act is
the act of all. If the ambassador of a nation makes reparation in a
nation's name, or does homage for a nation, that reparation, or that
homage, is the nation's act--if _one_ did it _for_ all, then _all_ did
it. So that instead of inferring that because Christ died for all,
therefore before that all were dead to God, his natural inference is
that therefore all are now dead to sin.
Once more, the conclusion of the apostle is exactly the reverse of
that which this interpretation attributes to him: he does not say that
Christ died in order that men might _not_ die, but exactly for this
very purpose, that they _might_ die; and this death he represents in
the next verse by an equivalent expression--the life of unselfishness:
"that they which live might henceforth live not unto themselves." The
"dead" of the first verse are "they that live" of the second.
The form of thought finds its exact parallel in Romans vi. 10, 11.
Two points claim our attention:--
I. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ.
II. The influence of that sacrifice on man.
I. The vicariousness of the sacrifice is implied in the word "for". A
vicarious act is an act done for another. When the Pope calls himself
the vicar of Christ, he implies that he acts for Christ. The vicar or
viceroy of a kingdom is one who acts for the king--a vicar's act
therefore is virtually the act of the principal whom he represents; so
that if the Papal doctrine were true, when the vicar of Christ
_pardons_, Christ has pardoned. When the viceroy of a kingdom has
published a proclamation or signed a treaty, the sovereign himself is
bound by those acts.
The truth of the expression _for all_, is contained in this fact, that
Christ is the representative of Humanity--properly speaking, the
representative of human nature. This is the truth contained in the
emphatic expression, "Son of Man." What Christ did _for_ Humanity was
done by Humanity, because in the name of Humanity. For a truly
vicarious act does not supersede the principal's duty of performance,
but rather implies and acknowledges it. Take the case from which this
very word of vicar has received its origin. In the old monastic times,
when the revenues of a cathedral or a cure fell to the lot of a
monastery, it became the duty of that monastery to perform the
religious services of the cure. But inasmuch as the monastery was a
corporate body, they appointed one of their number, whom they
denominated their vicar, to discharge those offices for them. His
service did not supersede theirs, but was a perpetual and standing
acknowledgement that they, as a whole and individually, were under the
obligation to perform it. The act of Christ is the act of
Humanity--that which all Humanity is bound to do. His righteousness
does not supersede our righteousness, nor does His sacrifice supersede
our sacrifice. It is the representation of human life and human
sacrifice--vicarious for all, yet binding upon all.
That He died for all is true--
1. Because He was the victim of the sin of all. In the peculiar
phraseology of St. Paul, he died unto sin. He was the victim of
Sin--He died by sin. It is the appalling mystery of our redemption
that the Redeemer took the attitude of subjection to evil. There was
scarcely a form of evil with which Christ did not come in contact, and
by which He did not suffer. He was the victim of false friendship and
ingratitude, the victim of bad government and injustice. He fell a
sacrifice to the vices of all classes--to the selfishness of the rich
and the fickleness of the poor:--intolerance, formalism, scepticism,
hatred of goodness, were the foes which crushed Him.
In the proper sense of the word He was a victim. He did not adroitly
wind through the dangerous forms of evil, meeting it with expedient
silence. Face to face, and front to front, He met it, rebuked it, and
defied it; and just as truly as he is a voluntary victim whose body
opposing the progress of the car of Juggernaut is crushed beneath its
monstrous wheels, was He a victim to the world's sin: because pure, He
was crushed by impurity; because just and real and true, He waked up
the rage of injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood.
Now this sin was the sin of all. Here arises at once a difficulty: it
seems to be most unnatural to assert that in any one sense He was the
sacrifice of the sin of all. We did not betray Him--that was Judas's
act--Peter denied Him--Thomas doubted--Pilate pronounced sentence--it
must be a figment to say that these were our acts; we did not watch
Him like the Pharisees, nor circumvent Him like the Scribes and
lawyers; by what possible sophistry can we be involved in the
complicity of that guilt? The savage of New Zealand who never heard of
Him, the learned Egyptian and the voluptuous Assyrian who died before
He came; how was it the sin of all?
The reply that is often given to this query is wonderfully unreal. It
is assumed that Christ was conscious, by His Omniscience, of the sins
of all mankind; that the duplicity of the child, and the crime of the
assassin, and every unholy thought that has ever passed through a
human bosom, were present to His mind in that awful hour as if they
were His own. This is utterly unscriptural. Where is the single text
from which it can be, except by force, extracted? Besides this, it is
fanciful and sentimental; and again it is dangerous, for it represents
the whole Atonement as a fictitious and shadowy transaction. There is
a mental state in which men have felt the burthen of sins which they
did not commit. There have been cases in which men have been
mysteriously excruciated with the thought of having committed the
unpardonable sin. But to represent the mental phenomena of the
Redeemer's mind as in any way resembling this--to say that His
conscience was oppressed with the responsibility of sins which He had
not committed--is to confound a state of sanity with the delusions of
a half lucid mind, and the workings of a healthy conscience with those
of one unnatural and morbid.
There is a way however, much more appalling and much more true, in
which this may be true, without resorting to any such fanciful
hypothesis. Sin has a great power in this world: it gives laws like
those of a sovereign, which bind us all, and to which we are all
submissive. There are current maxims in church and state, in society,
in trade, in law, to which we yield obedience. For this obedience
every one is responsible; for instance in trade, and in the profession
of law, every one is the servant of practices the rectitude of which
his heart can only half approve--every one complains of them, yet all
are involved in them. Now, when such sins reach their climax, as in
the case of national bankruptcy or an unjust acquittal, there may be
some who are in a special sense, the actors in the guilt; but
evidently, for the bankruptcy, each member of the community is
responsible in that degree and so far as he himself acquiesced in the
duplicities of public dealing; every careless juror, every unrighteous
judge, every false witness, has done his part in the reduction of
society to that state in which the monster injustice has been
perpetrated. In the riot of a tumultuous assembly by night, a house
may be burnt, or a murder committed; in the eye of the law, all who
are aiding and abetting there are each in his degree responsible for
that crime; there may be difference in guilt, from the degree in which
he is guilty who with his own hand perpetrated the deed, to that of
him who merely joined the rabble from mischievous
curiosity--degrees from that of wilful murder to that of more or less
excusable homicide.
The Pharisees were declared by the Saviour to be guilty of the blood
of Zacharias, the blood of righteous Abel, and of all the saints and
prophets who fell before He came. But how were the Pharisees guilty?
They built the sepulchres of the prophets, they honoured and admired
them; but they were guilty, in that they were the children of those
that slew the prophets; children in this sense, that they inherited
their _spirit_, they opposed the good in the form in which it showed
itself in _their day_, just as their fathers opposed the form
displayed to theirs; therefore He said that they belonged to the same
confederacy of evil, and that the guilt of the blood of all who had
been slain should rest on that generation. Similarly we are guilty of
the death of Christ. If you have been a false friend, a sceptic, a
cowardly disciple, a formalist, selfish, an opposer of goodness, an
oppressor, whatever evil you have done, in that degree and so far you
participate in the evil to which the Just One fell a victim--you are
one of that mighty rabble which cry, "Crucify Him, Crucify Him!" for
your sin He died; His blood lies at your threshold.
Again, He died for all, in that His sacrifice represents the sacrifice
of all. We have heard of the doctrine of "imputed righteousness;" it
is a theological expression to which meanings foolish enough are
sometimes attributed, but it contains a very deep truth, which it
shall be our endeavour to elicit.
Christ is the realized idea of our Humanity. He is God's idea of Man
completed. There is every difference between the ideal and the
actual--between what a man aims to be and what he is; a difference
between the race as it is, and the race as it existed in God's
creative idea when he pronounced it very good.
In Christ, therefore, God beholds Humanity; in Christ He sees
perfected every one in whom Christ's spirit exists in germ. He to whom
the possible is actual, to whom what will be already _is_, sees all
things _present_, gazes on the imperfect, and sees it in its
perfection. Let me venture an illustration. He who has never seen the
vegetable world except in Arctic regions, has but a poor idea of the
majesty of vegetable life,--a microscopic red moss tinting the surface
of the snow, a few stunted pines, and here and there perhaps a
dwindled oak; but to the botanist who has seen the luxuriance of
vegetation in its tropical magnificence, all that wretched scene
presents another aspect; to him those dwarfs are the representatives
of what might be, nay, what has been in a kindlier soil and a more
genial climate; he fills up by his conception the miserable actuality
presented by these shrubs, and attributes to them--imputes, that is,
to them--the majesty of which the undeveloped germ exists already.