CHAPTER VII: SATISFACTION OF CHRIST.

SATISFACTION OF CHRIST. __________________________________________________________________

§ 1. Statement of the Doctrine.

The Symbols of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches agree entire1y in their statement of this doctrine. In the "Augsburg Confession" [401] it is said, Christus "sua morte pro nostris peccatis satisfecit." In the "Apology for the Augsburg Confession" [402] it is more fully expounded, "Christus, quia sine peccato subiit poenam peccati, et victima pro nobis factus est, sustulit illud jus legis, ne accuset, ne damnet hos qui credunt in ipsum, quia ipse est propitiatio pro eis, propter quam nunc justi reputantur. Cum autem justi reputentur, lex non potest eos accusare, et damnare, etiamsi re ipsa legi non satisfecerint." "Mors Christi non est solum satisfactio pro culpa, sed etiam pro æterna morte." [403] "In propitiatore hæc duo concurrunt: Primum, oportet exstare verbum Dei, ex quo certo sciamus, quod Deus velit misereri et exaudire invocantes per hunc propitiatorem. Talis exstat de Christo promissio. . . . . Alterum est in propitiatore, quod merita ipsius proposita sunt, ut, quæ pro aliis satisfacerent, quæ aliis donentur imputatione divina, ut per ea, tanquam propriis meritis justi reputentur, ut si quis amicus pro amico solvit æs alienum, debitor alieno merito tanquam proprio liberatur. Ita Christi merita nobis donantur, ut justi reputemur fiducia meritorum Christi, cum in eum credimus, tanquam propria merita haberemus." [404] In the "Form of Concord" this doctrine is not only presented but elaborately expounded and vindicated. It is said, [405] "Justitia illa, quæ coram Deo fidei, aut credentibus, ex mera gratia imputatur, est obedientia, passio et resurrectio Christi, quibus ille legi nostra causa satisfecit, et peccata nostra expiavit. Cum enim Christus non tantum homo, verum Deus et homo sit, in una persona indivisa, tam non fuit legi subjectus, quam non fuit passioni et morti (ratione suæ personæ), obnoxius, quia Dominus legis erat. Eam ob causam ipsius obedientia (non ea tantum, qua patri paruit in tota sua passione et morte, verum etiam, qua nostra causa sponte sese legi subjecit, eamque obedientia illa sua implevit) nobis ad justitiam imputatur, ita, ut Deus propter totam obedientiam (quam Christus agendo et patiendo, in vita et morte sua, nostra causa Patri suo coelesti præstitit) peccata nobis remittat, pro bonis et justis nos reputet, et salute æterna donet."

The Reformed Confessions are of like import. The Second Helvetic Confession [406] says, "Christus peccata mundi in se recepit et sustulit, divinæque justitiæ satisfecit. Deus ergo propter solum Christum passum et resuscitatum, propitius est peccatis nostris, nec illa nobis imputat." The Belgic Confession says, [407] "Credimus, Jesum Christum summum ilium sacerdotem esse, . . . . qui se nostro nomine coram Patre ad placandam ipsius iram cum plena satisfactione obtulit, sistens se ipsum super altare crucis, et sanguinem suum pretiosum ad purgationem peccatorum nostrorum profudit." The Heidelberg Catechism says, [408] "Deus vult justitiæ satisfieri; quocirca necesse est, vel per nos, vel per alium satisfaciamus." In the following answers it is taught that man cannot satisfy the justice of God for himself, nor any creature for him; that it was necessary that He who, as our substitute, would make satisfaction in our stead, should be both God and man. In answer to the question, [409] Why it was necessary that Christ should die, it is said, "Propterea quod justitiæ et veritati Dei nullo alio pacto pro nostris peccatis potuit satisfieri, quam ipsa morte filii Dei." The Heidelberg Catechism being the standard of doctrine in all the Dutch and German Reformed churches in Europe and America, is one of the most important and authoritative of the symbols of the Reformation.

In the "Formula Consensus Helvetica" [410] it is said, "Ita Christus vice electorum obedientia mortis suæ Deo patri satisfecit, ut in censum tamen vicariæ justitiæ et obedientiæ illius, universa ejus, quam per totius vitæ suæ curriculum legi . . . . sive agendo sive patiendo præstitit, obedientia vocari debeat. . . . . Rotundo asserit ore Spiritus Dei, Christum sanctissima vita legi et justitiæ divinæ pro nobis satisfecisse, et pretium illud, quo empti sumus Deo, non in passionibus duntaxat, sed tota ejus vita legi conformata collocat."

The "Westminster Confession" [411] says, "The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of Himself, which He through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those whom the Father hath given unto Him."

This, however, is not a doctrine peculiar to the Lutheran and Reformed churches; it is part of the faith of the Church universal. The Council of Trent says, [412] "Jesus Christus, cum essemus inimici, propter nimiam caritatem qua dilexit nos, sua sanctissima passione in ligno crucis nobis justificationem meruit, et pro nobis Deo patri satisfecit." "Christus Jesus, qui pro peccatis nostris satisfecit."
[413] The Roman Catechism says, [414] "Hoc in passione, et morte Filius Dei salvator noster spectavit, ut omnium ætatum peccata redimeret ac deleret, et pro eis Patri abunde, cumulateque satisfaceret." "Prima satisfactio et præstantissima illa est, qua pro scelerum nostrorum ratione, etiam si Deus summo jure nobiscum velit agere, quidquid a nobis debeatur, cumulate persolutum est. Hæc vero ejusmodi esse dicitur, quæ nobis Deum propitium et placatum reddidit, eamque uni Christo domino acceptam ferimus, qui in cruce, pretio pro peccatis nostris soluto, plenissime Deo satisfecit." [415] __________________________________________________________________

[401] I. iv. 2; Hase, Libri Symbolici, 3d edit. p. 10.

[402] III. 58; Ibid. p. 93.
[403] VI. 43; Ibid. p. 190.
[404] IX. 17, 19; Ibid. p. 226.
[405] III. 14, 15; Ibid. p. 684, 685.

[406] XV.; Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, Leipzig, 1840, p. 494.

[407] XXI.; Ibid. p. 373.
[408] XII.; Ibid. p. 432.
[409] XL.; Ibid. p. 439.
[410] XV. 32, 33; Ibid. pp. 734, 735.
[411] Chap. viii. § 5.

[412] Sess. vi. cap. 7; Streitwolf, Libri Symbolici, Göttingen, 1846, pp. 24, 25.

[413] Sess. xiv. cap. 8; Ibid. p. 63.
[414] I. v. 11; Ibid. pp. 155, 156.

[415] II. v. 53 (lxxxvii. or 63), Ibid. p. 401. __________________________________________________________________

§ 2. The Intrinsic Worth of Christ's Satisfaction.

The first point is that Christ's work was of the nature of a satisfaction, because it met and answered all the demands of God's law and justice against the sinner. The law no longer condemns the sinner who believes in Christ. Those, however, whom the infinitely holy and strict law of God does not condemn are entitled to the divine fellowship and favour. To them there can be no condemnation. The work of Christ was not, therefore, a mere substitute for the execution of the law, which God in his sovereign mercy saw fit to accept in lieu of what the sinner was bound to render. It had an inherent worth which rendered it a perfect satisfaction, so that justice has no further demands. It is here as in the case of state criminals. If such an offender suffers the penalty which the law prescribes as the punishment of his offence he is no longer liable to condemnation. No further punishment can justly be demanded for that offence. This is what is called the perfection of Christ's satisfaction. It perfectly, from its own intrinsic worth, satisfies the demands of justice. This is the point meant to be illustrated when the work of Christ is compared in Scripture and in the writings of theologians to the payment of a debt. The creditor has no further claims when the debt due to him is fully paid.

This perfection of the satisfaction of Christ, as already remarked, is not due to his having suffered either in kind or in degree what the sinner would have been required to endure; but principally to the infinite dignity of his person. He was not a mere man, but God and man in one person. His obedience and sufferings were therefore the obedience and sufferings of a divine person. This does not imply, as the Patripassians in the ancient Church assumed, and as some writers in modem times assume, that the divine nature itself suffered. This idea is repudiated alike by the Latin, Lutheran, and Reformed churches. In the "Second Helvetic Confession" [416] it is said, "Minime docemus naturam in Christo divinam passam esse." The "Form of Concord" [417] teaches the same thing, quoting Luther, who says that our Saviour to suffer must become man, "non enim in sua natura Deus mori potest. Postquam autem Deus et homo unitus est in una persona, recte et vere dicitur: Deus mortuus est, quando videlicet ille homo moritur, qui cum Deo unum quiddam, seu una persona est." This is precisely what the Apostle, in Hebrews ii. 14, teaches, when he says that He who was the Son of God, who made heaven and earth, who upholds all things by the word of his mouth, and who is immutable and eternal, assumed our nature (flesh and blood) in order that He might die, and by death destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. Christ is but one person, with two distinct natures, and therefore whatever can be predicated of either nature may be predicated of the person. An indignity offered to a man's body is offered to himself. If this principle be not correct there was no greater crime in the crucifixion of Christ than in unjustly inflicting death on an ordinary man. The principle in question, however, is clearly recognized in Scripture, and therefore the sacred. writers do not hesitate to say that God purchased the Church with his blood; and that the Lord of glory was crucified. Hence such expressions as Dei mors, Dei sanguis, Dei passio have the sanction of Scriptural as well of Church usage. It follows from this that the satisfaction of Christ has all the value which belongs to the obedience and sufferings of the eternal Son of God, and his righteousness, as well active as passive, is infinitely meritorious. This is what the Apostle clearly teaches in Hebrews ix. 13, 14: "For if the blood if bulls and of goats . . . . sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through (or with) an eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" The superior efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ is thus referred to the infinitely superior dignity of his person.

It follows from the perfection of Christ's satisfaction that it supersedes and renders impossible all other satisfactions for sin. The sufferings which justified believers are called upon to endure are not punishments, because not designed for the satisfaction of justice. They are chastisements intended for the benefit of the sufferer, the edification of the Church, and the glory of God. In this view all Protestant churches concur.

Romish Doctrine of Satisfaction.

Romanists, while on the one hand they exalt to the utmost the intrinsic value of Christ's satisfaction, yet on the other hand they restrict its application. At one time, it was the prevalent doctrine in the Latin Church that the work of Christ availed only for the pardon of sins committed before baptism. With regard to post-baptismal sins, it was held either that they were unpardonable, or that atonement must be made for them by the sinner himself. This idea that the satisfaction of Christ avails only to the forgiveness of sins committed before conversion has been adopted by many Rationalists, as for example by Bretschneider. [418] He says, "Für spätere Sünden der Christen gilt das Opfer Christi nicht, sondern es geht dem Sünder nur einmal, bei der Taufe, zu Gute." "The sacrifice of Christ does not avail for the later sins of the Christian. It benefits the sinner only once, at his baptism." [419] What is more remarkable, Dr. Emmons, Puritan though he was, has very much the same idea. The only benefit we receive from Christ, he says, is the forgiveness of sins. This is granted when we believe. After that, we are rewarded or punished, not only according to but on account of our works. [420] The doctrine that post-baptismal sins are unpardonable, having been rejected as heretical, the Romish theologians adopted the theory that the satisfaction of Christ availed only to the remission of the penalty of eternal death; leaving the sinner bound to suffer the temporal punishment due to his transgressions or to make satisfaction for them.

The Romish doctrine of satisfactions arose out of a perversion of the penances imposed in the early ages upon the lapsed. Those penances were satisfactions rendered to the Church; that is, they were intended to satisfy the Church of the sincerity of the offender's repentance. When they came to be regarded as satisfactions rendered to the justice of God, the theologians were obliged to adopt a theory to reconcile the Church practice with the doctrine of the infinitely meritorious satisfaction of Christ. That theory was that the satisfaction of Christ, infinite though it was in merit, was designed only to secure the remission of everlasting death. Temporal punishments and the pains of purgatory after death are still to be endured, at the discretion of the Church, as satisfactions for sins. This is not the place for the full discussion of this subject. It is enough to remark, (1.) That if, as the Scriptures teach, every sin deserves God's wrath and curse, both in this life and in that which is to come, then it is out of all question for a sinner to make satisfaction for the least of all his sins. What he offers as the ground of pardon needs itself to be pardoned. This is so plain that Romanists have modified their theory so as in fact to destroy it, by teaching that the satisfaction rendered by penitents is accepted as such only for Christ's sake. But if this be so then the satisfaction of Christ is all-sufficient, and is not confined to removing the penalty of eternal death. (2.) In the Bible, the work of Christ is said to cleanse from all sin. All other sacrifices and satisfactions are said to be utterly unavailing, even should a man give the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul. (3.) Those who believe in Christ are justified, says the Apostle, from all things. They are not under condemnation. No one can lay anything to their charge. They have peace with God. (4.) This doctrine of supplementary satisfaction is derogatory to Christ and destructive of the peace of the believer, reducing him to a slavish state, and putting his salvation in the hands of the priests. (5.) If Christ be our only priest his work is the only satisfaction for sin. All others are unnecessary and every other is impossible. __________________________________________________________________

[416] XI.; Niemeyer, p. 485.
[417] VIII. 44; Hase, p. 772.

[418] Dogmatik, part ii. ch. vi. 2, §§ 154-158, 3d edit. vol. ii. pp. 280-310.

[419] Systematische Entwickelung, § 107, 4th edit. p. 624.

[420] Works of Nathaniel Emmons, D. D., edit. by Jacob Ide, D. D. Boston, 1842, vol. v. Sermons 46, 47. __________________________________________________________________

§ 3. Doctrine of the Scotists and Remonstrants.

While Protestants and the Church generally have held the doctrine that the satisfaction of Christ, because of the dignity of his person and the nature and degree of his sufferings was and is infinitely meritorious, absolutely perfect from its intrinsic worth, and completely efficacious in its application to all the sins of the believer, the Scotists in the Middle Ages, and after them Grotius and the Remonstrants, denied that the work of Christ had inherent value to satisfy divine justice, but said that it was taken as a satisfaction, acceptatione gratuita. The propositions laid down by Anselm, in his epoch-making book, "Cur Deus Homo?" were, "(1.) Quod necessarium fuit hominem redimi. (2.) Quod non potuit redimi sine satisfactione. (3.) Quod facienda erat satisfactio a Deo homine. (4.) Quod convenientior modus fuit hic, scilicet per passionem Christi." The argument of Anselm is founded on the assumption that the pardon of sin required an infinite satisfaction, i.e., a satisfaction of infinite merit, which could only be rendered by a person of infinite dignity. This principle, and all the propositions founded upon it, Duns Scotus contested. He advanced the opposite principle, namely, "Tantum valet omne creatum oblatum, pro quanto Deus acceptat." Therefore any man might have satisfied for his own sins; or one man for the sins of all men, had God seen fit so to ordain. "Meritum Christi," he says, "fuit finitum, quia a principio finito essentialiter dependens. Non enim Christus quatenus Deus meruit, sed quatenus homo." This principle became the foundation of the doctrine of the Remonstrants on the work of Christ, and of the work of Grotius, "De Satisfactione Christi." Limborch [421] says, "Satisfactio Christi dicitur, qua pro nobis poenas omnes luit peccatis nostris debitas, easque perferendo et exhauriendo divinæ justitiæ satisfecit. Verum illa sententia nullum habet in Scriptura fundamentum. Mors Christi vocatur sacrificium pro peccato; atqui sacrificia non sunt solutiones debitorum, neque plenariæ pro peccatis satisfactiones; sed illis peractis conceditur gratuita peccati remissio. In eo errant quam maxime, quod velint redemtionis pretium per omnia æquivalens esse debere miseriæ illi, e qua redemtio fit. Redemtionis pretium enim constitui solet pro libera æstimatione illius qui captivum detinet, non autem solvi pro captivi merito." [422] Curcellæus, another distinguished Remonstrant, or Arminian theologian, says the same thing:
[423] "Non ergo, ut vulgo putant, satisfecit [Christus] patiendo omnes poenas, quas peccatis nostris merueramus. Nam primo, istud ad sacrificii rationem non pertinet. . . . . Sacrificia enim non sunt solutiones debitorum. . . . . Secundo, Christus non est passus mortem æternam quæ erat poena peccato debita, nam paucis tantum horis in cruce prependit, et tertia die resurrexit ex mortuis. Imo etiamsi mortem æternam pertulisset, non videtur satisfacere potuisse pro omnibus totius mundi peccatis. Hæc enim fuisset tantum una mors, quæ omnibus mortibus, quas singuli pro suis peccatis meruerant, non æquivaluisset."

It is obvious that the objections presented in the above extracts arise from confounding pecuniary with judicial or legal satisfaction. There is an analogy between them, and, therefore, on the ground of that analogy it is right to say that Christ assumed and paid our debts. The analogy consists, first, in the effect produced, namely, the certain deliverance of those for whom the satisfaction is made; secondly, that a real equivalent is paid; and, thirdly, that in both cases justice requires that the liberation of the obligee should take place. But, as we have already seen, the two kinds of satisfaction differ, first, in that in penal satisfaction the demand is not for any specific degree or kind of suffering; secondly, that while the value of pecuniary satisfaction is independent entirely of the person by whom the payment is made, in the other case everything depends on the dignity of him by whom the satisfaction is rendered; and, thirdly, that the benefits of a penal satisfaction are conferred according to the terms or conditions of the covenant in pursuance of which it is offered and accepted.

The principle that a thing avails for whatever God chooses to take it, which is the foundation of the doctrine that Christ's work was not a satisfaction in virtue of its intrinsic worth but only by the gracious acceptance of God, cannot be true. For, --

1. It amounts to saying that there is no truth in anything. God may (if such language may be pardoned) take anything for anything; a whole for a part, or a part for the whole; truth for error, or error for truth; right for wrong, or wrong for right; the blood of a goat for the blood of the Eternal Son of God. This is impossible. The nature of God is immutable, -- immutable reason, truth, and goodness; and his nature determines his will and his judgments. Therefore it is impossible that He should take that to be satisfaction which is not really such.

2. The principle in question involves the denial of the necessity of the work of Christ. It is inconceivable that God should send his only begotten Son into the world to suffer and die if the same end could have been accomplished in any other way. If every man could atone for his own sins, or one man for the sins of the whole world, then Christ is dead in vain.

3. If this doctrine be true then it is not true that it is impossible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. If every creatum oblatum tantum valet, pro quanto Deus acceptat, then why might not the Old Testament sacrifices have sufficed to take away sin? What rendered them inefficacious was their own inherent worthlessness. And what renders the satisfaction of Christ effectual is its own inherent value.

4. The Scriptures teach the necessity of the death of Christ, not only by implication, but also by direct assertion. In Galatians ii. 21, the Apostle says, "If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." This means that if the righteousness necessary for the salvation of men could have been secured in any other way the whole work of Christ is a matter of supererogation, an unnecessary expenditure of what was beyond all price. Still more explicit is his language in Galatians iii. 21: "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." It is here asserted that if any other method could have availed to save sinners it would have been adopted. Our Lord, in Luke xxiv. 26, asks, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things?" There was an obligation, or necessity, which demanded his sufferings if the salvation of sinners was to be accomplished. The Apostle again, in Hebrews ii. 10, says, "It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." There was a necessity for the sufferings of Christ, and that necessity was not merely governmental, nor for the accumulating moral power over the sinner's heart, but it arose out of the nature of God. It became Him. It was consonant with his perfections and character, which is the highest conceivable kind of necessity.

5. What the Scriptures teach of the justice of God leads to the same conclusion. Justice is a form of moral excellence. It belongs to the nature of God. It demands the punishment of sin. If sin be pardoned it can be pardoned in consistency with the divine justice only on the ground of a forensic penal satisfaction. Therefore the Apostle says (Romans iii. 25), that God sent forth Christ as a propitiation through faith in his blood, in order that God might be just in justifying the ungodly.

6. The Scriptures, in representing the gift of Christ as the highest conceivable exhibition of the divine love, do thereby teach, first, that the end to be accomplished was worthy of the sacrifice; and, secondly, that the sacrifice was necessary to the attainment of the end. If the end could have been otherwise attained there would have been no exhibition of love in the gift of Christ for its accomplishment.

7. All that the Bible teaches of the truth of God; of the immutability of the law; of the necessity of faith; of the uselessness and worthlessness of all other sacrifices for sin; and of the impossibility of salvation except through the work of the incarnate Son of God, precludes the idea that his satisfaction was not necessary to our salvation, or that any other means could have accomplished the object. And if thus absolutely necessary, it must be that nothing else has worth enough to satisfy the demands of God's law. It is the language and spirit of the whole Bible, and of every believing heart in relation to Christ that his "blood alone has power sufficient to atone." __________________________________________________________________

[421] Theologia Christiana, III. xxi. 6; edit. Amsterdam, 1700, p. 255.

[422] Ibid. III. xxi. 8; ut supra, p. 256.

[423] Opera Theologica, edit. Amsterdam, 1675, p. 300. __________________________________________________________________

§ 4. Satisfaction rendered to Justice.

The second point involved in the Scriptural doctrine concerning he satisfaction of Christ is, that it was a satisfaction to the justice of God. This is asserted in all the Confessions above cited. And by justice is not meant simply general rectitude or rightness of character and action; nor simply rectoral justice, which consists in a due regard to the rights and interests of subjects in relation to rulers; much less does it mean commutative justice or honesty. It is admitted that the Hebrew word tsdyq, the Greek dikaios, the Latin justus, the English just or righteous, and their cognates, are used in all these senses both in Scripture and in ordinary life. But they are also used to express the idea of distributive or retributive justice; that form of moral excellence which demands the righteous distribution of rewards and punishments which renders it certain, under the government of God, that obedience will be rewarded and sin punished. This is also properly called, especially in its relation to sin, vindicatory justice, because it vindicates and maintains the right. Vindicatory and vindictive, in the ordinary sense of this latter term, are not synonymous. It is a common mistake or misrepresentation to confound these two words, and to represent those who ascribe to God the attribute of vindicatory justice as regarding Him as a vindictive being, thirsting for revenge. There is as much difference between the words and the ideas they express as there is between a righteous judge and a malicious murderer. The question then is, Does the attribute of vindicatory justice belong to God? Does his infinite moral excellence require that sin should be punished on account of its own inherent demerit, irrespective of the good effects which may flow from such punishment? Or is justice what Leibnitz defines it to be, "Benevolence guided by wisdom." It is admitted that the work of Christ was in some sense a satisfaction; that it satisfied in some way the exigencies of the case, or the conditions necessary to the salvation of man. It is further, at least generally, admitted that it was in some sense a satisfaction of justice. This being the case, everything depends on what is meant by justice. If justice is "benevolence guided by wisdom," or a benevolent disposition on the part of a ruler to sustain his authority as a means of promoting the happiness of his. kingdom, then the work of Christ is one thing. It may be simply a means of reformation, or of moral impression. But if justice is that perfection of the divine nature which renders it necessary that. the righteous be rewarded and the wicked punished, then the work of Christ must be a satisfaction of justice in that sense of the term. The question, therefore, concerning "the nature of the atonement" depends on the question whether there is in God such an attribute as distributive or vindicatory justice. This question has already been discussed when treating of the attributes of God. All that is necessary here is a brief recapitulation of the arguments there presented, --

1. We ascribe intelligence, knowledge, power, holiness, goodness, and truth to God, (a.) Because these are perfections which belong to our own nature, and must of necessity belong to Him in whose image we were created. (b.) Because these attributes are all manifested in his works. (c.) Because they are all revealed in his Word. On the same grounds we ascribe to God justice; that. is, the moral excellence which determines Him to punish sin and reward righteousness. The argument in this case is not only of the same kind, but of the same cogency. We are just as conscious of a sense of justice as we are of intelligence or of power. This consciousness belongs to man as man, to all men in all ages and under all circumstances. It must, therefore, belong to the original constitution of their nature. Consequently it is as certain that God is just, in the ordinary sense of that word, as that He is intelligent or holy.

2. The Spirit of God in convincing a man of sin convinces him of guilt as well as of pollution. That is, He convinces him of his desert of punishment. But a sense of a desert of punishment is a conviction that we ought to be punished; and this is of necessity attended with the persuasion that, under the righteous government of God, the punishment of sin is inevitable and necessary. They who sin, the Apostle says, know the righteous judgment of God, that they are worthy of death.

3. The justice of God is revealed in his works, (a.) In the constitution of our nature. The connection between sin and misery is so intimate that many have gone to the extreme of teaching that there is no other punishment of sin but its natural effects. This is contrary to fact as well as to Scripture. Nevertheless it is true that to be "carnally minded is death," that is, damnation. There is no help for it. It is vain to say that God will not punish sin when He has made sin and its punishment inseparable. The absence of light is darkness; the absence of life is death; (b.) It is, however, not only in the constitution of our nature, but also in all his works of providence, that God has revealed his purpose to punish sin. The deluge; the destruction of the cities of the plain; the overthrow of Jerusalem and the dispersion and long-continued degradation of the Jewish people; the ruins of Nineveh, of Babylon, of Tyre and Sidon, and of Egypt; and the present condition of many of the nations of the earth, as well as the general administration of the divine government, are proof enough that God is an avenger, that He will in no wise spare the guilty.

4. The Scriptures so constantly and so variously teach that God is just, that it is impossible to present adequately their testimony on the subject. (a.) We have the direct assertions of Scripture. Almost the first words which God spoke to Adam were, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The angels who sinned are reserved in chains unto the judgment of the great lay. Death is declared to be the wages, i.e., the proper recompense of sin, which justice demands that it should receive. God is declared to be a consuming fire. Men can no more secure themselves from the punishment of their sins, by their own devices, than they can save themselves from a raging conflagration by a covering of chaff. The penalty of the law is as much a revelation of the nature of God as its precept is. As He cannot, consistently with his perfections, exonerate men from the obligation of obedience, so He cannot allow them to sin with impunity. It is, therefore, declared that He will reward every man according to his works. (b.) All the divinely ordained institutions of religion, whether Patriarchal, Mosaic, or Christian, were founded on the assumption of the justice of God, and were designed to impress that great truth in the minds of men. They take for granted that men are sinners; and that, being sinners, they need expiation for their guilt as well as moral purification, in order to salvation. Sacrifices, therefore, were instituted from the beginning to teach the necessity of expiation and to serve as prophetic types of the only effectual expiation which, in the fulness of time, was to be offered for the sins of men. Without the shedding of blood (i.e., without vicarious punishment) there is no remission. This is recorded, not merely as a fact under the Mosaic dispensation, but as embodying a principle valid under all dispensations. It is not, therefore, this or that declaration of Scripture, or this or that institution which must be explained away if the justice of God be denied, but the whole form and structure of the religion of the Bible. That religion as the religion for sinners rests on the assumption of the necessity of expiation. This is its corner-stone, and the whole fabric falls into ruin if that stone be removed. That God cannot pardon sin without a satisfaction to justice, and that He cannot have fellowship with the unholy, are the two great truths which are revealed in the constitution of our nature as well as in the Scriptures, and which are recognized in all forms of religion, human or divine. It is because the demands of justice are met by the work of Christ, that his gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and that it is so unspeakably precious to those whom the Spirit of God has convinced of sin. (c.) We accordingly find that the plan of salvation as unfolded in the New Testament is founded on the assumption that God is just. The argument of the sacred writers is this: The wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. That is, God is determined to punish sin. All men, whether Gentiles or Jews, are sinners. Therefore the whole world is guilty before God. Hence no man can be justified by works. It is a contradiction to say that those who are under condemnation for their character and conduct can be justified on the ground of anything they are or can do. There is no force in this argument unless there is a necessity for the punishment of sin. Human sovereigns pardon criminals; earthly parents forgive their children. If the penalty of the law could be as easily remitted in the divine government then it would not follow from the fact that all men are sinners that they cannot be forgiven on the ground of their repentance and reformation. The Scriptures, however, assume that if a man sins he must die. On this assumption all their representations and arguments are founded. Hence the plan of salvation which the Bible reveals supposes that the justice of God which renders the punishment of sin necessary has been satisfied. Men can be pardoned and restored to the favour of God, because Christ was set forth as an expiation for their sins, through faith in his blood because He was made a curse for us; because He died, the just for the unjust; because He bore our sins in his own body on the tree and because the penalty due to us was laid on Him. It is clear therefore, that the Scriptures recognize the truth that God is just, in the sense that He is determined by his moral excellence to punish all sin, and therefore that the satisfaction of Christ which secures the pardon of sinners is rendered to the justice of God. Its primary and principal design is neither to make a moral impression upon the offenders themselves, nor to operate didactically on other intelligent creatures, but to satisfy the demands of justice; so that God can be just in justifying the ungodly. __________________________________________________________________

§ 5. The Work of Christ Satisfies the Demands of the Law.

A third point involved in the Church doctrine on the work of Christ, is that it is a satisfaction to the divine law. This indeed may seem to be included under the foregoing head. If a satisfaction to justice, it must be a satisfaction to law. But in the ordinary use of the terms, the word law is more comprehensive than justice. To satisfy justice is to satisfy the demand which justice makes for the punishment of sin. But the law demands far more than the punishment of sin, and therefore satisfaction to the law includes more than the satisfaction of vindicatory justice. In its relation to the law of God the Scriptural doctrine concerning the work of Christ includes the following points: --

1. The law of God is immutable. It can neither be abrogated nor dispensed with. This is true both as respects its precepts and penalty. Such is the nature of God as holy, that He cannot cease to require his rational creatures to be holy. It can never cease to be obligatory on them to love and obey God. And such is the nature of God as just, that He cannot cease to condemn sin, and therefore all those who are guilty of sin.

2. Our relation to the law is two-fold, federal and moral. It is of the nature of a covenant prescribing the conditions of life. It says, "Ye shall keep my statutes and my judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them." And, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them."

3. From this federal relation to the law we are, under the gospel, delivered. We are no longer bound to be free from all sin, and to render perfect obedience to the law, as the condition of salvation. If this were not the case, no flesh living could be saved. We are not under law but under grace.

4. This deliverance from the law is not effected by its abrogation, or by lowering its demands, but by the work of Christ. He was made under the law that He might redeem those who were under the law.

5. The work of Christ was therefore of the nature of a satisfaction to the demands of the law. By his obedience and sufferings, by his whole righteousness, active and passive, He, as our representative and substitute, did and endured all that the law demands.

6. Those, who by faith receive this righteousness, and trust upon it for justification, are saved; and receive the renewing of their whole nature into the image of God. Those who refuse to submit to this righteousness of God, and go about to establish their own righteousness, are left under the demands of the law; they are required to be free from all sin, or having sinned, to bear the penalty.

Proof of the Immutability of the Law.

The principles above stated are not arbitrarily assumed; they are not deductions from any à priori maxims or axioms; they are not the constituent elements of a humanly constructed theory; they are not even the mere obiter dicta of inspired men; they are the principles which the sacred writers not only announce as true, but on which they argue, and which they employ in the construction of that system of doctrine which they present as the object of faith and ground of hope to fallen men. The only legitimate way therefore of combating these principles, is to prove, not that they fail to satisfy the reason, the feelings, or the imagination, or that they are incumbered with this or that difficulty; but that they are not Scriptural. If the sacred writers do announce and embrace them, then they are true, or we have no solid ground on which to rest our hopes for eternity.

The Scriptural character of these principles being the only question of real importance, appeal must be made at once to the Word of God. Throughout the Scriptures, the immutability of the divine law; the necessity of its demands being satisfied; the impossibility of sinners making that satisfaction for themselves; the possibility of its being rendered by substitution; and that a wonderfully constituted person, could and would, and in fact has, accomplished this work in our behalf, are the great constituent principles of the religion of the Bible. As the revelation contained in the Scriptures has been made in a progressive form, we find all these principles culminating in their full development in the later writings of the New Testament. In St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, for example, the following positions are assumed and established (1.) The law must be fulfilled. (2.) It demands perfect obedience; and, in case of transgression, the penalty of death. (3.) No fallen man can fulfil those conditions, or satisfy the demands of the law. (4.) Christ, the Eternal Son of God, clothed in our natures has made this satisfaction to law for us. (5.) We are thus freed from the law. We are not under law, but under grace. (6.) All that is now required of us is faith in Christ. To those who are in Him there is no condemnation. (7.) By his obedience we are constituted righteous, and, being thus reconciled to God, we become partakers of the holy and immortal life of Christ, and are delivered not only from the penalty, but from the power of sin, and made the sons and heirs of God. (8.) The great condemning sin of men under the gospel, is rejecting the righteousness and Spirit of Christ, and insisting either that they need no Saviour, or that they can in some way save themselves; that they can satisfy all God's just demands, and deliver themselves from the power of sin. If the foregoing principles are eliminated from the Pauline epistles, their whole life and power are gone. And Paul assures us that he received his doctrines, not from men, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is against this rock, -- the substitution of Christ in the place of sinners; his making a full satisfaction to the justice and law of God, thus working out for us a perfect righteousness, by which we may be justified, -- that the assaults of philosophy, falsely so called, and of heresy in all its forms have been directed from the beginning. This it is that the Gnostics and New Platonists in the first centuries; the Scotists and Franciscans during the Middle Ages; the Socinians and Remonstrants at, and after the Reformation; and Rationalists and the speculative philosophy of our own age, have striven to overthrow. But it remains, what it ever has been, the foundation of the faith, hope, and life of the Church. __________________________________________________________________

§ 6. Proof of the Doctrine.

The Scriptural evidence in support of this great doctrine, as far as it can well be presented within reasonable limits, has already, in great measure, been exhibited, in the statement and vindication of the several elements which it includes.

It has been shown, (1.) That the work of Christ for our salvation, was a real satisfaction of infinite inherent dignity and worth. (2.) That it was a satisfaction not to commutative justice (as paying a sum of money would be), nor to the rectoral justice or benevolence of God, but to his distributive and vindicatory justice which renders necessary the punishment of sin; and (3.) That it was a satisfaction to the law of God, meeting its demands of a perfect righteousness for the justification of sinners. If these points be admitted, the Church doctrine concerning the satisfaction, or atonement of Christ, is admitted in all that is essential to its integrity. It remains, therefore, only to refer to certain classes of passages and modes of representation pervading the Scriptures, which assume or assert the truth of all the principles above stated.

Christ saves us as our Priest.

Christ is said to save men as a priest. It is not by the mere exercise of power, nor by instruction and mental illumination; nor by any objective, persuasive, moral influence; nor by any subjective operation, whether natural or supernatural, whether intelligible or mystical, but by acting for them the part of a representative, substitute, propitiator, and intercessor. It was in the Old Testament foretold that the Messiah was to be both priest and king, that he was to be a priest after the order of Melchisedec. In the New Testament, and especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is devoted almost exclusively to the exhibition of the priestly character and work of Christ, it is taught, --

1. That a priest is a substitute or representative, appointed to do for sinners what they could not do for themselves. Their guilt and pollution forbid their access to God. Someone, therefore, must be authorized to appear before God in their behalf, and effect reconciliation of God to sinners.

2. That this reconciliation can only be effected by means of an expiation for sin. The guilt of sin can be removed in no other way. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. A priest, therefore, is one appointed for men (i.e., to act in their behalf), to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin.

3. That this expiation was effected by the substitution of a victim in the place of the sinner, to die in his stead, i.e., in Scriptural language, "to bear his sins." "Guilt," says Ebrard, in a passage already quoted, "can be removed only by being actually punished, i.e. expiated. Either the sinner himself must bear the punishment, or a substitute must be found, which can assume the guilt, bear the penalty, and give the freedom from guilt or righteousness thus secured, to the offender." [424] This he gives as the fundamental idea of the epistle to the Hebrews.

4. Such being the nature of the priesthood and the way in which a priest saves those for whom he acts, the Apostle shows, first, with regard to the priests under the old economy, that such was the method, ordained by God, by which the remission of ceremonial sins and restoration to the privileges of the theocracy, were to be secured; and secondly, that the victims then offered, having no inherent dignity or worth, could not take away sin; they could not purge the conscience from the sense of guilt, or bring to the end contemplated (teleiosai) those for whom they were offended, and hence had to be continually repeated. In Hebrews ix. 9, it is said dora te kai thusiai . . . . me dunamenai kata suneidesin teleiosai ton latreuonta, i.e., says Robinson, "which could never make full expiation for the bringer, so as to satisfy his conscience."

5. The Aaronic priesthood and sacrifices were, therefore, temporary, being the mere types and shadows of the true priest and the real sacrifice, promised from the beginning.

6. Christ, the Eternal Son of God, assumed our nature in order that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. That is, to make expiation for sin. The word used is hilaskomai, propitium reddere; which in the Septuagint, is the substitute for kpr (to cover guilt), to hide sin from the sight of God. In the New Testament, as in the Septuagint, hilaskomai is the special term for sacerdotal expiation, and is not to be confounded with apokatallattesthai, to reconcile. The latter is the effect of the former; reconciliation is secured by expiation.

7. Christ is proved, especially in Hebrews v., to be a real priest; first, because He has all the qualifications for the office, He was a man, was a substitute, had a sacrifice, and was able to sympathize with his people; secondly, because He was called of God to the priesthood, as was Aaron; thirdly, because He actually discharged all the functions of the office.

8. The sacrifice which this great high priest offered in our behalf, was not the blood of irrational animals, but his own most precious blood.

9. This one sacrifice has perfected forever (teteleioken, made a perfect expiation for) them that are sanctified. (Hebrews x. 14.)

10. This sacrifice has superseded all others. No other is needed; and no other is possible.

11. Those who reject this method of salvation certainly perish. To them there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. (Hebrews x. 26.)

It can hardly be questioned that this is a correct, although feeble statement of the leading ideas of the Epistle to the Hebrews. With this agree all other representations of the Scriptures both in the Old Testament and in the New, and therefore if we adhere to the doctrine of the Bible we must believe that Christ saves us, not by power, or by moral influence, but as a priest, by offering Himself as an expiatory sacrifice for our sins. To deny this; to explain away these express teachings of the Scriptures, as mere accommodations to the modes of thought prevalent in the age of the Apostles; or to substitute modern ideas of the nature of sacrifices, for those of the Bible and of the whole ancient world; or to attempt to get at the philosophical truth inclosed in these Scriptural forms, while we reject the forms themselves, are only different ways of substituting our thoughts for God's thoughts, our way of salvation for God's way. If the ordinary authoritative rules of interpretation are to be adhered to, it cannot be denied that the Scriptures teach that Christ saves us as a priest by making a full expiation for our sins, bearing the penalty of them in his own person in our behalf.

Christ saves us as a Sacrifice.

Intimately connected with the argument from the priestly office of Christ, and inseparable from it, is that which is derived from those numerous passages in which He is set forth as a sacrifice for sin. Much as the nature of the Old Testament sacrifices has of late years. been discussed, and numerous as are the theories which have been advanced upon this subject, there are some points with regard to which all who profess faith in the Scriptures, are agreed. In the first place, it is agreed that Christ was in some sense a sacrifice for the sins of men; secondly, that the sense in which He was a sacrifice is the same as that in which the sin offerings of the Old Testament were sacrifices; and, thirdly, that the true Scriptural idea of sacrifices for sin is a historical question and not a matter of speculation. According to Michaelis, they were mere fines; [425] according to Sykes, federal rites; according to others, expressions of gratitude, offerings to God in acknowledgment of his goodness; according to others, they were symbolical of the surrender and devotion of the life of the offerer to God; [426] according to others, they were confessions of sin and symbolical exhibitions of penitence; and according to others, their whole design and effect was in some way to produce a salutary moral impression. [427] It is admitted that the offerings of the old economy were of different kinds, not only as bloody and unbloody, but that among those which involved the shedding of blood some were designed for one purpose and some for another. The whole question relates to the sin offerings properly so called, of which the sacrifices on the great day of atonement were the special illustrative examples. The common doctrine as to these sin offerings is, (1.) That the design of such offerings was to propitiate God; to satisfy his justice, and to render it consistent and proper that the offence for which they were offered should be forgiven, (2.) That this propitiation of God was secured by the expiation of guilt; by such an offering as covered sin, so that it did not appear before Him as demanding punishment; (3.) That this expiation was effected by vicarious punishment; the victim being substituted for the offender, bearing his guilt, and suffering the penalty which he had incurred; (4.) That the effect of such sin offerings was the pardon of the offender, and his restoration to favour and to the enjoyment of the privileges which he had forfeited. If this be the true Scriptural idea of a sacrifice for sin, then do the Scriptures in declaring that Christ was a sacrifice, intend to teach that He was the substitute for sinners; that He bore their guilt and suffered the penalty of the law in their stead; and thereby reconciled them unto God; i.e., rendered it consistent with his perfections that they should be pardoned and restored to the divine fellowship and favour.

Proof of the Common Doctrine concerning Sacrifices for Sin.

That this is the true doctrine concerning sacrifices for sin may be argued, --

1. From the general sentiment of the ancient world. These offerings arose from a sense of guilt and apprehension of the wrath of God. Under the pressure of the sense of sin, and when the displeasure of God was experienced or apprehended, men everywhere resorted to every means in their power to make expiation for their offences, and to propitiate the favour of God. Of these means the most natural, as it appears from its being universally adopted, was the offering of propitiatory sacrifices. The more numerous and costly these offerings the greater hope was cherished of their efficacy. Men did not spare even the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their souls. It was not that the Deity, to be propitiated, needed these oblations, or could Himself enjoy them; but it was that justice demanded satisfaction, and the hope was entertained that the death of the victims might be taken in lieu of that of the offender. Even those who repudiate the doctrine of expiation as belonging to the religion of the Bible, admit that it was the doctrine of the ancient world. But if it was the doctrine of the ancient world, two things naturally follow; first, that it has a foundation in the nature of man, and in the intuitive knowledge of the relation which he as a sinner bears to God; and, secondly, that when we find exactly the same rites and ceremonies, the same forms of expression and the same significant actions in the Scriptures, they cannot fairly be understood in a sense diametrically opposite to that in which all the rest of the world understood them.

2. The second argument is that it is beyond doubt that the Hebrews, to whom the Mosaic institutions were given, understood their sacrifices for sin to be expiatory offerings and not mere forms of worship or expressions of their devotion of themselves to God; or as simply didactic, designed to make a moral impression on the offender and on the spectators. They were explained as expiations, in which the victim bore the guilt of the sinner, and died in his stead and for his deliverance. That such was the doctrine of the Hebrews is proved by such authors as Outram, in his work "De Sacrificiis;" by Schoettgen, "Horæ Hebrææ et Talmudicæ;" Eisenmenger, "Endecktes Judenthum," and other writers on the subject. Outram quotes from the Jewish authorities forms of confession connected with the imposition of hands on the victim. One is to the following effect: [428] "I beseech thee, O Lord, I have sinned, I have done perversely, I have rebelled, I have done (specifying the offence); but now I repent, and let this victim be my expiation." The design of the imposition of hands was to signify, say these authorities, the removal of sin from the offender to the animal.
[429]

3. It is no less certain that the whole Christian world has ever regarded the sacrifices for sin to be expiatory, designed to teach the necessity of expiation and to foreshadow the method by which it was to be accomplished. Such, as has been shown, is the faith of the Latin, of the Lutheran, and of the Reformed churches, all the great historical bodies which make up the sum of professing Christians. That this world-wide belief in the necessity of expiation even among the heathen; this uniform conviction of the Hebrews that the sacrifices, which they were commanded to offer for sin, were expiatory; this concurrent judgment of the Christian Church in all ages and places are, after all, mere error and delusion; that such is not the teaching either of the natural conscience, or of the Hebrew Scriptures, or of Christ and his Apostles, is absolutely incredible. The attempt to overthrow a conviction thus general and permanent, is chimerical.

4. But these arguments from general conviction and assent, although perfectly valid in such cases as the present, are not those on which the faith of Christians rests. They find the doctrine of expiatory sacrifices clearly taught in Scripture; they see that the sin offerings under the Old Testament were expiations.

The Old Testament Sacrifices Expiatory.

This is plain from the clear meaning of the language used in reference to them. They are called sin offerings; trespass offerings, i.e., offerings made by sinners on account of sin. They are said to bear the sins of the offender; to make expiation for sin, i.e., to cover it from the sight of God's justice; they are declared to be intended to secure forgiveness, not through repentance or reformation, these are presupposed before the offering is brought, but by shedding of blood, by giving soul for soul, life for life. The reason assigned in Leviticus xvii. 11, why blood should not be used for food, was that it was set apart to make expiation for sin. The Hebrew is lkpr tslnphstykm, which the Septuagint renders exilaskesthai peri ton psuchon humon; and the Vulgate, "Ut super altare in eo expietis pro animabus vestris." The elder Michaelis expresses clearly the meaning of the passage and the design of the prohibition, when he says (On Leviticus xvii. 10), "Ne sanguis res sanctissima, ad expiationem immundorum a Deo ordinata, communi usu profanaretur." The last clause of the verse, which in our version is rendered, "For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul," is more literally and correctly rendered, "For blood by (its) soul or life makes atonement;" or, as Bähr and Fairbairn translate it, "The blood atones through the soul." The latter writer correctly remarks, [430] "This is the only sense of the passage that can be grammatically justified; for the preposition v after the verb to atone (kphr) invariably denotes that by which the atonement is made; while as invariably the person or object for which is denoted by l or l." -- Aben Ezra, quoted by Bähr, had briefly indicated the right interpretation. "Sanguis anima, quæ sibi inest, expiat." It seems impossible that this and similar express declarations of the Old Testament, that sacrifices for sins were expiations, can be reconciled with the modern speculation that they were symbolical expressions of devotion to God, or means of effecting a reformation of the offender, who because of that reformation was restored to God's favour.

The argument, therefore, is that the Scriptures expressly declare that these sacrifices were made for the expiation of sin. This idea is expressed by the word kpr, to cover, to hide from view, to blot out, to expiate. Hence the substantive kphr means that which delivers from punishment or evi. It is the common word for an atonement, but it also is used for a ransom, because it is rendered to secure deliverance. Thus the half shekel required to be paid by every male Israelite as a ransom for his soul was called a kphr (in Greek, lutron, or lutra). See Exodus xxx. 12-16: "When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel, . . . . then shall they give every man a ransom (kphr) for his soul unto the Lord, . . . . half a shekel . . . . the rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than half a shekel, when they give an offering to the Lord, to make an atonement (lkpr, Gr. exilasasthai) for your souls." Here it is impossible to mistake the meaning. The half shekel was a ransom, something paid to secure deliverance from evil. It was not a symbol of devotion, or an expression of penitence, but a payment of a stipulated ransom. That the half shekel bore no proportion to the value of a man's life, or the blood of a victim to the value of the soul, does not alter the case. The idea is the same. The truth taught is that satisfaction must be made if sinners are to be saved. The constantly recurring expressions, "to make atonement for sin;" "to make atonement on the horns of the altar;" "to make atonement for the sins of the people," etc., which are correct renderings of the Hebrew phrases which mean "to make expiation," as understood from the beginning, cannot be reconciled with any other theory of sacrifices than that of vicarious satisfaction. In Numbers xxxv. 31, it is said, "Ye shall take no satisfaction (kphr, lutra, pretium), for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death; but he shall be surely put to death . . . . the land cannot be cleansed (ykpr; Septuagint, exilasthesetai; Vulgate, nec aliter expiari potest) of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it." Here again there can be no mistake. To cover sin, kpr, is to expiate it by a penal satisfaction; that expiation is expressed, as we have seen, by kkr, which literally magnifies that which covers, and, in such connections, that which covers sin so that it no longer demands punishment. When, therefore, a sacrifice is said to cover sin it must mean that it expiates it, hides it from the eyes of justice by a satisfaction. A kphr is a satisfaction. This satisfaction must be made either by the offender or by some one in his stead. In the case of murder, if the perpetrator could not be discovered, a victim was to be slain in his stead, and thus satisfaction was to be made. The law in reference to this case makes the nature and design of sin offerings perfectly plain. The elders of the nearest city were commanded to take a heifer which had net borne the yoke, and wash their hands over it in attestation of their innocence of the blood of the murdered man; the priests being present. The heifer was to be slain, and thus expiation made for the offence. The words are, vnkpr lhm hdm; Greek, kai exilasthesetai autois to haima; Latin, "Et auferetur ab eis reatus sanguinis." The removal of guilt by a vicarious death is, therefore, the Scriptural idea of a sin offering. It would, however, require a volume to present a tithe of the evidence furnished, by the phraseology of the Old Testament, that the sin offerings, were regarded as expiations for sin; not designed proximately for the reformation of the offender, but to secure the remission of the penalty due to his transgression. The constantly recurring formula is, Let him offer the sacrifice for "sin, and it shall be forgiven him."

The ceremonies attending the offering of sacrifices for sin show that they were understood to be expiatory. (1) The victims were selected from the class of clean animals appropriated for the support of the life of man. They were to be free from all blemish. This physical perfection was typical of the freedom from all sin of Him who was to be the substitute for sinners. (2.) The offender was required himself to bring the victim to the altar. The service involved an acknowledgment on the part of the offerer of his just exposure to punishment for his sin. (3.) The hands of the offender were to be laid on the head of the victim, to express the ideas of substitution and of transfer of guilt. The sin of the offerer was laid upon the head of the victim. (4.) The blood of the victim, slain by the priest, was received by him as the minister of God, sprinkled on the altar, or, on the great day of atonement, carried into the Most Holy place where the symbol of God's presence was, and sprinkled on the top of the ark of the covenant; showing that the service terminated on God; that it was designed to appease his wrath (according to Scriptural phraseology), to satisfy his justice, and to open the way for the free forgiveness of sin. The significance assigned to these ceremonial acts is that which their nature demands; which the Scriptures themselves assign to them; and which they must have either to account for the effects which the sin offering produced, or to make out the correspondence between the type and the antitype which the New Testament declares was intended. These symbolical acts admit of no other explanation without doing violence to the text, and forcing on antiquity the ideas of modern times, which is to substitute our speculations for the authoritative teachings of the Scriptures.

The imposition of the hands of the offender upon the head of the victim was essential to this service. The general import of the imposition of hands was that of communication. Hence this ceremony was practiced on various occasions: (1.) In appointing to office, to signify the transfer of authority. (2.) In imparting any spiritual gift or blessing. (3.) In substituting one for another, and transferring the responsibility of one to another. This was the import of the imposition of hands upon the head of the victim. It was substituted in the place of the offerer, and the guilt of the one was symbolically transferred from the one to the other. Hence the victim was said to bear the sins of the people; their sins were said to be laid upon it. In the solemn services of the great day of atonement, the import of this rite is rendered especially clear It was commanded that two goats should be selected, one for a sin-offering and the other for a scape-goat. The two constituted one sacrifice, as it was impossible that one could signify all that was intended to be taught. Of the scape-goat it is said, "Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, . . . . and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited." This renders it plain that the design of the imposition of hands was to signify the transfer of the guilt of the offender to the victim. The nature of these offerings is still further evident from the fact that the victim was said "to bear the sin" of the offender. For example, in Isaiah liii. that the servant of the Lord made "his soul an offering for sin," is explained by saying that "He bare the sin of many;" that "the chastisement of our peace was upon him;" and that "the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." These and similar expressions do not admit of being understood of the removal of sin by reformation or spiritual renovation. They have a fixed and definite meaning throughout the Scriptures. To bear sin is to bear the guilt and punishment of sin. It may be admitted that the Hebrew word ns' may mean to remove, or bear away, as in 1 Samuel xvii. 34 and Judges xvi. 31, although even in these cases the ordinary sense is admissible. The question, however, is not what a word may mean, but what it does mean in a given formula and connection. The word signifies to raise, or lift up; to lift up the eyes, the hand, the voice, the head, the heart. Then it means to lift up in the sense of bearing, as a tree bears its fruit; or in the sense of enduring, as sorrow, suffering; or, of bearing as a burden, and especially the burden of guilt or punishment. And finally it may have the necessary meaning of bearing away, or of removing. If this should be insisted upon in those cases where sin is spoken of, then it remains to be asked what is the Scriptural sense of removing sin, or bearing sin away. That formula means two things; first, to remove the guilt of sin by expiation, and secondly, to remove its defilement and power by spiritual renovation. One or the other of these ideas is expressed by all the corresponding terms used in the Bible; kathairein, to purify, or katharismon poiein; hagiazein, to cleanse; and others, as to wash, to blot out, etc. All these terms are used to express either sacrificial purification by blood, or spiritual purification by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Which, in any particular case, is intended, is determined by the context. Therefore, even if the words ns'tsyv; be rendered to remove iniquity or sin, the question would still be, Does it mean the removal of guilt by expiation; or the removal of pollution by moral renovation? In point of fact the words in question always refer to bearing the punishment and thus removing the guilt of sin, and never to the removal of moral pollution. This is plain, (1.) Because ns' is interchanged with svl which never means to remove, but only to sustain, or bear as a burden. (2.) Because usage determines the meaning of the phrase and is uniform. In Numbers xiv. 34, it is said, "Ye shall bear your iniquities forty years." Leviticus v. 1, "If a soul . . . . hear the voice of swearing, and is a witness; . . . . if he do not utter it, he shall bear his iniquity." Leviticus v. 17, "He is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity." Leviticus vii. 18, "The soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity." Leviticus xvii. 16, "If he wash not . . . . then he shall bear his iniquity." Leviticus xix. 8; xx. 17; xxii. 9, "They shall keep my ordinance, lest they bear sin for it." Numbers ix. 13, If a man forbear to keep the passover, he shall be cut off from the people, "he shall bear his sin." See also Numbers xviii. 22, 32. Ezekiel iv. 4, 5, it is said to the prophet enduring penance, "So shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel." "Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days." "Lie thou upon thy left side . . . . according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity." Ezekiel xviii. 20, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son." In all these, and in other like cases, it is simply impossible that "bearing sin" should mean the removal of sin by moral renovation. The expression occurs some forty times in the Bible, and always in the sense of bearing the guilt or punishment of sin. It is hardly an exception to this remark that there are a few cases in which ns' cht't means to pardon; as in Exodus x. 17; xxxii. 32; xxxiv. 7; Psalms xxxii. 5 (and lxxxv. 3); for pardon is not the removal of sin morally, but the lifting up, or removal of its guilt. This being the fact, it determines the nature of the sin offerings under the law. The victim bore the sin of the offerer, and died in his stead. An expiation was thereby effected by the suffering of a vicarious punishment. This also determines the nature of the work of Christ. If He was an offering for sin, if He saves us from the penalty of the law of God, in the same way in which the sin offering saved the Israelite from the penalty of the law of Moses, then He bore the guilt of our sins and endured the penalty in our stead. We may not approve of this method of salvation. The idea of the innocent bearing the sins of the guilty and being punished in his stead, may not be agreeable to our feelings or to our modes of thinking, but it can hardly be denied that such is the representation and doctrine of the Scriptures. Our only alternative is to accept that doctrine, or reject the authority of Scripture directly or indirectly. That is, either to deny their divine origin, or to explain away their explicit statements. In either case their plain meaning remains untouched. The German rationalists in general take the former of these two courses. They admit that the Bible teaches the doctrine of vicarious punishment, but they deny the truth of the doctrine because they deny the Bible to be the Word of God.

The passages in which Christ is represented as a sacrifice for sin, are too numerous to be here specially considered. The New Testament, and particularly the Epistle to the Hebrews, as before remarked, declares and teaches, that the priesthood of the old economy was a type of the priesthood of Christ; that the sacrifices of that dispensation were types of his sacrifice; that as the blood of bulls and of goats purified the flesh, so the blood of Christ cleanses the soul from guilt; and that as they were expiations effected by vicarious punishment, in their sphere, so was the sacrifice of Christ in the infinitely higher sphere to which his work belongs. Such being the relation between the Old Economy and the New, the whole sacrificial service of the Mosaic institutions, becomes to the Christian an extended and irresistible proof and exhibition of the work of Christ as an expiation for the sins of the world, and a satisfaction to the justice of God.

The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah.

It is not however only in the typical services of the old economy that this great doctrine was set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah this doctrine is presented with a clearness and copiousness which have extorted assent from the most unwilling minds. The prophet in that chapter not only foretells that the Messiah was to be a man of sorrows; not only that He was to suffer the greatest indignities and be put to a violent death; not only that these sufferings were endured for the benefit of others; but that they were truly vicarious, i.e., that He suffered, in our stead, the penalty which we had incurred, in order to our deliverance. This is done not only in those forms of expression which most naturally admit of this interpretation, but in others which can, consistently with usage and the analogy of Scripture, be understood in no other way. To the former class belong such expressions as the following, "He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." Our griefs and our sorrows are the griefs and sorrows which we deserved. These Christ bore in the sense of enduring, for He carried them as a burden. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." "With his stripes we are healed." "For the transgression of my people was he stricken." These phrases might be used of the sufferings of a patriot for his country, of a philanthropist for his fellow-men, or of a friend for those dear to him. That they however are most naturally understood of vicarious suffering, can hardly be denied, And that they were intended by the Spirit of God to be so understood, is plain by their being intermingled with expressions which admit of no other interpretation. To this class belong the following clauses: First, "the chastisement (or punishment) of our peace was upon him." That is, the punishment by which our peace was secured. Of this clause Delitzsch, one of the very first of living Hebraists, says, [431] "Der Begriff der poena vicaria kann hebräisch gar nicht schärfer ausgedrückt werden als in jenen Worten." "The idea of vicarious punishment cannot be more precisely expressed in Hebrew than by those words." Secondly, it is said, "The Lord hath laid on him (caused to fall, or, cast on him) the iniquity of us all." We have already seen that this is the language used in the Old Testament to express the transfer of the guilt of the offender to the victim slain in his stead. They have a definite Scriptural meaning, which cannot be denied in this case without doing open violence to admitted rules of interpretation. "If," says Dr. J. Addison Alexander,
[432] "vicarious suffering can be described in words, it is so described in these two verses;" i.e., the verses in which this clause occurs. Thirdly, it is said of the Messiah that He made, or was to make "his soul an offering for sin." The Hebrew word is 'sm, guilt, debt; and then an offering which bears guilt and expiates it. It is the common word in the Levitical law for "trespass offering." Michaelis in his marginal annotations, remarks on this word (Isaiah liii. 10), "Delictum significat, ut notet etiam sacrificium, cui delictum imputatum est. Vide passim, inprimis Lev. iv. 3; v. 6, 7, 16; vii. 1, etc., etc. . . . . Recte etiam Raschi ad h. 1. Ascham,' inquit, significat satisfactionem, seu lytron, quod quis alteri exsolvit, in quem deliquit, Gallice, Amande, i.e. mulcta.'" The literal meaning of the words, therefore, is, His soul was made a satisfaction for sin. Fourthly, it is said, "My righteous servant shall justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities." "He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many." It has already been shown that to "bear sin" never means to sanctify, to effect a moral change by removing the power and pollution of sin, but uniformly, in the sacrificial language of the Bible, to bear the guilt or penalty for sin.

Passages of the Hew Testament in which the Work of Christ is set forth as Sacrifice.

In Romans iii. 25, it is said, He was set forth as "a propitiation through faith in his blood." The word here used is hilasterion, the neuter form of the adjective hilasterios ("propitiatory, expiatory") used substantively. It therefore means, as Robinson and other lexicographers define it, and as the great body of interpreters explain it, "an expiatory sacrifice." The meaning of the word is determined by the context and confirmed by parallel passages. The design of setting forth Christ as a hilasterion was precisely that which an expiatory sacrifice was intended to accomplish, namely, to satisfy justice, that God might be just in the forgiveness of sin. And the dikaiosune of God manifested in the sacrifice of Christ, was not his benevolence, but that form of justice which demands the punishment of sin. "It is a fundamental idea of Scripture," says Delitzsch, "that sin is expiated (ykpr) by punishment, as murder by the death of the murderer." [433] Again, "Where there is shedding of blood and of life, there is violent death, and where a violent death is (judicially) inflicted, there there is manifestation of vindicatory justice, der strafenden Gerechtigkeit."
[434] In like manner, in Romans viii. 3, the Apostle says, God sent his Son as a sin offering (peri hamartias, which in Hellenistic Greek means an offering for sin, Hebrews x. 6), and thereby condemned sin in the flesh, that is, in the flesh or person of Christ. And thus it is that we are justified, or the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us. The same Apostle, in Galatians i. 4, says that Christ "gave himself for our sins." That is, He gave Himself unto death as a sacrifice for our sins that He might effect our redemption. Such is the plain meaning of this passage, if understood according to the established usage of the Scripture. "The idea of satisfaction," says Meyer, on this passage, "lies not in the force of the preposition [huper] but in the nature of the transaction, in dem ganzen Sachverhältniss." In Ephesians v. 2, it is said Christ gave "himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." His offering was a sacrifice (thusian). His blood was shed as an expiation. The question, says Meyer, whether Christ is here represented as a sin offering, "is decided not so much by huper hemon as by the constant New Testament, and specially the Pauline, conception of the death of Christ as a hilasterion." Hebrews ix. 14, is especially important and decisive. The Apostle, in the context, contrasts the sacrifices of the law with that of Christ. If the former, consisting of the blood of irrational animals, nothing but the principle of animal life, could avail to effect external or ceremonial purification, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who was possessed of an eternal spirit, or divine nature, and offered Himself without spot unto God, avail to the purification of the conscience, i.e., effect the real expiation of sin. The purification spoken of in both members of this comparison, is purification from guilt, and not spiritual renovation. The Old Testament sacrifices were expiatory and not reformatory, and so was the sacrifice of Christ. The certain result and ultimate design in both cases was reconciliation to the favour and fellowship of God; but the necessary preliminary condition of such reconciliation was the expiation of guilt. Again, toward the end of the same chapter, the Apostle says that Christ was not called upon to "offer himself often, . . . for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." The offering which He made was Himself. Its design and effect were to put away sin; i.e., to put away sin as was done by expiatory sacrifices. This is confirmed by what follows. Christ came the first time "to bear the sins of many;" He is to come the second time "without sin," without that burden which, on his first advent, He had voluntarily assumed. He was then burdened with our sins in the sense in which the ancient sacrifices bore the sins of the people. He bore their guilt; that is, he assumed the responsibility of making satisfaction for them to the justice of God. When He comes the second time, it will not be as a sin offering, but to consummate the salvation of his people. The parallel passage to this is found in 2 Corinthians v. 21: "He hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin," The design of the Apostle is to explain how it is that God is reconciled unto the world, not imputing unto men their trespasses. He is free thus to pardon and treat as righteous those who in themselves are unrighteous, because for us and in our stead He who was without sin was treated as a sinner. The sense in which Christ was treated as a sinner is, says Meyer, in loco "in dem er nämlich die Todesstrafe erlitt, in that he suffered the punishment of death." Here again the idea of the poena vicaria is clearly expressed.

In Hebrews x. 10, we are said to be "sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." The word hagiazein, here rendered sanctify, means to cleanse. Sin is, in Scripture, always regarded as a defilement in both its aspects of guilt and moral turpitude. As guilt, it is cleansed by blood, by sacrificial expiation, as defilement, by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Which kind of purification is intended is determined in each case by the context. If the purification is effected by sacrifice, by the blood or death of Christ, then the removal of guilt is intended. Hence, all the passages in which we are said to be saved, or reconciled unto God, or purified, or sanctified by the blood or death of Christ, must be regarded as so many assertions that He was an expiatory sacrifice for sin. In this passage the meaning of the Apostle cannot be mistaken. He is again contrasting the sacrifices of the Old Testament with that of Christ. They were ineffectual, the latter was of sovereign efficacy. "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. Lo, I come to do thy will." By which will, i.e., by the execution of this purpose of sending his incarnate Son, we are cleansed by the one offering up of his body. The ancient sacrifices, he says (verse 11), had to be constantly repeated. "But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God." "For by one offering he hath perfected forever (teteleioken, brought to the end contemplated by a sacrifice) them that are sanctified," i.e., cleansed from guilt. That sacrificial cleansing is here intended is plain, for the effect of it is pardon. "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." And in verse 26, we are taught that for those who reject the sacrifice of Christ there remains "no more sacrifice for sins; but a certain fearful looking for of judgment." It was pardon, therefore, founded upon the expiation of sin, that was secured by the sacrifice of Christ. And this is declared to be the only possible means by which our guilt can be removed, or the justice of God satisfied. It is to be always borne in mind, however, that the end of expiation is reconciliation with God, and that reconciliation with God involves or secures conformity to his image and intimate fellowship with Him. The ultimate design of the work of Christ is, therefore, declared to be to "bring us to God;" to "purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works." The removal of guilt by expiation is, however, constantly set forth as the absolutely essential preliminary to this inward subjective reconciliation with God. This is a necessity, as the Scriptures teach, arising out of the nature of God as a holy and just Being.

What Paul teaches so abundantly of the sacrificial death of Christ is taught by the Apostle John (First Epistle, ii. 2). Jesus Christ "is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." The word here used is hilasmos, propitiation, expiation; from "hilaskomai, to reconcile one's self to any one by expiation, to appease, to propitiate." And in chapter iv. 10, it is said, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." The inconsistency between love, and expiation or satisfaction for sin, which modern writers so much insist upon, was not perceived by men who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. In chapter i. 7, this same Apostle says, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." To cleanse, katharizein, kathairein, katharismon poiein, hagiazein, louein (Revelation i. 5) are established sacrificial terms to express the removal of the guilt of sin by expiation.

The above are only a part of the passages in which our blessed Lord is, in the New Testament, set forth as a sin offering, in the Scriptural sense of that term. What is thus taught is taught by other forms of expression which imply the expiatory character of his death, or his priestly function of making satisfaction for sin. Thus in Hebrews ix. 28, it is said, "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." This is a quotation from Isaiah liii. 12, where the same word is used in the Septuagint that the Apostle here employs. The meaning of the Scriptural phrase "to bear sin" has already been sufficiently discussed. Robinson, who will not be suspected of theological bias, defines, in his "Greek Lexicon," the word in question (anaphero) in the formula anenenkein tas hamartias hemon, "to bear up our sins, to take upon oneself and bear our sins, i.e., to bear the penalty of sin, to make expiation for sin." This is the sense in which the sacrifices of old were said to bear the sins of the people, and in which it was said that one man, in God's dealings with his theocratic people, should not bear the sins of another. Delitzsch, on Hebrews ix. 28, says, [435] "This assumption of the sufferings which the sins of men had caused, into fellowship with whom He had entered, this bearing as a substitute the punishment of sins not his own, this expiatory suffering for the sins of others, is precisely what anenenkein amartias pollon in this passage means, and is the sense intended in the Italic and Vulgate versions; ad multorum exhaurienda peccata.'" He quotes with approbation the comment of Seb. Schmidt: "Quia mors in hominibus poena est, Christus oblatus est moriendo, ut morte sua portaret omnium hominum peccata h. e. omnes peccatorum poenas exæquaret satisfaciendo." [436]

Nearly the same language is used by the Apostle Peter (First Epistle, ii. 24). "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree." Whether anaphero here means sufferre, to bear or endure, or sursum ferre, to carry up, the sense is the same. Only the figure is altered. Christ bore the guilt of our sins. This is the burden which He sustained; or which He carried up with Him when He ascended the cross. In the parallel passage in Isaiah liii. 11, evidently in the Apostle's mind, the words are in the Septuagint, tas hamartias auton autos anoisei, where in Hebrew ysbl is used, which appears decisive in favour of the rendering in our version, He "bare our sins," as svl always means to bear as a burden. As to the doctrinal meaning of this passage commentators of almost all classes agree. Wahl, in his "Lexicon," on the word anaphero referring to this place, makes it mean "peccatorum poenam et reatum ultro in se suscipit." Bretschneider (Rationalist) thus defines the word, "attollo et mihi impono, i.e., impositum mihi porto, tropice de poenis: poenam susceptam luo; Heb. ix. 28. . . . . Vide etiam Num. xiv. 33, anoisousi ten porneian humon, poena vestræ perfidiæ illis persolvenda est." Wegscheider, the chief of the systematic theologians among the Rationalists, [437] referring to this passage, 1 Peter ii. 24, says that almost all the New Testament writers regard the death of Christ "tanquam [mortem] expiatoriam, eandemque vicariam, velut poenam peccatorum hominum omnium ab ipso susceptam, etc." Calvin does not go beyond these Rationalists; his comment is, "Sicuti sub lege peccator, ut reatu solveretur, victimam substituebat suo loco: ita Christus maledictionem peccatis nostris debitam in se suscepit, ut ea coram Deo expiaret. Hoc beneficium sophistæ in suis scholis, quantum possunt, obscurant."

Another form of expression used by the sacred writers clearly teaches the expiatory character of Christ's work. Under the old economy, the great function of the high priest was to make expiation for sin, and thereby restore the people to the favour of God, and secure for them the blessings of the covenant under which they lived. All this was typical of Christ and of his work. He came to save his people from their sins, to restore them to the favour of God, and to secure for them the enjoyment of the blessings of the new and better covenant of which He is the mediator. He, therefore, assumed our nature in order that He might die, and by death effect our reconciliation with God. For as He did not undertake the redemption of angels, but the redemption of man, it was the nature of man that He assumed. He was made in all things like unto his brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, eis to hilaskesthai tas hamartias tou laou, to make expiation for the sins of the people. The word hilaskomai (or exilaskomai) is the technical word in Hellenistic Greek to express the idea of expiation. In common Greek, the word means propitium reddere, and in the passive form it is used in this sense in the Septuagint as in Psalm lxxix. 9. But in the middle and deponent form followed by the word sins in the accusative, it always expresses the act by which that in sin is removed which hinders God from being propitious. This is the precise idea of expiation. Hence the word is so constantly rendered in the Vulgate by expiare, and is in Greek the rendering of kpr. Hence Christ as He who renders God propitious to us is called the hilasmos peri ton hamartion hemon in 1 John ii. 2, and hilasterion in Romans iii. 25.

Still another form in which the doctrine of expiation is taught is found in those passages which refer our reconciliation to God to the death of Christ. The Greek word used to express this idea in Romans v. 10; 2 Corinthians v. 18, 19, 20, is katallassein, to exchange, or to change the relation of one person to another, from enmity to friendship. In Ephesians ii. 16; Colossians i. 20, 21, the word used is apokatallattein, only an intensive form, to reconcile fully. When two parties are at enmity a reconciliation may be effected by a change in either or in both. When, therefore, it is said that we are reconciled to God, it only means that peace is restored between Him and us. Whether this is effected by our enmity towards Him being removed, or by his justice in regard to us being satisfied, or whether both ideas are in any case included, depends on the context where the word occurs, and on the analogy of Scripture. In the chief passage, Romans v. 10, the obvious meaning is that the reconciliation is effected by God's justice being satisfied, so that He can be favourable to us in consistency with his own nature. This is plain, --

1. Because the means by which the reconciliation is effected is "the death of his Son." The design of sacrificial death is expiation. It would be to do violence to all Scriptural usage to make the proximate design and effect of a sacrifice the removal of the sinner's enmity to God.

2. "Being reconciled by the death of his Son," in verse 10, is parallel to the clause "being justified by his blood" in verse 9. The one is exchanged for the other, as different forms of expressing the same idea. But justification is not sanctification. It does not express a subjective change in the sinner. And, therefore, the reconciliation here spoken of cannot express any such change.

3. Those reconciled are declared to be echthroi, in the passive sense of the word, "those who are the objects of God's just displeasure." They are guilty. Justice demands their punishment. The death of Christ, as satisfying justice, reconciles God to us; effects peace, so that we can be received into favour.

4. What is here taught is explained by all those passages which teach the method by which the reconciliation of God and man is effected, namely, by the expiation of sin. Meyer, on this passage, says, "katellagemen and katallagentes must of necessity be understood passively: ausgesöhnt mit Gott, atoned for in the sight of God, so that he no longer is hostile to us; he has said aside his anger, and we are made partakers of his grace and favour." The same doctrine is taught in Ephesians ii. 16. "That he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross." Here again the reconciliation of God with man is effected by the cross or death of Christ, which, removing the necessity for the punishment of sinners, renders it possible for God to manifest towards them his love. The change is not in man, but, humanly speaking, in God; a change from the purpose to punish to a purpose to pardon and save. There is, so to speak, a reconciliation of God's justice and of his love effected by Christ's bearing the penalty in our stead. In 2 Corinthians v. 18, it is said, God "hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation." This does not mean that God changed our heart, and made us love Him, and appointed the Apostle to announce that fact. It can only mean that through Christ, through what He did and suffered for us, peace is restored between God and man, who is able and willing to be gracious. This is the gospel which Paul was commissioned to announce, namely, as follows in the next verse, God is bringing about peace; He was in Christ effecting this peace, and now is ready to forgive sin, i.e., not to impute unto men their trespasses; and therefore the Apostle urges his readers to embrace this offer of mercy, to be reconciled unto God; i.e., to accept his overture of reconciliation. For it has a sure foundation. It rests on the substitution and vicarious death of Christ. He was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. It is impossible, therefore, that the reconciliation of which the Apostles speak as effected by the cross or death of Christ, should, in its primary and main aspect, be a subjective change in us from enmity to the love of God. It is such a reconciliation as makes God our friend; a reconciliation which enables Him to pardon and save sinners, and which they are called upon most gratefully to embrace.

It is clearly, therefore, the doctrine of the New Testament, that Jesus Christ our Lord saves his people by acting for them the part of a priest. For this office He had all the requisite qualifications; He was thereto duly appointed, and He performed all its functions. He was an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of men. He is not only repeatedly declared to be a sin offering in the Old Testament sense of that term; but He is said to have borne our sins; to have made expiation for the sins of the people; and to have reconciled us, who were the just objects of the divine wrath, to God by his death, by his cross, by the sacrifice of Himself. These representations are so frequent; they are so formally stated, so illustrated, and so applied, as to render them characteristic. They constitute the essential element of the Scriptural doctrine concerning the method of salvation.

Christ our Redeemer.

There is a third class of passages equally numerous and equally important. Christ is not only set forth as a Priest and as a sacrifice, but also as a Redeemer, and his work as a Redemption. Redemption is deliverance from evil by the payment of a ransom. This idea is expressed by the words apolutrosis, from lutron, and the verbs lutros, agorazo (to purchase), and exagorazo (to buy from, or deliver out of the possession or power of any one by purchase). The price or ransom paid for our redemption is always said to be Christ himself, his blood, his death. As the evils consequent on our apostasy from God are manifold, Christ's work as a Redeemer is presented in manifold relations in the word of God.

Redemption from the Penalty of the Law.

1. The first and most obvious consequence of sin, is subjection to the penalty of the law. The wages of sin is death. Every sin of necessity subjects the sinner to the wrath and curse of God. The first step, therefore, in the salvation of sinners, is their redemption from that curse. Until this is done they are of necessity separated from God. But alienation from Him of necessity involves both misery and subjection to the power of sin. So long as men are under the curse, they are cut off from the only source of holiness and life. Such is the doctrine taught throughout the Bible, and elaborately in Romans, chapters vi. and vii. In effecting the salvation of his people, Christ "redeemed them from the curse of the law," not by a mere act of sovereignty, or power; not by moral influence restoring them to virtue, but by being "made a curse for them." No language can be plainer than this. The curse is the penalty of the law. We were subject to that penalty. Christ has redeemed us from that subjection by being made a curse for us. (Galatians iii. 13.) That the infinitely exalted and holy Son of God should be "accursed" (epikataratos), is so awful an idea, that the Apostle justifies the use of such language by quoting the declaration of Scripture, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." Suffering, and especially the suffering of death, judicially inflicted on account of sin, is penal. Those who thus suffer bear the curse or penalty of the law. The sufferings of Christ, and especially his death upon the cross, were neither calamities, nor chastisements designed for his own good, nor symbolical or didactic exhibitions, designed to illustrate and enforce truth, and exert a moral influence on others; these are all subordinate and collateral ends. Nor were they the mere natural consequences of his becoming a man and subjecting Himself to the common lot of humanity. They were divine inflictions. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He was smitten of God and afflicted. These sufferings were declared to be on account of sin, not his own, but ours. He bore our sins. The chastisement of our peace was on Him. And they were designed as an expiation, or for the satisfaction of justice. They had, therefore, all the elements of punishment, and consequently it was in a strict and proper sense that He was made a curse for us. All this is included in what the Apostle teaches in this passage (Gal. iii. 13), and its immediate context.

Redemption from the Law.

2. Nearly allied to this mode of representation are those passages in which Christ is said to have delivered us from the law. Redemption from bondage to the law includes not only deliverance from its penalty, but also from the obligation to satisfy its demands. This is the fundamental idea of Paul's doctrine of justification. The law demands, and from the nature of God, must demand perfect obedience. It says, Do this and live; and, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." No man since the fall is able to fulfil these demands, yet He must fulfil them or perish. The only possible method, according to the Scriptures, by which men can be saved, is that they should be delivered from this obligation of perfect obedience. This, the Apostle teaches, has been effected by Christ. He was "made under the law to redeem them that were under the law." (Gal. iv. 4, 5.) Therefore, in Romans vi. 14, he says to believers, "Ye are not under the law, but under grace." And this redemption from the law in Romans vii. 4, is said to be "by the body of Christ." Hence we are justified not by our own obedience, but "by the obedience" of Christ. (Rom. v. 18, 19.) Redemption in this case is not mere deliverance, but a true redemption, i. e., a deliverance effected by satisfying all the just claims which are against us. The Apostle says, in Galatians iv. 5, that we are thus redeemed from the law, in order "that we might receive the adoption of sons"; that is, be introduced into the state and relation of sons to God. Subjection to the law, in our case, was a state of bondage. Those under the law are, therefore, called slaves, douloi. From this state of bondage they are redeemed, and introduced into the liberty of the sons of God. This redemption includes freedom from a slavish spirit, which is supplanted by a spirit of adoption, filling the heart with reverence, love, and confidence in God as our reconciled Father.

Redemption from the Power of Sin.

3. As deliverance from the curse of the law secures restoration to the favour of God, and as the love of God is the life of the soul, and restores us to his image, therefore in redeeming us from the curse of the law, Christ redeems us also from the power of sin. "Whosoever committeth sin," saith our Lord, "is the servant (the slave) of sin." This is a bondage from which no man can deliver himself. To effect this deliverance was the great object of the mission of Christ. He gave Himself that He might purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. He died, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us unto God. He loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might present it unto Himself a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. This deliverance from sin is a true redemption. A deliverance effected by a ransom, or satisfaction to justice, was the necessary condition of restoration to the favour of God; and restoration to his favour was the necessary condition of holiness. Therefore, it is said, Galatians i. 8, Christ "gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us (exeletai) from this present evil world." Titus ii. 14, "Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity." 1 Peter i. 18, 19, "Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." Deliverance by sacrifice was deliverance by ransom. Therefore, here as elsewhere, the two modes of statement are combined. Thus our Lord in Matthew xx. 28, Mark x. 45, says, "The Son of Man came . . . . to give his life a ransom for many (anti, not merely huper, pollon)." The idea of substitution cannot be more definitely expressed. In these passages our deliverance is said to be effected by a ransom. In Matthew xxvi. 28, our Lord says that his blood was "shed for many for the remission of sins." Here his death is presented in the light of a sacrifice. The two modes of deliverance are therefore identical. A ransom was a satisfaction to justice, and a sacrifice is a satisfaction to justice.

Redemption from the Power of Satan.

4. The Scriptures teach that Christ redeems us from the power of Satan. Satan is said to be the prince and god of this world. His kingdom is the kingdom of darkness, in which all men, since Adam, are born, and in which they remain, until translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son. They are his subjects "taken captive by him at his will." (2 Tim. ii. 26.) The first promise was that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil; to cast him down from his place of usurped power, to deliver those who are subject to his dominion. (2 Cor. iv. 4; Col. ii. 16.) The fact of this redemption of his people from the power of Satan, and the mode of its accomplishment, are clearly stated in Hebrews ii. 15. The eternal Son of God, who in the first chapter of that epistle, is proved to be God, the object of the worship of angels, the creator of heaven and earth, eternal and immutable, in verse 14 of the second chapter, is said to have become man, in order "that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." It is here taught, (1.) That men are in a state of bondage through fear of the wrath of God on account of sin. (2.) That in this state they are in subjection to Satan who has the power of death over them; i.e., the ability and opportunity of inflicting on them the sufferings due to them as sinners. (3.) That from this state of bondage and of subjection to the power of Satan, they are delivered by the death of Christ. His death, by satisfying the justice of God, frees them from the penalty of the law; and freedom from the curse of the law involves freedom from the power of Satan to inflict its penalty. "The strength of sin is the law." (1 Cor. xv. 56.) What satisfies the law deprives sin of the power to subject us to the wrath of God. And thus redemption from the law, is redemption from the curse, and consequently redemption from the power of Satan. This Scriptural representation took such hold of the imagination of many of the early fathers, that they dwelt upon it, almost to the exclusion of other and more important aspects of the work of Christ. They dallied with it and wrought it out into many fanciful theories. These theories have passed away; the Scriptural truth which underlay them, remains. Christ is our Redeemer from the power of Satan, as well as from the curse of the law, and from the dominion of sin. And if a Redeemer, the deliverance which He effected was by means of a ransom. Hence He is often said to have purchased his people. They are his because He bought them. "Know ye not that . . . . ye are not your own?" says the Apostle, "For ye are bought with a price." (1 Cor. vi. 20.) God, in Acts xx. 28, is said to have purchased the Church "with his own blood." "Ye were redeemed (delivered by purchase) . . . . with the precious blood of Christ." (1 Pet. i. 18, 19.) "Thou art worthy . . . . for thou has purchased us (hegorasas) for God by thy blood." (Rev. v. 9.)

Final Redemption from all Evil.

5. Christ redeems us not only from the curse of the law, from the law itself as a covenant of works, from the power of sin, and from the dominion of Satan, but also from all evil. This evil is the consequence of the curse of the law, and being redeemed from that we are delivered from all evil. Hence the word redemption is often used for the sum of all the benefits of Christ's work, or for the consummation of the great scheme of salvation. Thus our Lord says, Luke xxi. 28, that when the Son of Man shall appear in his glory, then his disciples may be sure that their "redemption draweth nigh." They are sealed unto the day of redemption. (Eph. i. 14.) Christ has "obtained eternal redemption." (Heb. ix. 12.) Believers are represented as waiting for their redemption. (Rom. viii. 23.)

It is therefore the plain doctrine of Scripture that, as before said, Christ saves us neither by the mere exercise of power, nor by his doctrine, nor by his example, nor by the moral influence which He exerted, nor by any subjective influence on his people, whether natural or mystical, but as a satisfaction to divine justice, as an expiation for sin and as a ransom from the curse and authority of the law, thus reconciling us to God, by making it consistent with his perfections to exercise mercy toward sinners, and then renewing them after his own image, and finally exalting them to all the dignity, excellence, and blessedness of the sons of God.

Argument from Related Doctrines.

All the doctrines of grace are intimately connected. They stand in such relation to each other, that one of necessity supposes the truth of the others. The common Church doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ, therefore, is not an isolated doctrine. It is assumed in all that the Scriptures teach of the relation between Christ and his people; of the condition on which our interest in his redemption is suspended; and of the nature of the benefits of that redemption.

1. No doctrine of the Bible, relating to the plan of salvation, is more plainly taught or more wide reaching than that which concerns the union between Christ and his people. That union in one aspect, was from eternity, we were in Him before the foundation of the world; given to Him of the Father, to redeem from the estate of sin and misery, into which it was foreseen our race would by transgression fall. It was for the accomplishment of this purpose of mercy that He assumed our nature, was born of a woman, and did and suffered all that He was called upon to do and to endure in working out our salvation. He did not, therefore, come into the world for Himself. It was not to work out a righteousness of his own to entitle Him to the exaltation and power which in our nature He now enjoys. In virtue of the Godhead of his personality, He was of necessity infinitely exalted above all creatures. He came for us. He came as a representative. He came in the same relation to his people, which Adam, in the original covenant, bore to the whole race. He came to take their place; to be their substitute, to do for them, and in their name, what they could not do for themselves. All He did, therefore, was vicarious; his obedience and his sufferings. The parallel between Adam and Christ, the two great representatives of man, the two federal heads, the one of all his natural descendants, the other of all given Him by the Father, is carried out into its details in Romans v. 12-21. It is assumed or implied, however, everywhere else in the sacred volume. What Adam did, in his federal capacity, was in law and justice regarded as done by all whom he represented. And so all that Christ did and suffered as a federal head, was in law and justice done or suffered by his people. Therefore, as we were condemned for the disobedience of Adam, so we are justified for the obedience of Christ. As in Adam all died, so in Christ are all made alive. Hence Christ's death is said to be our death, and we are said to rise with Him, to live with Him, and to be exalted, in our measure, in his exaltation. He is the head and we are the body. The acts of the head, are the acts of the whole mystical person. The ideas, therefore, of legal substitution, of vicarious obedience and punishment, of the satisfaction of justice by one for all, underlie and pervade the whole scheme of redemption. They can no more be separated from that scheme than the warp can be separated from the woof without destroying the whole texture.

2. In like manner these same truths are implied in what sinners are required to do in order to become the subjects of the redemption of Christ. It is not enough that we should receive his doctrines; or endeavour to regulate our lives by his moral precepts; or that we confide in his protection, or submit to his control as one into whose hands all power in heaven and earth has been committed. It is not enough that we should open our hearts to all the influences for good which flow from his person or his work. We must trust in Him. We must renounce our own righteousness, and confide in his for our acceptance with God. We must give up the idea that we can satisfy the demands of God's justice and law, by anything we can do, suffer, or experience, and rely exclusively on what He, as our representative, substitute, and surety, has done and suffered in our stead. This is what the gospel demands. And this, the world over, is precisely what every true believer, no matter what his theological theories may be, actually does. But this act of self-renunciation and of faith in Christ as the ground of our forgiveness and acceptance with God, supposes Him to be our substitute, who has satisfied all the demands of law and justice in our stead.

3. If we turn to the Scriptural account of the benefits which we receive from Christ, we find that this view of the nature of his work, is therein necessarily implied. We are justified through Him. He is our righteousness. We are made the righteousness of God in Him. But justification is not a subjective work. It is not sanctification. It is not a change wrought in us either naturally or supernaturally. It is not the mere executive act of a sovereign, suspending the action of the law, or granting pardon to the guilty. It is the opposite of condemnation. It is a declaration that the claims of justice are satisfied. This is the uniform meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words employed in Scripture, and of the corresponding words in all other languages, as far as those languages are cultivated to express what passes in the consciousness of men. But if God, in justifying sinners, declares that with regard to them the claims of justice are satisfied, it confessedly is not on the ground that the sinner himself has made that satisfaction, but that Christ has made it in his behalf.

The doctrine of sanctification also, as presented in the Scriptures, is founded on the substitution of Christ. Sanctification is not a work of nature, but a work of grace. It is a transformation of character effected not by moral influences, but supernaturally by the Holy Spirit; although on that account only the more rationally. The first step in the process is deliverance from the curse of the law by the body, or death of Christ. Then God being reconciled, He admits us into fellowship with Himself. But as the sinner is only imperfectly sanctified, he is still in his state and acts far from being in himself an object of the divine complacency. It is only as united to Christ and represented by Him, that he enjoys the continuance of the divine favour, which is his life, and constantly receives from Him the gift of the Holy Spirit. So that the life that the believer lives, is Christ living in him. Thus in the whole process of salvation the ideas of substitution, of representation, of Christ's being and doing for us, all that we are required to be and to do, are of necessity involved. And even to the last we are saved only in Him. It is in virtue of this union that believers are raised from the dead, admitted into heaven, and receive the crown of eternal life. It is not for what they have done, nor for what they have been made, but solely for what has been done in their stead that they are made partakers of his life, and, ultimately, of his glory.

Argument from the Religious Experience of Believers.

By the religious experience of Christians is meant those states and acts of the mind produced by "the things of the Spirit," or by the truths of God's Word as revealed and applied by the Holy Ghost. We are clearly taught in Scripture that the truth is not only objectively presented in the Word, but that it is the gracious office of the Spirit, as a teacher and guide, to lead the people of God properly to understand the truths thus outwardly revealed, and to cause them to produce their proper effect on the reason, the feelings, the conscience, and the life. What the Holy Spirit thus leads the people of God to believe must be true. No man however is authorized to appeal to his own inward experience as a test of truth for others. His experience may be, and in most cases is, determined more or less by his peculiar training, his own modes of thinking, and diverse other modifying influences. But this does not destroy the value of religious experience as a guide to the knowledge of the truth. It has an authority second only to that of the Word of God. One great source of error in theology has always been the neglect of this inward guide. Men have formed their opinions, or framed their doctrines on philosophical principles, or moral axioms, and thus have been led to adopt conclusions which contradict the inward teachings of the Spirit, and even their own religious consciousness. The only question is, How can we distinguish the human from the divine? How can we determine what in our experience is due to the teaching of the Spirit, and what to other influences? The answer to these questions is, (1.) That what is conformed to the infallible standard in the Scriptures, is genuine, and what is not thus conformed is spurious. The Bible contains not only the truths themselves, but a record of the effects produced on the mind when they are applied by the Holy Spirit. (2.) Another test is universality. What all true Christians experience must be referred to a cause common to all. It cannot be accounted for by what is peculiar to individuals or to denominations. (3.) A subordinate test, but one of great value to the individual, is to be found in the nature of the experience itself, and its effects upon the heart and life. A religious experience which makes a man self-complacent, self-righteous, proud, censorious, and persecuting, is certainly not to be referred to the Spirit of holiness and love. But if a man's experience renders him humble, meek, contrite, forgiving, and long-suffering; if it leads him to believe all things and hope all things; if it renders him spiritually and heavenly minded; if it makes it Christ for him to live; in short, if it produces the same effect on him that the truth produced on the prophets and apostles, there can be little doubt that it is due to the teaching and influence of the Holy Ghost.

It is certainly an unanswerable argument in favour of the divinity of Christ, for example, as a doctrine of the Bible, that all true Christians look up to Christ as God; that they render Him the adoration, the love, the confidence, the submission, and the devotion which are due to God alone, and which the apprehension of divine perfection only can produce. It is certainly a proof that the Scriptures teach that man is a fallen being, that he is guilty and defiled by sin, that he is utterly unable to free himself from the burden and power of sin, that he is dependent on the grace of God and the power of the Spirit, if these truths are inwrought into the experience of all true believers. In like manner, if all Christians trust in Christ for their salvation; if they look to Him as their substitute, obeying and suffering in their stead, bearing their sins, sustaining the curse of the law in their place; if they regard Him as the expiatory sacrifice to take away their guilt and satisfy the justice of God in their behalf; if they thank and bless Him for having given Himself as a ransom for their redemption from the penalty and obligation of the law as prescribing the condition of salvation, and from the dominion of Satan, from the power of sin and from all its evil consequences; then, beyond doubt, these are the truths of God, revealed by the Spirit in the word, and taught by the Spirit to all who submit to his guidance. That such is the experience of true believers in relation to the work of Christ, is plain, (1.) Because this is the form and manner in which holy men of old whose experience is recorded in the Scriptures, expressed their relation to Christ and their obligations to Him. He was to them an expiatory sacrifice; a ransom; an hilasmos or propitiation. They regarded Him as made a curse for them; as bearing their punishment, or "the chastisement of their peace." They received the "sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ," as the only means of being cleansed from the guilt of their sins, and of restoration to the favour of God and holiness of heart and life. This was undoubtedly their experience as it is recorded in the Bible. (2.) In the second place, from the times of the Apostle to the present day, the people of God have had the same inward convictions and feelings. This is clear from their confessions of faith, from their liturgies and prayers, from their hymns, and from all the records of their inward religious life. Let any one look over the hymns of the Latin Church, of the Moravians, the Lutherans, the Reformed, of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Independents, and Congregationalists, and see what truths on this subject constituted and now constitute the, food and atmosphere of their religious life: --

"Jesus, my God, Thy blood alone hath power sufficient to atone."

"To the dear fountain of Thy blood, incarnate God, I fly"

"My soul looks back to see the burdens Thou didst bear, When hanging on the cursed tree, and hopes her sins were there."

"Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld,
Der Welt unnd ihren Kinder."
"Geh hin, nimm dich der Sünder an,
Die auch kein Engel retten kann
Von meines Zornes Ruthen!
Die Straf' ist schwer, der Zorn ist gross;
Du kannst und sollst sie machen los
Durch Sterben und durch Bluten."

Does any Christian object to such hymns? Do they not express his inmost religious convictions? If they do not agree with the speculations of his understanding, do they not express the feelings of his heart and the necessities of his fallen nature? The speculations of the understanding are what man teaches; the truths which call forth these feelings of the heart are what the Holy Ghost teaches.

This argument may be presented in another light. It may be shown that no other theory of the work of Christ does correspond with the inward experience of God's people. The theory that the work of Christ was didactic; that it was exemplary; that its proximate design was to produce a subjective change in the sinner or a moral impression on the minds of all intelligent creatures; these and other theories, contrary to the common Church doctrine, fail especially in two points. First, they do not account for the intimate personal relation between Christ and the believer which is everywhere recognized in Scripture, and which is so precious in the view of all true Christians. Secondly, they make no provision for the expiation of sin, or for satisfying the demands of a guilty conscience, which mere pardon never can appease.

Throughout the New Testament, Christ is represented not only as the object of worship and of supreme love and devotion, but also as being to his people the immediate and constant source of life and of all good. Not Christ as God, but Christ as our Saviour. He is the head, we are his members. He is the vine, we are the branches. It is not we that live, but Christ that liveth in us. He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. His blood cleanses us from all sins. He redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. He is our great High Priest who ever lives to make intercession for us. It would be easy to show from the records of the religious life of the Church that believers have ever regarded Christ in the light in which He is here presented. The argument is that these representations are not consistent with any moral or governmental theory of the atonement.

There are two hymns which, perhaps, beyond all others, are dear to the hearts of all Christians who speak the English language. The one written by Charles Wesley, an Arminian; the other by Toplady, a Calvinist. It is hard to see what meaning can be attached to these hymns by those who hold that Christ died simply to teach us something, or to make a moral impression on us or others. How can they say, --

"Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly"?

Why should they fly to Him if He be only a teacher or moral reformer? What do they mean when they say, --

"Hide me, O my Saviour hide"?

Hide from what? Not from the vindicatory justice of God, for they admit no such attribute.

"Other refuge have I none;"
refuge from what?
"All my trust on Thee is laid."

For what do we trust Him? According to their theory He is not the ground of our confidence. It is not for his righteousness, but For our own that we are to be accepted by God. It would seem that those only who hold the common Church doctrine can say, --

"Thou, O Christ, art all I need."

All I need as a creature, as a sinner, as guilty, as polluted, as miserable and helpless; all I need for time or for eternity. So of Toplady's precious hymn, --

"Rock of ages, cleft for me;"

for me personally and individually; as Paul said he lived "by faith of the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me."

"Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side that flowed;
Be of sin the double cure;
Cleanse me from its guilt and power."

How can such language be used by those who deny the necessity of expiation; who hold that guilt need not be washed away, that all that is necessary is that we should be made morally good? No one can say, --

"Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling,"

who does not believe that Christ "bore our sins in his own body on the tree."

It is a historical fact that where false theories of the atonement prevail, Christ and his work are put in the background. We hear from the pulpits much about God as a moral governor; much about the law and obligation, and of the duty of submission; but little about Christ, of the duty of fleeing to Him, of receiving Him, of trusting in Him, of renouncing our own righteousness that we may put on the righteousness of God; and little of our union with Him, of his living in us, and of our duty to live by faith in Him Thus new theories introduce a new religion. __________________________________________________________________

[424] Dogmatik, II. iii. 1, § 401. Königsberg, 1852, vol. ii. p. 159.

[425] This also is the doctrine of Hofmann in his Schriftbeweis. It is one of the principal objects of Delitzsch in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews and in the long Excursus attached to that admirable work, to contest the doctrine of Hofmann on the nature of the work of Christ.

[426] This is the theory by Dr. Bähr, in his Symbolik.

[427] Keil in his Biblische Archäologie, and many others, give substantially this moral view. According to Keil, sacrifices were designed to teach the translation of the sinner from a state of alienation from God to a state of grace. Dr. Young, in his Light and Life of Men, represents them as Bähr does, as indicating the surrender of the soul to God, and as intended to give a divine sanction to the use of animal food. Notwithstanding these conflicting speculations of individual writers, it remains true that the great body of Biblical scholars of all ages and of all classes regard the sin offering of the Old Testament as real piacular sacrifices. This is done by the highest class of the modern German theologians, who for themselves reject the Church doctrine of the atonement.

[428] "Obsecro Domine, peccavi, rebellis fui, perverse egi, hoc et illud feci, nunc autem me peccasse poenitet; hæc sit itaque expiato mea." De Sacrificiis, I. xxii. 9, edit. London, 1677, p. 273.

[429] Lib. I. xv. 8, p. 166 ff.

[430] Typology, edit. Philadelphia, 1857, vol. ii. p. 288, note.

[431] Commentar zum Briefe an die Hebräer, Leipzig, 1857, p. 716.

[432] The Later Prophecies of Isaiah, New York, 1847, p. 264.

[433] Commentar zum Briefe an die Hebräer, p. 720.

[434] Ibid. p. 719.
[435] Page 442.
[436] Commentary on Hebrews, Leipzig, 1722.

[437] Institutiones Theologiæ, § 136, 5th edit. Halle, 1826, p. 424. __________________________________________________________________

§ 7. Objections.

The only legitimate method of controverting a doctrine which purports to be founded on the Scriptures is the exegetical. If its advocates undertake to show that it is taught in the Bible, its opponents are bound to prove that the Bible, understood agreeably to the recognized laws of interpretation, does not teach it. This method, comparatively speaking, is little relied upon, or resorted to by the adversaries of the Church doctrine concerning the satisfaction of Christ. Their main reliance is on objections of two classes: the one drawn from speculative or philosophical principles; the other from the sentiments or feelings. It is not uncommon for modern writers, especially among the German theologians, to begin the discussion of this subject by a review of the Scriptural statements in relation to it. This is often eminently satisfactory. It is admitted that Christ saves us as a priest by offering Himself a sacrifice for sin; that He is a priest and sin offering in the Old Testament sense of those terms; and that a priest is a mediator, a representative of the people, and an offerer of sacrifices. It is admitted that the sin offerings of the old dispensation were expiatory sacrifices, designed to satisfy the justice of God and to secure the restoration of his favour to the sinner. It is admitted that expiation was made by substitution and vicarious punishment, that the victim bore the sins of the offerer and died not only for his benefit, but in his place. It is further admitted that all this was designed to be typical of the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, and that the New Testament teaches that these types were fulfilled in Him; that He was the only true priest, and his offering of Himself was the only available sacrifice for sin; that He bore the sins of men; made expiation for their guilt by taking their place, and sustaining the penalty of the law and time wrath of God in their stead; and that the effect of his satisfaction of justice is that God is in such a sense reconciled to man, that He can consistently pardon their sins, and bestow upon them all saving blessings. Having given this exhibition of what the Scriptures teach on the subject, they go on to state what the Fathers taught; how the doctrine was presented during the Middle Ages, and afterwards by the Reformers; how the Rationalists and Supernaturalists of the last generation dealt with it; and how the modern speculative theologians have philosophized about it; and end, generally, by giving in their adhesion to some one of these modern theories more or less modified. All the while there stand the Scriptural statements untouched and unrefuted. They are allowed to go for what they are worth; but they are not permitted to control the writers own convictions. This course is adopted by different men on different principles. Sometimes it is upon the distinct denial of the inspiration of the sacred writers. They are admitted to be honest end faithful. They may or may not have been the recipients of a supernatural revelation, but they were fallible men, subject to all the influences which determine the modes of thought and the expressions of the men of any given age or nation. The sacred writers were Jews, and accustomed to a religion which had priests and sacrifices. It was, therefore, natural that they should set forth under figures and in the use of terms, borrowed from their own institutions, the truths that Christ saved sinners, and that in the prosecution of that work He suffered and died. These truths may be retained, but the form in which they are presented in the Bible may be safely discarded.

Others, and perhaps the majority of the most popular of this class of theologians, go further than this. They are willing that criticism and forced interpretations should make what havoc they please with the Bible. Any and every book may be rejected from the canon. Any and every doctrine may be interpreted out of the sacred pages; still the only Christianity they value is safe. Christianity is independent of any form of doctrine. It is a life, an inward, organic power, which remodels the soul; which life is Christianity, because it is assumed to have its origin in Christ.

Others again act on the principles of that form of rationalism which has received the name of Dogmatism. The doctrines and facts of the Bible are allowed to stand as true. They are allowed to be the proper modes of statement for popular instruction and impression. But it is assumed to be the office of the theologian to discover, present, and bring into harmony with his system, the philosophical truths which underlie these doctrinal statements of the Bible. And these philosophical truths are assumed to be the substance of the Scriptural doctrines, of which the doctrines themselves are the unessential and mutable forms. Thus the doctrine of the Trinity is admitted. The form in which it is presented in the Bible is regarded as its popular form, which it may be useful to retain for the people. But the real and important truth which it involves is, that original, unintelligent, unconscious Being (the Father) comes to conscious existence in the world (the Son), by an eternal process, and returns by an unceasing flow into the infinite (the Spirit). It is also admitted that God became flesh, but it was, as some say, in the whole race of man; mankind are the manifestation of God in the flesh; or, as others say, the Church is his body, that is, the form in which the incarnation is realized. Christ is acknowledged to be our saviour from sin, but it is by a purely subjective process. He introduces a new life power into humanity, which enters into conflict with the evil of our nature, and after a painful struggle overcomes it. This is called the application of philosophy to the explanation of Scriptural doctrines. It is patent, however, that this is not explanation, but substitution. It is the substitution of the human for the divine; of the thoughts of men, which are mere vapour, for the thoughts of God, which are eternal verities. It is giving a stone for bread, and a scorpion for an egg. It is, indeed, a very convenient method of getting rid of the teachings of the Bible, while professing to admit its authority. It is important, however, to notice the concession involved in these modes of proceeding. It is acknowledged that the Church doctrine of a true expiatory sacrifice for sin, of a real satisfaction of justice by means of the vicarious punishment of sin, is the doctrine of the Scriptures, as well of the Old Testament as of the New. This is all we contend for, and all we care for. If God teaches this, men may teach what they please.

Moral Objections.

Another class of objections to the Scriptural doctrine of satisfaction, which may be called philosophical, although not of the speculative kind, are those which are founded on certain assumed moral axioms. It is said to be self-evident that the innocent cannot be guilty; and if not guilty he cannot be punished, for punishment is the judicial infliction of evil on account of guilt. As the Church doctrine, while maintaining the perfect sinlessness of Christ, teaches that He bore the guilt of sin, and therefore was regarded and treated as a sinner, that doctrine assumes both an impossibility and an act of injustice. It assumes that God regards things as they are not. He regards the innocent as guilty. This is an impossibility. And if possible for Him to treat the innocent as guilty, it would be an act of gross injustice. On this class of objections it may be remarked, --

1. That they avail nothing against the plain declaration of the Scriptures. If the Bible teaches that the innocent may bear the guilt of the actual transgressor; that He may endure the penalty incurred in his place, then it is in vain to say that this cannot be done.

2. If it be said that these moral objections render it necessary to explain these representations of Scripture as figurative, or as anthropomorphic modes of expression, as when God is said to have eyes, to stand, or to walk, then the reply is that these representations are so didactic, are so repeated; and are so inwrought into the whole system of Scriptural doctrine, that they leave us no alternative but to receive them as the truths of God, or to reject tie Bible as his word.

3. Rejecting the Bible does not help the matter. We cannot reject the facts of providence. Where is the propriety of saying that the innocent cannot justly suffer for the guilty, when we see that they actually do thus suffer continually, and everywhere since the world began? There is no moral principle asserted in tie Bible, which is not carried out in providence. God says He will visit the iniquities of the fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation of those that hate Him. And so He does, and ever has done. Are we so confident in ourselves as to deny that there is a just God who governs the world, rather than admit that the innocent may rightfully bear the iniquity of the guilty? In teaching the doctrine of legal substitution, of the transfer of guilt from the transgressor to the innocent, of the satisfaction of justice by vicarious punishment, the Bible asserts and assumes no moral principle which does not underlie all the providential dealings of God with individuals or with nations.

4. Men constantly deceive themselves by postulating as moral axioms what are nothing more than the forms in which their feelings or peculiar opinions find expression. To one man it is an axiom that a holy God cannot permit sin, or a benevolent God allow his creatures to be miserable; and he, therefore, infers either that there is no God, or that He cannot control the acts of free agents. To another it is self-evidently true that a free act cannot be certain, and therefore that there can be no foreordination, or foreknowledge, or prediction of the occurrence of such acts. To another, it is self-evident that a merciful God cannot permit any portion of his rational creatures to remain forever under the dominion of sin and suffering. There would be no end of controversy, and no security for any truth whatever, if the strong personal convictions of individual minds be allowed to determine what is, or what is not true, what the Bible may, and what it may not, be allowed to teach. It must be admitted, however, that there are moral intuitions, founded on the constitution of our nature, and constituting a primary revelation of the nature of God, which no external revelation can possibly contradict. The authority of these intuitive truths is assumed or fully recognized in the Bible itself. They have, however, their criteria. They cannot be enlarged or diminished. No man can add to, or detract from, their number. Those criteria are, (1.) They are all recognized in the Scriptures themselves. (2.) They are universally admitted as true by all rational minds. (3.) They cannot be denied. No effort of the will, and no sophistry of the understanding can destroy their authority over the reason and conscience.

5. It is very evident that the principle that "the innocent cannot justly be punished for the guilty," cannot stand the application of the above-mentioned criteria. So far from being recognized in the Bible, it is contrary to its plainest declarations and facts. So far from being universally received among men as true, it has never been received at all as part of the common faith of mankind. The substitution of the innocent for the guilty, of victims for transgressors in sacrifice, of one for many; the idea of expiation by vicarious punishment, has been familiar to the human mind in all ages. It has been admitted not only as possible, but as rational, and recognized as indicating the only method by which sinful men can be reconciled to a just and holy God. It is not, therefore, to be admitted that it conflicts with any intuition of the reason or of the conscience; on the contrary it is congenial with both. It is no doubt frequently the case that opposition to this doctrine arises from a misapprehension of the terms in which it is expressed. By guilt many insist on meaning personal criminality and ill desert; and by punishment evil inflicted on the ground of such personal demerit. In these senses of the words the doctrine of satisfaction and vicarious punishment would indeed involve an impossibility. Moral character cannot be transferred. The Remonstrants were right in saying that man cannot be good with another's goodness, any more than he can be white with another's whiteness. And if punishment means evil inflicted on the ground of personal demerit, then it is a contradiction to say that the innocent can be punished. But if guilt expresses only the relation of sin to justice, and is the obligation under which the sinner is placed to satisfy its demands, then there is nothing in the nature of things, nothing in the moral nature of man, nothing in the nature of God as revealed either in his providence or in his word, which forbids the idea that this obligation may on adequate grounds be transferred from one to an other, or assumed by one in the place of others.

To the head of objections founded on assumed moral axioms belong those urged by a large class of modern, and especially of German theologians. These theologians have their peculiar views of the nature of God, of his relation to the world, and of anthropology in all its branches, which underlie and determine all their theological doctrines. It is denied that Schleiermacher founded a school; but it is certain that he introduced a method of theologizing, and advocated principles, which have determined the character of the theology of a large class of men, not only in Germany, but also in England and America: Twesten, Nitsch, Lücke, Olshausen, Ullmann, Lange, Liebner, and even Ebrard in Germany and Morell and Maurice in England, belong to this class of writers. In this country what is known as the "Mercersburg Theology" is the product of the same principles. Everything which distinguishes that theology from the theology of the Reformed Church, comes from the introduction of these new German speculative principles. No two of the writers above mentioned agree in all points. They differ, however, only in the length to which they carry their common principles in modifying or overthrowing the faith of the Church. Ebrard, one of the best, because one of the most moderate and least infected of the class, says in the preface to his "Dogmatik," that he goes hand in hand with the old Reformed theology in all points, and that for that reason he is more true to the principles of his Church, as a church of progress. He professes to have carried that theology forward by a process of "organic development;" and this Professor Harbaugh of Mercersburg, in his late inaugural address, claims to have been the service, and still to be the office of the German Reformed Church in this country. It is true that the leading theologians of that Church, as was perhaps to be expected, have given themselves up to the guidance of the German mind. All they have done has been to incorporate the modern German philosophy with theology. Their advances, therefore, have no more worth than belongs to any other form of human speculation. They do not pretend to get their peculiar doctrines from the Bible; they only labour to make the Bible agree with their doctrines. But this is just as impossible as that the Scriptures should teach the principles of modern chemistry, astronomy, or geology. These philosophical principles had no existence in the minds of men when the Bible was written, and they have no authority now but what they get from their human authors. If they survive for a generation, it will be more than similar speculations have in general been able to accomplish. [438] It is, however, lamentable to see how even good men allow themselves to explain away the most catholic, and plainly revealed doctrines of the Bible, in obedience to the dictates of the modern transcendental philosophy. What however we have here immediately in view is, the objections which this class of writers make to the Church form of the doctrine of satisfaction, in obedience to the assumed moral axiom above mentioned, namely, that the innocent cannot by God be regarded and treated as guilty, or the guilty regarded and treated as righteous. It is indeed true that God cannot but regard every person as he really is. His judgments are according to truth. But this is not inconsistent with his regarding Christ, although personally innocent, as having voluntarily assumed our place and undertaken to satisfy the demands of justice in our place; nor with his regarding the believer, although personally undeserving, as righteous, in the sense of being free from just exposure to condemnation, on the ground of the vicarious satisfaction of Christ. This is precisely what the Scriptures affirm to be true, and that which believers in all ages have made the ground of their hope toward God. This is almost the identical proposition affirmed by the Apostle, when he declares that on the ground of the propitiation of Christ, God "can justify the ungodly," i.e., declare the unrighteous to be righteous; unrighteous personally, but righteous in that the demands of justice in regard to him are satisfied. This also is precisely what the writers referred to (not Ebrard who does not go so far as those with whom he is classed) deny. If God, say they, regards Christ as sinful, He must be really sinful; if He pronounces the believer righteous, he must be truly, personally, and subjectively righteous. As most of these writers admit the sinlessness of Christ, and yet maintain that only sinners can be treated as sinners, and only the personally righteous treated as righteous; and as they hold that imputation implies the real possession of the quality, act, or relation which is imputed, they are forced to teach that Christ in assuming our nature as guilty and fallen, ipso facto, assumed all the responsibilities of men, and was bound to answer to the justice of God for all the sins which hnmanity had committed. The doctrine of one class of these writers is, that the Logos in assuming our nature did not become an individual, but the universal man; He did not take to Himself "a true body and a reasonable soul," but the whole of humanity, or humanity as an organic whole or law of life; the individual dying for the sins of other individuals, does not satisfy justice. When He was nailed to the cross, not an individual merely, but humanity itself, was crucified; and, therefore, his sufferings were the sufferings not of an individual man, but of that which underlies all human individualities, and consequently avails for all in whom humanity is individualized. As Christ becomes personally responsible for the guilt which attaches to the humanity which He assumed, so we become personally righteous and entitled, on the ground of what we are or become, to eternal life, because, by our union with Him, we partake of his humanity as well as of his divinity. His theanthropic nature is conveyed to us with all its merits, excellence, and glories, as the nature of Adam with its guilt, pollution, and weaknesses, has been transmitted to his posterity. It is in favour of this theory that the church doctrine of the substitution of Christ, the innocent for the guilty; of his bearing the guilt not of his own nature, but of sinners; of his suffering the penalty of the law in the place of those by whom it had been incurred, one individual of infinite dignity dying in the stead of the multitude of his people (the shepherd for his sheep), is discarded and trodden under foot. In reference to this theory, it is sufficient here to remark, --

1. That it is a mere speculative, or philosophical, anthropological theory. It has no more authority than the thousands of speculations which the teeming mind of man has produced. Schleiermacher says that man is the form in which the universal spirit comes to consciousness and individuality on this earth. These writers say that man is the form in which generic humanity is individualized. Every philosophy has its own anthropology. It is evidently most unreasonable and presumptuous to found the explanation of a great Scriptural doctrine, which the people are bound to understand and receive, and on which they are required to rest their hope of salvation, upon a theory as to the nature of man, which has no divine authority, and which not one man in a thousand, perhaps not one in hundreds of thousands, believes or ever has believed. The self-confidence and self-exaltation which such a course implies, can hardly be the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

2. The theory itself is unintelligible. The phrases "universal man," and "the whole of humanity," as here used, have no meaning. To say that "humanity itself was nailed to the cross," conveys no rational idea. By a universal man might be meant a universal genius, or a man who represents all mankind as Adam did. But this is expressly repudiated. By "a universal man," as distinguished from an individual man, is intended a man who includes the whole of humanity in himself. Though this might be said of Adam when he stood absolutely alone, before the creation of Eve, yet it cannot be said of any one of a multitude of men. A universal man would be a man who included in himself all human persons; an idea as monstrous as the modern doctrine of "the all-personality of God."

In the language of the Church, to assume a nature is to assume a substance with its essential attributes and properties. Through all ages in the Church the words phusis, oisia, substantia, and natura, have, in relation to this subject, been used interchangeably. When it is said that the Logos assumed our nature, it is meant that He took into personal union with Himself a substance or essence having the same essential properties which constitute us men. But He did not assume the whole of that substance or essence. He assumed the whole of humanity in the sense of assuming all the attributes of humanity. He took upon Him all that was necessary to constitute Him "very man" as He was from eternity "very God." This, however, is not what these writers mean. They say He took upon Him the whole of humanity so as to be, not an individual, but the universal man. This is what some of the first of German minds have pronounced to be Unsinn, i.e., meaningless. Even if the idea of substance, although recognized by the Bible, the Church, and mankind, be discarded, and humanity, or human nature, be defined as a life, or organic force, or aggregate of certain forces, the case is not altered. A universal man would still be a man who had in himself to the exclusion of all others, the totality of that life or of those forces. There is no conceivable sense in which Christ had in Himself the whole of humanity, when millions of other men existed around Him. This whole theory, therefore, which is set up as antagonistic to the Church doctrine of satisfaction, rests on an unintelligible, or meaningless proposition. It is no new thing in the history of the human mind that even great men should deceive themselves with words, and take mystic phrases, or vague imaginings for definite ideas.

3. There is a moral or ethical impossibility, as well as a metaphysical one, involved in this theory. The doctrine is, that in assuming human nature Christ assumed the guilt attaching to the sins humanity had committed. He became responsible for those sins; and was bound to bear the penalty they had incurred. Nevertheless human nature as it existed in his person was guiltless and absolutely pure. This, to our apprehensions, is an impossibility. Guilt and sin can be predicated only of a person. This if not a self-evident, is, at least, a universally admitted truth. Only a person is a rational agent. It is only to persons that responsibility, guilt, or moral character can attach. Human nature apart from human persons cannot act, and therefore cannot contract guilt, or be responsible. Christ assumed a rational soul which had never existed as a person, and could not be responsible on the ground of its nature for the sins of other men. Unless guilt and sin be essential attributes or properties of human nature, Christ did not assume guilt by assuming that nature. If guilt and sin cannot be predicated of Christ's person, they cannot by possibility be predicated of his human nature. The whole theory, therefore, which denies that Christ as a divine person clothed in a nature like our own, assumed the guilt of our sins by imputation of what did not belong to Him, and sustained the penalty which we had incurred, and makes that denial on the ground that the innocent cannot bear the sins of the guilty; that God could not regard Him as sin, unless He was in Himself sin, is founded on the moral impossibility that a nature, as distinguished from a person, can sin or be guilty.

When it is said that we derive a sinful nature from Adam, and that guilt as well as pollution attaches to the nature of fallen men, the doctrine is, that we, and all who derive that nature from Adam, are personally sinful and guilty. We are born, as the Apostle says, the children of wrath. It is not an impersonal nature which is guilty, for this would be a contradiction, but persons whose immanent, subjective state is opposed to the character and law of God. All this, however, is denied concerning Christ. These theologians admit that, as a person, He was without sin. But if without sin, He was without guilt. It was according to the Scriptures by the imputation to Him of sins not his own, that He bore our guilt, or assumed the responsibility of satisfying justice on our account. It is only by admitting that by being born of a woman, or becoming flesh, Christ placed Himself in the category of sinful men, and became personally a sinner, and guilty in the sight of God, as all other men are, that it can be maintained that the assumption of our nature in itself involved the assumption of guilt, or that He thereby became responsible for all the sins which men possessing that nature had committed.

4. It is another fatal objection to this scheme that it subverts the whole gospel plan of salvation. Instead of directing the soul to Christ, to his righteousness, and to his intercession; that is, to what is objective and out of itself, as the ground of its hope toward God, it turns the attention of the sinner in upon himself. The only righteousness he has on which to trust is within. He has a new nature, and because of that nature is and deserves to be, reconciled unto God and entitled to eternal life. It places Christ just as far from us as Adam is. As Adam is the source of a nature for which we are condemned, so Christ is the source of a nature for which we are justified and saved. The system, therefore, calls upon us to exchange a hope founded upon what Christ is and has done in our behalf, a hope which rests upon an infinitely meritorious righteousness out of ourselves, for a hope founded on the glimmer of divine life which we find within ourselves. We may call this new nature by what high-sounding names we please. We may call it theanthropic, divine-human, or divine, it makes no difference. Whatever it is called, it is something so weak and so imperfect that it cannot satisfy ourselves, much less the infinitely holy and just God. To call on men to trust for their acceptance before God on the ground of what they are made by this inward change, is to call upon them to build their eternal hopes upon a foundation which cannot sustain a straw. That this is the true view of the plan of salvation as proposed by these theologians, notwithstanding the lofty terms in which they speak of Christ as our Saviour, is plain from the parallel which they constantly refer to between our relation to Christ and our relation to Adam. This is an analogy which the Apostle insists upon, and which as presented by him is full of instruction and hope. Adam was the head and representative of his race. We stood our probation in him. His sin was putatively the sin of his posterity. It was the judicial ground of their condemnation. The penalty of that transgression was death, the loss of the life of God, as well as of his fellowship and favour. All mankind, therefore, represented by Adam in the first covenant came into the world in a state of condemnation and of spiritual death. He was a type of Christ, because Christ is the head and representative of his people. He fulfilled all righteousness in their behalf and in their stead. As Adam's disobedience was the ground of the condemnation of all who were in him, so Christ's obedience is the ground of the justification of all who are in Him; and as spiritual death was the penal, and therefore certain consequence of our condemnation for the sin of Adam, so spiritual and eternal life is the covenanted, and therefore the certain and inseparable consequence of our justification for the righteousness of Christ. But according to the modern speculative (or as it is called by Dorner, [439] "the regenerated") theology, the parallel between Christ and Adam is very different. We are not condemned for Adam's sin, as his sin, but only for that sin as it was ours, committed by us as partakers of the numerically same nature that sinned in him, and for the consequent corruption of our nature. The whole ground of our condemnation is subjective or inward. We are condemned for what we are. In like manner we are justified for what we become through Christ. He assumed numerically the same nature that had sinned. He sanctified it, elevated it, and raised it to the power of a divine life by its union with his divine person, and He communicates this new, theanthropic nature to his people, and on the ground of what they thus become they are reconciled and saved. It is a favourite and frequently occurring statement with these writers that Christ redeems us, not by what He does, but by what He is. His assumption of our nature was its redemption. Extreme spiritualism always ends in materialism. This whole theory has a materialistic aspect. Humanity as derived from Adam is conceived of as a polluted stream, into which a healing purifying element was introduced by Christ. From Him onward, it flows as a life-giving stream. What then becomes of those who lived before Christ? This is a question which these theologians are slow to answer. They agree, however, in saying that the condition of the patriarchs was deplorable; that their relation to Christ was essentially different from ours. There was no theanthropic life for them. That began with the incarnation, and the stream cannot flow backwards.

No one can read the theological works of the speculative school, without being satisfied that their design is not to set forth what the Scriptures teach. To this little or no attention is paid. Their object is to give a scientific interpretation of certain facts of Scripture (such as sin and redemption), in accordance with the principles of the current philosophy. These writers are as much out of the reach, and out of contact with the sympathies and religious life of the people, as men in a balloon are out of relation to those they leave behind. To the aeronauts indeed those on the earth appear very diminutive and grovelling; but they are none the less in their proper sphere and upon solid ground. All that the excursionists can hope for is a safe return to terra firma. And that is seldom accomplished without risk or loss.

Popular Objections.

The more popular objections to the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction have already been considered in the progress of the discussion. A certain amount of repetition may be pardoned for the sake of a brief and distinct statement of the several points. These objections were all urged by Socinus and his associates at the time of the Reformation. They are principally the following: --

There is no Vindicatory Justice in God.

1. There is no such attribute in God as vindicatory justice, and therefore there can be no satisfaction to justice required or rendered. This would be a fatal objection if the assumption which it involves were correct. But if it is intuitively true, that sin ought to be punished, then it is no less true that God will, and from the constitution of his nature must do, what ought to be done. All men, in despite of the sophistry of the understanding, and in despite of their moral degradation, know that it is the righteous judgment of God, that those who sin are worthy of death. They, therefore, know that without a satisfaction to justice, sin cannot be pardoned. If there be no sacrifice for sin, there is only a fearful looking for of judgment. This conviction lies undisturbed at the bottom of every human breast, and never fails, sooner or later, to reveal itself with irrepressible force on the reason and the conscience.

There can be no Antagonism in God.

2. To the same effect it is objected that there can be no antagonism in God. There cannot be one impulse to punish and another impulse not to punish . All God's acts or manifestations of Himself toward his creatures, must be referred to one principle, and that principle is love. And, therefore, his plan of saving sinners can only be regarded as an exhibition of love, not of justice in any form. All that He can, as a God of love, require, is the return of his creatures to Himself, which is a return to holiness and happiness. It is true God is love. But it is no less true that love in God is not a weakness, impelling Him to do what ought not to be done. If sin ought to be punished, as conscience and the word of God declare, then there is nothing in God which impels Him to leave it unpunished. His whole nature is indeed harmonious, but it has the harmony of moral excellence, leading with absolute certainty to the judge of all the earth doing right; punishing or pardoning, just as moral excellence demands. The love of God has not prevented the final perdition of apostate angels; and it could not require the restoration of fallen men without an adequate atonement. The infinite, discriminating love of God to our race, is manifested in his giving his own Son to bear our sins and to redeem us from the curse of the law by sustaining the penalty in his own person. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (hilasmos, propitiatio, expiatio. No man can get the saving import out of that word) for our sins." (1 John iv. 10.)

The Transfer of Guilt or Righteousness Impossible.

3. It is objected that the transfer of guilt and righteousness involved in the Church doctrine of satisfaction is impossible. The transfer of guilt or righteousness, as states of consciousness or forms of moral character, is indeed impossible. But the transfer of guilt as responsibility to justice, and of righteousness as that which satisfies justice, is no more impossible than that one man should pay the debt of another. All that the Bible teaches on this subject is that Christ paid as a substitute, our debt to the justice of God. The handwriting (cheirographon, the bond, Schuldbrief) Christ has cancelled, by nailing it to his cross. His complete satisfaction to the law, freed us as completely as the debtor is freed when his bond is legally cancelled.

Expiation a Heathenish Idea.

4. The idea of expiation, the innocent suffering for the guilty and God being thereby propitiated, is declared to be heathenish and revolting. No man has the right to make his taste or feelings the test of truth. That a doctrine is disagreeable, is no sufficient evidence of its untruth. There are a great many terribly unpleasant truths, to which we sinners have to submit. Besides, the idea of expiation is not revolting to the vast majority of minds, as is proved by its being incorporated in all religions of men, whether pagan, Jewish, or Christian. So far from being revolting, it is cherished and delighted in as the only hope of the guilty. So far from the innocent suffering for the guilty being a revolting spectacle, it is one of the sublimest exhibitions of self-sacrificing love. All heaven stands uncovered before the cross on which the Son of God, holy and harmless, bore the sins of men. And God forbid that redeemed sinners should regard the cross as an offence. God is not won to love by the death of his Son, but that death renders it consistent with moral excellence that his infinite love for sinful men should have unrestricted sway.

Satisfaction to Justice unnecessary.

5. It is objected that the doctrine of satisfaction to justice by means of vicarious punishment is unnecessary. All that is needed for the restoration of harmony in the universe can be effected by the power of love. The two great ends to be accomplished are a clue impression on rational minds of the evil of sin, and the reformation of sinners. Both these objects, it is contended, are secured without expiation or any penal suffering. According to some, the work of Christ operates æsthetically to accomplish the ends desired; according to others, it operates morally through the exhibition of love or by example, or by the confirmation of truth; and according to others, the operation is supernatural or mystical. But in any case his work was no satisfaction to justice or expiation for sin. It is enough to say in answer to all this, --

1. That such is not the doctrine of the Bible. The Scriptures teach that something more was necessary for the salvation of men than moral influences and impressions, or the revelation and confirmation of truth, something very different from mystical influence on the nature of man. What was necessary was precisely what was done. The Son of God assumed our nature, took the place of sinners, bore the curse of the law in their stead, and thereby rendered it possible that God should be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly. If such be the Scripture doctrine, all these schemes of redemption may be dismissed without consideration.

2. These schemes are not only unscriptural, but they are inoperative They do not meet the necessities of the case, as those necessities reveal themselves in the consciousness of men. They make no provision for the removal of guilt. But the sense of guilt is universal and ineradicable. It is not irrational. It is not founded on ignorance or misconception of our relation to God. The more the soul is enlightened, the more deep and painful is its sense of guilt. There are some philosophers who would persuade us that there is no such thing as sin; that the sense of moral pollution of which men complain, and under which the holiest men groan as under a body of death, is all a delusion, a state of mind produced by erroneous views of God and of his relation to his creatures. There are others, theologians as well as philosophers, who while admitting the reality of moral evil, and recognizing the validity of the testimony of consciousness as to our moral pollution, endeavour to persuade us that there is no such thing as guilt. Responsibility to justice, the desert of punishment, the moral necessity for the punishment of sin, they deny. The one class is just as obviously wrong as the other. Consciousness testifies just as clearly and just as universally to the guilt, as to the pollution. It craves as importunately deliverance from the one as from the other. A plan of salvation, therefore, which makes no provision for the removal of guilt, or satisfaction of justice, which admits no such thing as the vicarious punishment of sin, is as little suited to our necessities as though it made no provision for the reformation and sanctification of men.

3. A third remark on these humanly devised schemes of redemption is, that while they leave out the essential idea of expiation, or satisfaction to justice by vicarious punishment, without which salvation is impossible, and reconciliation with a just God inconceivable they contain no element of influence or power which does not belong in a higher degree to the Scriptural and Church doctrine. Whatever there is of power in a perfectly sinless life, of a life of self-sacrifice and devotion to the service of God and the good of man, is to be found in the Church doctrine. Whatever there is of power in the prolonged exhibition of a love which passes knowledge, is to be found there. Whatever there is of power in the truths which Christ taught, and which He sealed with his blood, truths either before entirely unknown, or only imperfectly apprehended, belongs of course to the doctrine which the Church universal has ever held. And whatever there is of reality in the doctrine of our mystical union, and of our participation of the nature of Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, belongs to the Scriptural doctrine, without the blurring and enfeebling effects of modern speculation. While, therefore, we should lose everything in renouncing the doctrine of expiation through the sacrificial death of Christ, we should gain nothing, by adopting these modern theories.

"If a man," says Delitzsch, "keeps in view our desert of punishment, and allows the three saving doctrines of Scripture to stand in their integrity, namely, (1.) That God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, i.e., imputed our sins to Him. (2.) That Christ, although free from guilt, laden with our guilt, was made a curse for us, i.e., suffered the wrath of God due to us; or, as the Scripture also says, that God executed on his Son judgment against sin, He having taken upon Him flesh and blood and offered Himself as a sacrifice for us for the expiation of sin. (3.) That in like manner his righteousness is imputed to believers, so that we may stand before God, as He had submitted to the imputation of our sins in order to their expiation; if these premises remain unobliterated, then it is as clear as the sun that Christ suffered and died as our substitute, in order that we need not suffer what we deserved, and in order that we instead of dying should be partakers of the life secured by his vicarious death." [440] __________________________________________________________________

[438] Indeed, already the philosophy of Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher seems to be for the rising men of Germany as much a thing of the past, as that of the Hindus or the Cabala. The German mind has swung round from making spirit everything, to making it nothing.

[439] See his Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie, p. 769, and onward. He dates this regeneration from Schelling, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, especially, of course the last.

[440] Commentar zum Briefe an die Hebräer, p. 728. "Behält man die Verdammnisswürdigkeit unserer Schuld recht im Auge und lässt man ohne Deuteln die drel grossen von der Schrift bezeugten Heilswahrheiten stehen: 1. dass Gott den der von keiner Sünde wüsste für uns zur Sünde gemacht d. i. ihm unsere Sünden imputirt hat; 2. dass Christus der Schuldlose, aber mit unserer Schuld Beladene für uns ein Fluch geworden d. i. den Blitz des Zorns, der uns treffen sollte, für uns erlitten, oder, wie die Schrift such sagt, dass Gott an seinem Sohne, der unser Fleisch und Blut angenommen und sich uns zum Sündopfer, zur Sündenühne begeben, das Gericht über die Sünde vollzogen; 3. dass uns nun im Glauben seine Gerechtigkeit ebenso zugerechnet wird, um vor Gott bestehen zu können, wie er sich hat unsere Sünden zurechnen lassen, um sie zu büssen --: so ist es auch, so lange diese Vordersätze ungeschmälert bleiben, sonnenklar, das er stellvertretend für uns gelitten und gestorben, damit wir nicht leiden müssten, was wir verwirkt, und damit wir statt zu sterben in seinem durch stellvertretenden Tod hindurch gewonnen Leben das Leben hatten." __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________