THE ATONEMENT
By
REV. JOHN MORGAN,
D.D. THE
ATONEMENT In the heathen world there were
propitiatory rites. The serious heathen felt that to
propitiate Deity it was not enough to repent of wrong done,
or to confess it humbly. They sacrificed animals, and even
their own children and other selected human victims,
apparently as self-inflicted loss or suffering; hoping
thereby to excite the pity of the offended gods. It is in
allusion to this that Micah the prophet represents man as
asking, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, or bow,
myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with
burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be
pleased with thousands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers
of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression--the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" This is a natural
and affecting expression of belief in an avenging God. It is
very, different from a belief that there is no mercy needed,
or none to be possibly obtained. The answer of the prophet
is not to be considered as a denial of any need of
atonement, but as declaring that if there is a humble use of
the atonements provided by God, and doing justly, and loving
mercy, and humble walking with him, all will be
well. The heathen really endeavored to make
expiation for their offences against their deities by
devoting costly offerings to their honor, and to appease or
propitiate their supposed wrathful feelings by the sacrifice
sometimes, at the demand of the priests, of their
dearest--according to Tennyson's terrible poem, "The
Victim." The sacrifice of Iphigenia may furnish an
illustration. Sometimes the gods were imagined, in their
rage, to send pestilence or famine or wide sweeping ruin
upon armies and nations, in revenge for an offence to a
priest or dishonor done to a temple; and the god must be
appeased in this awful way, not merely by the reparation for
the wrong. The human victims were slain, it
seems to me, as in great straits a victim is thrown to a
herd of hungry wolves, to save the rest; or less odiously, a
few of an offending family, army, or nation sacrificed to
save the residue. I know of no case of a victim not
connected with the offenders thus sacrificed; and never does
the idea appear of vicarious punishment recognized as a full
equivalent for the punishment of the offenders. There was
perhaps, a parallelism between the human sacrifices and the
punishment of one or several of a company of mutineers,
instead of the whole number. There were sometimes sacrifices of
quite another sort. Where a great deliverance or a great
victory had been granted, so supposed, costly offerings were
made in acknowledgment; rivers of oil and wine were poured
out, thousands of animals slaughtered, and sometimes, as the
crown of all, human victims slain. The case of Jephthah's
daughter was perhaps, of this class. There was here no idea
of atonement. Much as there was revolting in the
heathen propitiations they had a real origin in the sense of
guilt in the souls of men, and in the struggle to obtain
relief and still the clamors of remorse and fear. They had
the same origin with the Tough shirts, the painful penances,
and abject humiliations of some who bear the Christian name;
and they had the same efficacy. Read Tennyson's "Simeon
Stylites," where the subject is treated with the power of a
master. The atonements prescribed in the law
were of a fundamentally different character, though
appealing to the same susceptibilities of the human soul. It
was not the case that all the sacrifices of the law were
propitiatory. The burnt-offerings and other offerings appear
to have been symbols of the offering up of one's self to
God, as I think Hengstenberg has correctly explained them.
But the sacrifices on the great day of atonement, and the
sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, were propitiatory.
They had a relation to sin and its forgiveness, and are said
to make atonement for the soul; and this atonement was a
condition of forgiveness in the sense in which forgiveness
was dispensed under the law. Was the idea ever expressed in
the Mosaic code, or anywhere in the Bible, that the animal
slain was judicially substituted for the sinner, and
punished by death instead of him? Or is it said that the
animal typifies a future victim who was to be punished for
him? I think no such language is found. The natural import
of the sin-offering seems to be that the death of the victim
symbolizes the death which the sinner deserves to
suffer--that in the offering he acknowledges this, while he
casts himself on the mercy of God for pardon, according to
God's own appointment. In like manner, the ablutions
symbolize the cleansing of the soul by the grace of God--a
cleansing confessed in the ablutions to be needed. This
seems to be the simple import of these rites. They do not
imply that God's feelings or dispositions are altered by
them, but only our relations to him, justifying him in
treating us with a kindness which he could not use if we did
not thus come to him. These rites were adapted to exert a
wholesome influence on the observer himself, and on all,
too, who witnessed his observance of them; and the effect
was naturally much greater when all Israel, on the great day
of atonement, joined in the atoning observances. No mere
verbal confession of sin could have an equal effect, though
the verbal confession had its place, and was also
required. The law not only did not require, but
utterly prohibited human sacrifices; though the Israelites,
from time to time, roused God's intensest indignation by
falling into the horrid heathen practice. For animals no
nobler use could be imagined than to serve the uses of the
human soul, and to prepare the way for the grand atonement
of the Son of God. These animal sacrifices did not, in the
deepest sense, take away sin. It may be said that, in that
sense, all the sin of the world remained unatoned till the
work of Christ was finished--till he had by himself purged
our sin. We are not yet prepared to enter upon this great
theme. A few things remain to be said of atonements before
Christ. It may be interesting to refer to the
passage, Num. xxxv., respecting the murderer. Here the
representation seems to be that until the murderer is duly
punished the whole land is held guilty of his crime, and
cannot be released till his blood is shed by them; for on
them rests the responsibility of protecting innocent blood,
and of vindicating it when shed; and when a murder has
occurred it is assumed that the proper state of feeling with
respect to murder had not been present in the land. "Blood
defileth the land [makes it profane before God]; and
for the land atonement is not made except in the blood of
him that murderously shed blood" (vs. 33). The technical
word for atonement is used, which our translation here and
elsewhere obscures. In this case, atonement is not effected
by the blood of the murderer as a sacrificial victim, but by
the righteous conduct of the authorities and people in
slaying him, and thus endeavoring to make murder odious. All
is done by divine command. In a similar manner, when a
person was found slain by an unknown homicide the nearest
town was held responsible till in a solemn manner they had
gone through rites of atonement appointed by God, and God
was himself entreated to atone for his people; and then it
was declared that atonement had been made. The translators
here again fail to use the technical word. It is obvious
what a spirit of vigilance in guarding human life this
institution is adapted to promote. Till it was duly honored,
the sunshine of divine beneficence could not be enjoyed in
full by the town. When in Micah the proposed heathen
atonements are rejected, the Lord tells what he will accept,
namely, justice, mercy, and humble walking with God. This
seems to mean that the chief atonement or condition of
accepting one who has sinned is a return to right doing. But
this right doing must include the observance of the atoning
rites appointed by the Lord. Indeed, the moral influence on
others of a sin-offering must have depended much upon a
belief in the sincere repentance of the offerer. In Prov. xvi. 6 it is said: "By mercy
and truth iniquity is purged." Strictly, it should be
rendered, "iniquity is atoned." "The departure from evil" of
the remainder of the verse is not departure from sin, but
from evil as punishment. The whole seems to mean, Mercy and
truth obtain atonement for us, and the fear of the Lord
escape from punishment. The two parts of the verse form a
parallelism Mercy and truth and the fear of the Lord
conspicuously in a man may be the occasion of grace and
salvation to others, as well as to the subject. In Numbers xxv. we have a remarkable
example of an atonement expressly declared by the Lord
himself to be effected by the zealous righteousness of
Phineas. Israel had fallen into foul idolatry and the vile
lewdness connected with it. God had commanded that the heads
of Israel should be hanged up before him, and Moses had
issued the order that each still faithful Israelite should
slay his men who were joined to Baal-Peor. A plague had gone
forth which slew twenty-four thousand men. While Moses and
the congregation of Israel were weeping before the door of
the tabernacle, Zimri, a prince of the tribe of Simeon, in
the sight of Moses and all Israel, took Cozbi, a Midianitish
princess, and went with her to his tent. Then Phineas,
grandson of Aaron, indignant at this impudent abomination,
seized a javelin, followed into the tent, and thrust them
both through, killing them on the spot, in accordance with
God's commands. Then the plague was stayed; and the Lord
said to Moses "Phineas has turned my wrath away from the
children of Israel, in being jealous with my jealousy among
them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my
jealousy. Wherefore say, I give unto him my covenant of
peace; and he shall have it, and his seed after him, even
the covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was
jealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children
of Israel." I have changed the translation to make it a
little more literal, and to harmonize its parts. This is to me one of the most
instructive passages in the Old Testament. It seems plain
that the atonement here made was not made by means of a
slain animal, but by the manifestation of whole-hearted
interest in the honor of God and the salvation of Israel. In
thus making an atonement, Phineas acted as a true priest of
the Lord, and the reward was fitly the establishment of the
priesthood in his family. It was an atonement, because a
holy moral influence went forth from it, turning Israel from
foul idolatry to the sole service of Jehovah. On account of
it, therefore, God could fitly turn from the fierceness of
his consuming wrath, and grant Israel a space for
repentance, and finally blot out the sin confessed and
forsaken through the influence of the manifestation Phineas
had made. This atonement would give a better efficacy to the
atoning rites in established use. It cannot be reasonably supposed that
the case of Phineas stands absolutely, isolated, and that
the devoted jealousy for God's honor and Israel's good of
other distinguished saints, who have stood in the breach
when God's cause was in most danger, had no similar atoning
efficacy. It was often the case that for their sake the
church was spared, and through them often restored from
threatened ruin. Some of them hazarded, others laid down,
their lives, and the zeal of the Lord's cause ate them up.
Their testimony in word and deed for God and for his law
were always ready, and both boldly and lovingly given. Hence
many of these holy men have been considered and called by
the church types of Christ, imperfectly yet really
foreshadowing him and his work in various relations.
Atonement as effected through them was very different, in
the manner of it, from atonement made by the blood of
animals, yet had the same general aim and result, to bring
Israel into such a moral state, and such a relation to God,
that he could properly show mercy, forgive, and bless; that
no mistake would be left in the minds of his rational
creatures with respect to his hatred of sin and love of
holiness. But Phineas would not have increased the efficacy
of his atonement if he had surrendered himself to his father
or grandfather to be slain on an altar, that his blood, in
the manner of an animal's blood, might be sprinkled for the
people. Such things were done among the heathen, but God had
forbidden them most solemnly, and expressed his horror of
them. They never could have produced a beneficent effect.
But if Phineas, in his devoted effort to vindicate the
claims of Jehovah to be the God of Israel, and to annihilate
the foul worship of Baal-Peor, had lost his life, that might
have added to the effect of his holy zeal. The object and aim of the God who had
created man in his own image, and whose heart was grieved to
see his so richly-endowed creature fallen and lost, was to
recover him from his ruin, and to reinstate him in his full
favor. This was the end of all his operations in all stages
of the world's history. And in a comprehensive view the
whole series of providential and moral dispensations, of
judgments and mercies, of trials without revealed law and
with revealed law, the whole array of rites and
institutions, of punishments and atonements, was necessary.
But man was not restored till the gracious Father had done
something higher and better for him than he had yet done;
nor even then, until his last and most perfect system of
operations had worked in the world for many generations. All
along multitudes would be saved; but the world, ruled by the
original arch-enemy, would show itself a mighty antagonistic
force, long resisting, with apparent success, the power of
the great Redeemer. All, however, would result in a most
glorious triumph of redemption, and the kingdoms of the
world become the kingdom of God and his Christ. In all that God ever did by men for
the behoof of their fellow-men, whether in the way of
physical force or moral influence, he did it through his
Spirit, guiding, actuating, and empowering them. In large
measure the Spirit was in them, and presided over their
speech and actions, and especially qualified them to provide
that wonderful collection of divine inspirations, the Old
Testament. But when the fullness of time had
come, prepared by all the past, the Word that was in the
beginning with God, and was God, through whom all things
that exist came into existence, in whom is the life that is
the light of men, became flesh and sojourned among us (and
we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten one from
the father), full, of grace and truth. For the law was given
through Moses; the grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. In
him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, the Word,
and the immeasurable abundance of the Spirit. In all the
holy patriarchs, prophets, priests, kings, and mighty, men,
God dwelt in measure; in Christ, in absolute fullness, so
that, it was absurd for any one who knew him to ask to see,
the Father. He that had seen him had seen the Father. His
words are the words of God; his works the works of God.
Perfect infallibility characterizes every manifestation. He
was infallible in the knowledge and utterance of the truth.
The law he perfectly understood in all its breadth and
spirituality. Here men, the best, the highest of them, might
be partially ignorant of the law as to its spirit or
application, but he could not be. His spirit and life were a
perpetual outflow of holy obedience, an absolute,
matter-of-fact commentary on the law. He is God with us, in
and with humanity, a real and true brother of the race, full
of all human sympathies; while he is perpetually in the
Father and the Father in him in an ineffable closeness of
interfusion. Being such in his person, he was
qualified as no one else ever had been, or ever could be, to
open up to our souls an spiritual reality and truth. There
is a dark haze drawn over man's interior eye by sin with
respect to the glory of the divine law, the guilt of sin,
the value of the good of rational beings, the sacredness of
the relations man sustains to God and his throne. It is his
mission to be the light of the world, to chase away the
darkness, to send down into the depths of the soul the true
illumination. For this end was he born, and for this came he
into the world, that he should bear witness unto the truth.
He is the faithful and true witness, bearing witness to the
truth as no other could. He bore witness to the precepts of
the law, showing their breadth and spirituality, as it had
never been shown before. He testified of the world that its
deeds were evil as no mere human prophet ever did. He tore
the veil from sanctimonious hypocrisy. His teachings have
confessedly spread through the world a blaze of light with
regard to moral truth, compared with which all that was seen
before was but as twilight to noonday. In this way he
magnified the law and made it honorable, exhibited the glory
of the precept and showed how worthy it is to be the rule
for the heart and life of all God's moral creatures. He
magnified also the penalty, showed up the ill-desert of all
sin, whether it stained the heart or the life. His
instructions were wonderfully illustrated by all the
manifestations of his life. That was the love commanded by
the law perfectly embodied, and blazing in the eyes of
mankind as the sun of righteousness. Till Christ acted in
the world man hardly knew what the word love meant; but he
has to millions of hearts effectually interpreted it, and
yet has made them feel that they did not know the meaning as
he did. All his actions, whether divine or human, or both,
showed it forth transcendently. Perpetually there streamed
forth from him love to poor, ignorant, sinful, lost men,
love for the most lost; tender interest in all their
interests; heartful compassion for all the woes they
suffered or feared. And never did this world's sinners so
see in any other presence how guilty they were, how unworthy
of favor or blessing, yet were they emboldened by divine
benignity to ask what they needed; and it was only there
that any such grateful love was felt. It was not towards man only that our
Lord manifested love, but supremely to his Heavenly Father;
showing the most perfect regard for his will, even when it
called him to die the most revolting death. While no one
else set the value on human good that he did, by word, by
deed, by suffering, yet he was infinitely removed in his
whole career from the mere humanitarianism that ignores God
while it professes to devote itself to man. Every
manifestation he made falls in with and echoes the words
that he calls the great commandment, "Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart." In life and in death he
magnified this law and made it honorable, with a devotion no
one had ever so gloriously shown before. Thus he condemned
godlessness, and gibbeted it on his cross. No one with my spiritual eyesight can
fail to see in Jesus a deep, solemn earnestness of devotion
to God's glory and man's good, transcending all ever beheld
in any other life. It is no fanatical or enthusiastic
devotion but as calm and rational as it is earnest and
intense. And had he only lived such a life, and we possessed
the true and fit record of it, it would have been a
priceless treasure to the race. But his great mission of
magnifying the law and making it honorable, and thus laying
the foundations for man's salvation and his Father's highest
glory on earth, was to have a most tragic close, one which
was to make the cross the highest symbol of holy love and
redemptive power which mankind or the universe ever
possessed. He was to seal his testimony, that of his whole
career, with his blood. That was the appointment of his
Father, and it was his will that his Father's will should be
done. And we can, with our child eyes, see the wisdom. For
his death intensifies infinitely the apparent earnestness
and whole-hearted lovingness of his entire manifestation. It
is here that love shines in full-sanctimonious blaze. Here
it shines on the icy hearts of sinners with dissolving
power. In the light of this love how odious does sin appear,
how worthy of all condemnation. Here is the loveliest, most
fragrant beauty of holiness; and in its pure light how ugly
and hateful are sin and the sinner. In its contact and connection with
the Son of God sin had the greatest opportunity that it ever
had to exhibit its nature and malignity. How blind it was to
the most resplendent light that had ever irradiated earth,
or even heaven. When sinful men not only rejected, but
persecuted, reviled, and, finally, with infuriated rage,
murdered the Son of God, sin manifested its true character
and horrible baseness. And thus sin wrote, as it were, in
letters of blood, its own condemnation and the rectitude of
the law which denounces it. It would have been wonderful if
at such a spectacle there had not been darkness over all the
earth, and if there had not been such a shaking as rent the
rocks. It seems as if on this little spot outside of
Jerusalem, at Golgotha, the place of malefactors' skulls,
there occurred the most marvelous exhibition the universe
ever witnessed. Holy love and sin here met, and
spontaneously manifested their genius and power. Holy love
could not act itself out in its simplicity without
manifesting its own exceeding beauty and loveliness, and, in
contrast, the ugliness and hatefulness of sin. And sin could
not here act itself out without showing its detestable
character and worthiness of intensest
condemnation. In every possible rational point of
view there goes forth from the whole character and career,
and especially from the cross of the Son of God, where the
manifestation of his holy love culminates, the mightiest
moral influence, not only to rescue sinful men from sin, but
to clarify and exalt the moral ideas and moral life of the
whole universe. Christ is therefore set forth as a
propitiation, or propitiator, in his blood. He is the
propitiation for the sins of the whole world. The facts of
his history are great public facts, published for their
natural influence to the whole universe, but especially to
his human brethren. He bore all his sufferings, all the
horrors of his death, primarily for them. He bore them that
the eternal weight of God's wrath might not abide on his
brethren. Therefore they are vicarious sufferings, but not
at all in the sense that they are the literal punishment for
their sins. But if his love wins our faith and transforms
us, then we may be legitimately pardoned. For the moral
influence of his suffering love is of far more efficacy to
deter all God's moral creatures from sin, to magnify the law
and make it honorable in their hearts, than the deserved
punishment of countless millions of sinners could be. But
still pardon can only reach the penitent. For, as our Lord
himself asked on his way to the cross, "If these things are
done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" The
dry tree, the persistent sinner, fit for fuel, can get no
legitimate hope from the cross; it rather bids him despair.
"He that believeth not is condemned already"--has his
certain condemnation emblazoned in his black
unbelief--"because he hath not believed in the name of the
only-begotten Son of God." According to the view of Christ's
atonement here presented, there is a closer analogy between
the atonement made by Phineas and that by Christ, than
between the atonements made by the blood of brute animals
and the atonement made by our Lord. But there is an analogy
belonging to all atonements; and the blood which always
accompanied the legal sacrifices occasioned the frequent
allusions to them, as also their being a regular institution
of Moses, still in use when the apostles wrote. When Paul says that "God made him to
be sin for us who knew no sin," the reference is to our
Lord's being delivered up by God's counsel to be treated by
men as the vilest malefactor. There is no allusion here to
the sin-offerings. The original word here rendered sin is by
some thought to mean in this place sin-offering; but this
translation, while it rejects the ordinary meaning of the
word, nullifies the antithesis of the apostle. Paul says, in
sense, God delivered up Christ to be treated as if he were
sin, that we might be treated as if we were righteousness.
In a similar way we must interpret Gal. iii. 13: "Christ has
redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us; for it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth
on a tree." Here Paul alludes to a saying in the Old
Testament, that an executed criminal is deemed accursed of
God. The manner of such a criminal's death was the manner of
the death of the Saviour, as Isaiah predicted it would be.
And this was indeed an awful humiliation for the Son of God
to endure. But to suppose that he was accursed of God, or
regarded otherwise than with the highest complacency, is
simply monstrous. The apostle does not say having been made
the curse of the law for us, but simply a curse, that is, a
person hanged on a tree like a malefactor. If the Jews before the time of Christ
had understood the language as many now take it, they must
have supposed that the Messiah was to be made an awful
exception to the law against human sacrifices; and that he
was to be slain, as brute animals were, on an altar, as an
atonement for sin. But I am not aware that any ancient
Jewish interpreter ever had this idea; and it was certainly
alien to all the ideas of our Lord's earthly time. The
disciples of John the baptizer, when he spake of Jesus as
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, never
thought of such a thing as his being slain for sin in the
manner of an animal. And no such thing appears in the
historic record. What a different record it would be if the
Jewish high-priest had been commanded to slay him on the
altar of sacrifice, and he had actually done so. Or if Jesus
himself, our great High-priest, had built an altar, and on
that, in the manner of Racine's Eriphyle in his Iphigenic,
had slain himself, or had laid himself on the altar, and had
there awaited a thunder-bolt from his Father's hand, and the
thunder-bolt had pierced the heart of God's Son, would such
a transaction have been a fit one to be done in this
universe of God? I feel sure that no Christian can think, it
would be fit, or that it is possible to imagine a scene like
that to be presented. Nor can any one believe that the
effect of such a transaction would be wholesome in heaven,
earth, or hell. The conception, or a similar one, it seems,
did arise in heathen minds; but Christians are all glad of
the abhorrence expressed for the entire thing in the sacred
records. We feel no such horror when irrational animals are
so employed; but we should experience a revolting if the
innocent creatures were tortured. The obedience of our Lord unto death,
even the death of the cross, was no vicarious obedience to
the law, and endurance of its penalty to be imputed to the
elect; but was the most effectual condemnation of sin and
glorification of holiness ever exhibited in this or any
other world. All along it was rendered in contrast with the
most awful display of wickedness ever made; which, in its
murderous culmination, brought out in the boldest relief the
nature of sin. Christ, therefore, in this obedience did that
which was more fit to be an atonement for all worlds,
reconciling holy angels and sinful men to God, than any
other conceivable provision that God could make, because it
introduces into the universe among the moral creatures of
God the highest possible redeeming moral influence. In its
presence how ill-deserving every believing sinner must feel;
while he, at the same time, feels, too, that through this he
may be fitly forgiven, his merited punishment being an
infinitesimal, or mere zero, compared with the condemnation
which the cross visits upon his sin. But, as has been said
above, the saving power can reach only the believer. To the
unbeliever the holy sufferer says, "If these things be done
in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? These sufferings of Christ, while
they are not punishment, are, to all who are saved, in the
highest sense vicarious. They more than answer the purpose
of the redeemed sinner's punishment, but they do answer that
purpose. The end of his sufferings is not, could not be,
mere retributive justice, but the promotion, among the moral
creatures of God, of obedience to the law of love more
directly than any punishment possibly could do it. The
Saviour's obedience unto the death of the cross promotes
this obedience, not only among men, but in all worlds. The
believing sinner's pardon, instead of interfering with this
great end, is itself an exemplification of the love which
the law commands. For mercy, when it can be fitly exorcised,
is itself a sweet demand of the holy law. Though our Lord is not a victim, laid
by divine command on a literal altar of sacrifice, much less
a formal substitute executed under law in place of the
actual criminals, no sinner can, if he beholds him on the
cross, with a believing heart, help saying, it is I that
deserve death for my sin, a death more dreadful than that
which my Redeemer suffers. It is natural, therefore, for him
to sing, "My faith would lay, her
hand On that dear head of
thine; While like a penitent I
stand, And there confess my sin." The entire holy universe might fitly
sympathize with the scene, and rejoice to see the curse
removed. One of the solemn and awful ways by
which God has guarded against the abuse of the gift of his
Son is, appointing him to be the Judge of the world; and at
the great day he will so proceed as to show that he
exercises no weak and, demoralizing pity for incorrigible
rebels. "The Lord Jesus," Paul says, "will be revealed from
heaven with his mighty, angels in flaming fire, taking
vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and
from the glory of his power, when he shall come to be
glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that
believe . . . at that day." Then will be seen the wrath of
the Lamb, and blood, not his own, will sprinkle his garments
and stain all his raiment, when he treads the wine-press
alone, needing no help from his people, treading his enemies
and theirs in his anger, and trampling them in his fury. But
then believers lift up their heads, for the time of
consummated redemption is come. All the allusions of the Bible to
atonement and sacrifice, and all the usual language of
evangelical preaching and song fall in with this view of the
atonement of Christ. And especially does it fit into the
language which the Christian naturally uses with respect to
his own bearing of tho cross and being crucified with his
Lord, filling up that which is behind of the sufferings of
Christ for the sake of his body, the church. None of this
language detracts from the soleness of the work of Christ,
as this is the origin or fountain of all the spiritual
manifestations of his people. I have already spoken of the
atonement of the Son of God as reaching back through all
past ages. That seems the import of the remarkable language
of the apostle Paul in Rom. iii. 25, imperfectly translated
in our English Bible, "Whom God set forth as a propitiation,
through faith, in his blood; unto a showing of his
righteousness, on account of a pretermission of sins
formerly committed during the forbearance of God, with a
showing of his righteousness at the present time, unto his
being righteous and justifying him that is of faith." There
can be no sinner who remembers the mercy of God shown him in
any age of the world, whose heart is not utterly hardened,
that will not learn in the Saviour's life and death a deeper
lesson respecting his sin, and find mightier motives there
for holiness, than any other manifestations from God afford.
It is according to the same principle that the apostle
represents that the heavenly beings are themselves
reconciled to God by Christ; which can mean nothing else
than their effectually receiving higher lessons. in moral
excellence than they ever before knew. Inflicted punishment is, of course,
always a condemnation, of sin, and less directly a
commendation of righteousness and any imaginable atonement
must have its moral power in the condemnation of the former
and commendation of the latter. Righteous conduct is several
times spoken of as condemning sin. Thus Noah, by his faith,
manifested in building the ark, "condemned the world." The
repentance of the Ninevites condemned the impenitence of our
Lord's contemporaries; and so did the respect which the
Queen of Sheba showed to the wisdom of Solomon. It is too
obvious to need insistence that this is an effect of
righteous conduct, and the condemnation and commendation are
the more emphatic the further the zealous adherence to
righteousness is carried. The effect is naturally
reformatory; and in proportion to this influence mercy to
the reformed becomes safe and salutary, since the influence
is not confined to the reformed, but extends through the
whole moral community. As in the case of Phineas and Moses,
the influence is atoning. Nothing can be plainer than the
condemnatory and commendatory power of our Lord's character
and actions. It is plainly transcendently the greatest power
for condemnation and commendation the moral world has ever
known. "What the law could not do in that it was weak
through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh,
that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us."
When Christ, as the God-man, and, as such, the highest
witness, had by word and deed, pushed his practical
testimony (the testimony at the appropriate epoch, I Tim.
ii. 6) in the face of all human enmity, in the face of the
cross, this constituted the highest conceivable atonement.
Death, inflicted by, God's command, on a literal altar,
could not have enhanced the beneficent influence but must
have unutterably marred it. All the theories that so teach
do mar it; but, thank God, it is too mighty to be destroyed
by worlds of false philosophy and false interpretation. It
remains, amid all perversions that do not set aside the
dignity of Christ's divine-human person and the facts of his
life and death, the highest moral influence in the
universe. I have quoted several scriptures in
which our Lord's, suffering obedience to death is spoken of
as the chief constituent of the atonement; but I wish
specially to signalize Hebrews x. 5-10, because this epistle
is thought most plainly to exhibit the common notion of
vicarious punishment. Here the writer quotes a passage from
the fortieth Psalm, in which the sacrifices of the law as
insufficient atonements are apparently contrasted with
Christ's cordial obedience to his Father's will as the
all-sufficient atonement. The offering of the body of Christ
is spoken of, not as indicating that he is laid on an altar,
and slain like an animal victim, but as showing that he, as
God's saints always do in an inferior degree, laid himself
out in death--bringing sacrifice for the ends for which he
lived and died. The "body" of our Lord is here the organ of
obedience provided as such by God. The Hebrew literally
translated is "ears hast thou dug out for me," that is,
fashioned for me, ready to listen to all thy commands. The
rendering of the Septuagint can be made to agree in sense
with this only by making "body" mean a ready organ of
obedience. In the psalm no mention is made of death endured,
but the mode of obedience specified is declaring God's truth
in the great congregation, as the faithful and true witness
for God. This was what brought on his death, in which he
died as the highest witness for God and his holy law. So his
atoning work was analagous to that of Moses and Phineas,
though both on account of the superiority of the truth be
declared, the dignity of his person, and the greatness of
his sufferings, infinitely more significant and
impressive. It is a most fit and glorious work of
the Spirit of God to bring to bear upon the souls of men the
life and death of the Son, the only-begotten, to take of the
things of Christ and show them to men. The blindness and
stupidity which sin produces in human souls renders this
work of the Spirit absolutely essential. Thus the gospel,
the good news respecting this glorious Saviour, must be
proclaimed with the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven, with
demonstration of the Spirit and power. To perfect men in the
knowledge of Christ, and to educate them to be his younger
brethren in the kingdom, the Spirit takes up his permanent
abode in believers. And this indwelling of the Spirit
belongs to the heavenly as well as to the earthly state.
What the Scriptures say of the present glory and reign of
our Lord, of his coming to judge the world, and of his
receiving believers to himself to enjoy him forever, does
not belong to the atonement which was finished in his
earthly sojourn. But these truths constitute a part of the
gospel, and have an influence in promoting faith and
practical holiness. The Spirit, therefore, takes these
things as part of the things of Christ, and shows them to
our souls. They serve to awe sinners, and cheer the saints
of God; they have always been milch dwelt on by faithful
ministers of the gospel, and always will be. It may assist in the comprehension of
the views here presented, to sum up more briefly what has
been said in the preceding pages. 1. One of the most important
provisions of the ancient time was what are called
atonements. They were of different forms, but all united in
being designed to promote repentance and obedience, and to
create a public influence against sin which would render
forgiveness safe and wholesome. (1) There were the so-called
sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, and the offerings of
the great day of atonement, consisting mainly of the solemn
slaying of clean animals, with confession of sin, intended
to symbolize and set forth the ill-desert of the sinner who
was to be forgiven. The anger of God of course ceases when
the sinner repents; but the atonement, while it wholesomely,
affects the mind of the penitent believer, puts God publicly
into a position in which he can properly pardon. (2) There were atonements effected by
the conspicuous zeal and devotion of eminent saints of God,
in which their conduct sent forth a healthful moral
influence to bring their brethren to repentance, and made it
safe for God to forgive them when penitent, and even to
exercise forbearance towards them before repentance. The
most signalized case of this kind is that of Phineas, who is
expressly, said by his jealousy for God to have made
atonement for Israel. Moses is similarly said to have made
an atonement for Israel. (3) Human sacrifices, offered
frequently by the heathen, were never tolerated by God, but
most strictly forbidden; and there is no heathen practice
mentioned with more horror by the prophets of the Lord. It
was impossible that they ever should have sent forth a
healthful moral influence, even though offered under the
lashings of conscience for the sins of the soul. 2. In the fullness of time, that is,
when the world had had all the necessary previous
experience, and had been carried through all the needful
preparatory training, the Word, who was in the beginning
with God, and was God, became flesh, and sojourned among us;
and thus there was on earth literally, an Immanuel, a true
incarnation of God himself. The incarnation alone was a most
wonderful expression of divine interest in the lost race of
mankind; but the history of the career of the Redeemer--for
it was to redeem he came--makes it the most stupendous
marvel that the human heart can contemplate. His chief
object here below was to make such an atonement for sin as
to save from sin and death all that could by any possible
atonement be saved, his atonement being the highest and most
efficacious possible to the infinite goodness, wisdom, and
power of God. The atonement made by Christ
consisted in the creation of the greatest beneficent moral
influence that could be sent forth into the universe. To
create this he must, in a transcendent degree and manner,
magnify the law and make it honorable, and thus lift it up
on high from the dishonored, prostrate, and trampled
situation to which in this world sin had brought it down. He
was to rescue the honor of God, and make him to man God and
the Heavenly Father. He was to prepare the deliverance of
man from debasing selfishness, and from bondage to sensual
and passional gratification. This he was to do by means of
the various wonders he did and suffered, manifesting all the
perfections, natural and moral, of divinity, and as well all
the perfections of an absolutely innocent and holy humanity.
To his Heavenly Father in his law of love he was obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross. All he said, all he
did, all he suffered, was the most awful condemnation sin
ever received, or could receive; for he placed the
resplendent whiteness of heaven's highest holiness alongside
of the dark abomination which had befouled and laid waste
the fair creation of God, and threatened to turn it into a
hell. This abomination raged shamelessly around his cross,
where his wondrous testimony for God and divine love, and
against all sin, had its most glorious culmination; a
testimony that would, in spite of all the rage and cunning
of Satan, take effect in millions of human hearts, subdue
the world, and extend its influence even to the angels of
God. The cross could not but show that all sin deserves a
worse death than was suffered there in behalf of the sinner;
could not but show, too, the certain doom of him who
tramples under his profane feet the sacred blood, and
refuses to yield his heart to its influence. This great
showing up of sin by the obedience of Christ unto the death
of the cross, renders unnecessary the showing up of the
penitent's ill-desert by his personal punishment. That
becomes, not undeserved, but inappropriate in the presence
of the great Sufferer, on whose sacred head he lays his hand
and confesses his sins. 3. The manner of the atonement of the
Son of God is not the same with that of the sin-offerings of
the Mosaic law. That was appropriate for animals, but not
for any rational being, much less for the Son of God.
Sacrificing him on God's part in that way, would have
horrified the whole rational creation, and could not have
been of beneficent influence. But as Christ did die, his
death glorifies the Father and saves the world. 4. The great moral function of the
Divine Spirit is to take the things of the Saviour and to
show them to mankind. This work is essential; for left to
themselves sinners would fail of any effectual knowledge of
what our Lord has done and suffered for them. The gospel
must be preached with demonstration of the Spirit and of
power. 5. A necessary part of the gospel
follows the story of the cross, the resurrection, the
ascension, the reign at God's right hand, the constant
working of Christ with his church, the second advent, the
resurrection at his call of all the dead, the last judgment,
the relations of Christ to his people in the
post-resurrection state. All these things shed light on the
atonement, illustrate its importance and eternal
influence. 6. No character that ever shone in
our world has exerted the actual influence against sin and
in favor of virtue that has flowed from Jesus Christ. This
is nearly the universal testimony of the best writers who
have expatiated on the characters of history. By general
confession he only has realized the ideal of moral
excellence. Rousseau, in his eloquent way, merely echoed the
general voice when, in his Emile, he wrote, "If Socrates
lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ lived and
died like a God." The very ideas of mankind respecting right
and wrong have been wonderfully changed, clarified, and
glorified through him, by his deeds as well as words. Even
those who have denied his divinity have talked of him, of
his transcendent character, as it is fit to talk only of a
divine person; not only such men as Dr. Channing, but even
such as Renan, and, recently, John Stuart Mill, who went so
far as to think that Jesus might have an unique mission in
the world. How sunlight plain it is that if man is to be
brought to true virtue, and realize the law of his moral
reason, Christ is to be the influence to effect it: he is to
be the Atonement, the Reconciler. He is the one who, as
Gabriel says to Daniel, is "to make an end of sins, and to
make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness."