THE ATONEMENT
By
REV. JOHN MORGAN,
D.D. The Story of
Sin Consciousness, observation, and
Scripture unite in the recognition of the awful actual
sinfulness of man. The picture which Scripture gives of
man's moral character, aside from the influence of grace, is
truly frightful. The moral depravity ascribed to him is
total, "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart evil
continually." He is free from righteousness, and no good
thing dwells in him. A large part of the Bible is occupied
with the history of the wickedness of mankind, very
different from the history of the prevalence of small-pox or
cholera. We have the wickedness of the antediluvians set
forth in terms of awful significance. Then comes the wickedness of the
Canaanites of Abraham's time, culminating in that of the
inhabitants of the cities associated with Sodom, horribly
infecting even the family Lot. Then follows the wickedness
of the later Canaanites, heaping up its measure till it was
full. The wickedness the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites,
and, indeed, of all the nations and races with which the
family of Abraham had to do, moves before us. Neither
Abraham nor Isaac thought that their children could safely
intermarry, with them. The Abrahamic race itself presents a
mournful spectacle of depravity, deceit, violence, murder,
even fratricide, breaking out among them. And what a
melancholy picture does the history of Israel exhibit in the
different eras of their existence--in Egypt, in the
wilderness, under the judges, under the kings, in their own
land, and in the land of captivity! Finally, when the return
from Babylon promised better things, how soon and how long
did odious exhibitions of sin show themselves--a formalism
and hypocrisy more odious than the old idolatry! The
culmination of sin was reached in the rejection,
persecution, and murder of the Son of God, and in the
persistent resistance to his claims to the present day. All
this was perpetrated under a supernatural system of
appliances which ought to have made Israel a nation of
exemplary saints--a glorious, transforming spectacle to all
the other nations. When we turn to the great Gentile
nations and empires, we find them of such a character that
they are fitly symbolized to the student of history under
the figures of the most ferocious wild beasts, which succeed
each other with no moral improvement; the last being the
most ferocious and destructive, stamping with his feet what
he cannot destroy. The apostle Paul photographs the
characters both of the Gentiles and of the Jews in lines,
and colors which all history attests. The testimony of
intelligent travellers and missionaries assures us that the
heathen of the present generation are in moral character as
hideous as the heathen of past ages. This wickedness, thus darkening the
historic page, is not to be excused on the plea of
ignorance. God has never left himself without witness. "The
invisible things of him since the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without
excuse." They have known that "God gave them rain and
fruitful seasons, filling their hearts, with food and
gladness." His law has stood written on their hearts; and
the story of his supernatural interpositions has gone to all
the world. Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Greece, Rome, have had
the story told them, and might have known its full purport
if they had desired the knowledge of God's ways. And what a
wonderful comment upon the poisonous influence of a perverse
heart that has given itself to sin, that the revelation of
God to Israel had so little power over the souls of the
chosen race! Even Josephus represents that the Jews of his
time were the most wicked people on the face of the
earth. No doubt, in important respects
civilization had a favorable influence; but civilization
itself became the occasion of corruption. The Greek and
Roman writers abound in testimonies to the great corruption
that reigned in the most civilized and refined nations of
the earth, and in the character of persons of the highest
rank and influence. The Greek and Roman military power was
used for the enslavement and robbery of the ruder nations.
And the same wild scene of slaughter and pillage continues
to the present day--the game of war still played by the
nations on various pretenses. The support of armies has been
the greatest burden of mankind, exhausting the productions
of the field and factory, and even the wide ocean. The
villanies of trade are count. less. The adulteration of all
articles of food, of wear, and of medicines, and often of
the most dangerous character, abound on every side. Many
live on the vices and miseries of their fellow-men, reducing
innumerable women and children to starvation, selling to
those who ought to feed them maddening and murderous
poisons. Large and often triumphant politied parties sustain
these wretches in their villanous trade, and share with them
the spoils, buying their nefarious votes with nefarious
laws. In Great Britain and the United States probably more
capital is engaged in this atrocious business than in any
other. And these intelligent nations suffer this ruin to
rage from generation to generation. And slavery and the
slave-trade forced on us unspeakable horrors for hundreds of
years. The unclean spirit, though cast out, still manifests
his foul temper, not only where he reigned, but in vast
numbers and regions long called free. The treatment the gospel as received
presents another aspect of human wickedness. The persecution
and murder of the Son of God has been already spoken of. "He
was in the world," writes the apostle John, "and the world
was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto
his own, and his own received him not." "This is the
condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men
have loved the darkness rather than the light, because their
deeds were evil." As the apostles traversed the earth on
their mission of mercy they were everywhere persecuted with
murderous malice; and it is remarkable that the great
Apostle to the Gentiles himself was, before his conversion,
a great persecutor, and made havoc of the church. After Christianity spread its
conquests till the Roman empire became nominally Christian,
Christianity became dreadfully corrupted, and the whole
Orient where it prevailed so extensively is now overspread
with a miserable formalism and a dead faith, where
Mohammedism or some other alien religion has not utterly
displaced it. To a vast extent the same corruption pervades
Europe; and one America is almost wholly occupied by
debasing superstition, and the other America, partly
occupied by it, is seriously threatened with the same
general spiritual bondage. A grievous unbelief, worse than
these corruptions of Christianity, extensively prevails
throughout the so-called Christian world. Romanism in
France, Italy, Germany, and Spain is often a mere cover, and
scarcely a cover, for some form of infidelity. And the same
is the case with much of the Protestantism of Continental
Europe, and even of Great Britain and of the United
States. Infidels often make their proud boast
that Christianity, through their great discoveries, is
well-nigh obsolete. The history of the world proves
abundantly that mankind, left to themselves, or supplied
with all the reformatory means in operation before Christ,
are likely to be forever the slaves of Satan, and need the
mightiest divine interposition for their salvation from
delusion and sin.