Part 19

[14] "Either he" ("the Deity of the Unitarians") "must show no mercy, in order to continue true; or he must show no truth, in order to exercise mercy. If he overlook man's guilt, _admit him to the enjoyment of his favor, and proceed_ by corrective discipline to restore his character, he unsettles the foundations of all equitable government, obliterates the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, spreads consternation in heaven, and proclaims impunity in hell. Such a God would not be worth serving. _Such_ tenderness, instead of inspiring filial affection, would lead only to reckless contempt."--_Mr. M'Neile's Lecture_, p. 313.

Surely this is a description, not of the Unitarian, but of the Lecturer's own creed. It certainly is no part of his opponents' belief, that God first admits the guilty to his favor, and _then "proceeds"_ "to restore his character." This arrangement, by which pardon _precedes_ moral restoration, is that feature in the Orthodox theory of the Divine dealings against which Unitarians protest, and which Mr. M'Neile himself insists upon as essential throughout his Lecture. "We think," he says, "that _before_ man can be introduced to the only true process of improvement, he must _first_ have forgiveness of his guilt." What is this "first" step, of pardon, but an "overlooking of man's guilt"; and what is the second, of "sanctification," but a "restoring of character"; whether we say by "corrective discipline," or the "influence of the Holy Spirit," matters not. Is it said that the guilt is not overlooked, if Christ endured its penalty? I ask, again, whether justice regards only the _infliction_ of suffering, or its _quantity_, without caring about its _direction_? Was it impossible for the stern righteousness of God freely to forgive the penitent? And how was the injustice of liberating the guilty mended by the torments of the innocent? Here is the verdict against sin: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And how is this verdict executed? The soul that had sinned does _not_ die; and one "that knew no sin" dies instead. And this is called a divine union of _truth_ and _mercy_; being the most precise negation of both, of which any conception can be formed. First, to hang the destinies of all mankind upon a solitary volition of their first parents, and then let loose a diabolic power on that volition to break it down; to vitiate the human constitution in punishment for the fall, and yet continue to demand obedience to the original and perfect moral law; to assert the absolute inflexibility of that holy law, yet all the while have in view for the offenders a method of escape, which violates every one of its provisions, and makes it all a solemn pretence; to forgive that which is in itself unpardonable, on condition of the suicide of a God, is to shock and confound all notions of rectitude, without affording even the sublimity of a savage grandeur. This will be called "blasphemy"; and it is so; but the blasphemy is not in the _words_, but in the _thing_.

Unitarians are falsely accused of representing God as "overlooking man's guilt." They hold, that _no guilt is overlooked till it is eradicated from the soul_; and that pardon proceeds _pari passu_ with sanctification.

[15] Mr. Buddicom has the following note, intimating his approbation of this rendering: "Some of the best commentators have connected εν τω αυτου αιματι, not with δια της πιστεως, but with ἱλαστηριον and, accordingly, Bishop Bull renders the passage, 'Quem proposuit Deus placamentum in sanguine suo per fidem.'"--_Lecture on Atonement_, p. 496.

[16] John i. 29. For an example of the use of the word "_world_" to denote the Gentiles, see Rom. xi. 12-15; where St. Paul, speaking of the rejection of the Messiah by the Jews, declares that it is only temporary; and as it has given occasion for the adoption of the Gentiles, so will this lead, by ultimate reaction, to the readmission of Israel; a consummation in which the Gentiles should rejoice without boasting or high-mindedness. "If," he says, "the fall of them (the Israelites) be the riches of _the world_ (the Gentiles), and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness! For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the Apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify my office; if, by any means, I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh (the Jews), and save some of them; for if the casting away of them be the _reconciling of the world_, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?"

[17] Acts xx. 28. It is hardly necessary to say, that the reading of our common version, "_church of God_," wants the support of the best authorities; and that, with the general consent of the most competent critics, Griesbach reads "_church of the Lord_."

[18] Gal. iii. 13. Even here the Apostle cannot refrain from adverting to his _Gentile_ interpretation of the cross; for he adds,--"that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ."

[19] In three or four instances, it is true, a sin-offering is demanded from the perpetrator of some act of _moral wrong_. But in all these cases a suitable punishment was ordained also; a circumstance inconsistent with the idea, that the expiation procured remission of guilt. The _sacrifice_ appended to the _penal infliction_ indicates the twofold character of the act,--at once a _ceremonial defilement_ and a _crime_; and requiring, to remedy the one, an atoning rite,--to chastise the other, a judicial penalty. See an excellent tract by Rev. Edward Higginson, of Hull, entitled, "The Sacrifice of Christ scripturally and rationally interpreted," particularly pp. 30-34.

[20] Heb. vii. 27. Let the reader look carefully again into the verbal and logical structure of this verse; and then ask himself whether it is not as plain as words can make it, that Christ "once for all" _offered up_ "_a sacrifice first for_ HIS OWN SINS, and _then for the people's_." The argument surely is this: "He need not do the _daily_ thing, for he has done it _once for all_; the never-finished work of other pontiffs, a single act of his achieved." The sentiment loses its meaning, unless that which he did once is _the selfsame thing_ which they did always: and what was that?--the offering by the high-priest of a sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the people's. With what propriety, then, can Mr. Buddicom ask us this question: "Why is he said to have excelled the Jewish high-priest in _not_ offering a sacrifice for himself?" I submit, that no such thing is said; but that, on the contrary, it is positively affirmed that Christ _did_ offer sacrifice for his own sins. So plain indeed is this, that Trinitarian commentators are forced to slip in a restraining word and an additional sentiment into the last clause of the verse. Thus Pierce: "Who has no need, like the priests under the law, from time to time to offer up sacrifice first for his own sins, and after that for the people's. For this _latter_ he did once for all when he offered up himself; _and as to the former, he had no occasion to do it at all_." And no doubt the writer of the Epistle _ought_ to have said just this, if he intended to draw the kind of contrast which orthodox theology requires, between Jesus and the Hebrew priests. He limits the opposition between them to _one_ particular;--the Son of Aaron made offering _daily_,--the Son of God _once for all_. Divines must add _another_ particular;--that the Jewish priest atoned for _two_ classes of sins, his own and the people's,--Christ for the people's only. Suppose for a moment that this was the author's design; that the word "_this_," instead of having its proper grammatical antecedent, may be restrained, as in the commentary cited above, to the sacrifice for _the people's_ sins; then the word "daily" may be left out, without disturbance to the other substantive particular of the contrast: the verse will then stand thus: "Who needeth not, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice for his own sins; _for_ he offered up sacrifice for the people's sins, when he offered up himself." Here, all the reasoning is obviously gone, and the sentence becomes a mere inanity: to make sense, we want, instead of the latter clause, the sentiment of Pierce,--_for_ "he had no occasion to do this at all." This, however, is an invention of the expositor, more jealous for his author's orthodoxy than for his composition. I think it necessary to add, that, by leaving out the most emphatic word in this verse (the word _once_) Mr. Buddicom has suppressed the author's antithesis, and favored the suggestion of his own. I have no doubt that this was unconsciously done; but it shows how system rubs off the angles of Scriptural difficulties.--I subjoin a part of the note of John Crell on the passage: "De pontifice Christo loquitur. Quid verô fecit semel Christus? quid aliud, quam quod Pontifex antiquus statâ die quotannis[21] faciebat? Principaliter autem hic non de oblatione pro peccatis populi; sed de oblatione pro ipsius Pontificis peccatis agi, ex superioribus, ipsoque rationum contextu manifestum est."

The sins which his sacrifice cancelled must have been of the same order in the people and in himself; certainly therefore not moral in their character, but ceremonial. His death was, for himself no less than for his Hebrew disciples, a commutation for the Mosaic ordinances. Had he not died, he must have continued under their power; "were he on earth, he would not be a priest," or have "obtained that more excellent ministry," by which he clears away, in the courts above, all possibilities of ritual sin below, and himself emerges from legal to spiritual relations.

[21] This is obviously the meaning of καθ ἡμεραν in this passage; _from time to time_, and in the case alluded to, _yearly_; not, as in the common version, _daily_.

[22] Mr. Buddicom's Lecture on the Atonement, p. 471.

[23] See Mr. M'Neile's Lecture, pp. 302, 311, 328, 340, 341.

[24] Mr. M'Neile's Lecture, p. 338.

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.

_The Nature of the Atonement, and its Relation to Remission of Sins and Eternal Life._ By JOHN M'LEOD CAMPBELL. Cambridge: Macmillan & Co. 1856.

This is a strange book. A Greek would have hated it. A Puritan would have found it savory, even where it was unsound. Rosenkranz, who has written on the _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.