Chapter III: Part 3

We see, then, that the necessity for an atonement makes the Eternal Father both unjust in his demands on men and cruel in his punishment of inevitable failure; but there is another injustice which is of the very essence of the Atonement itself. This consists in the vicarious character of the sacrifice: a new element of injustice is introduced when we consider that the person sacrificed is not even the guilty party. If a man offends against law, justice requires that he should be punished: the punishment becomes unjust if it is excessive, as in the case we have been considering above; but it is equally unjust to allow him to go free without punishment. Christians are right in affirming that moral government would be at an end were men allowed to sin with impunity, and did an easy forgiveness succeed to each offence. They appeal to our instinctive sense of justice to-approve the sentiment that punishment should follow sin: we acquiesce, and hope that we have now reached a firm standing-ground from which to proceed further in our investigation. But, no; they promptly outrage that same sense of justice which they have called as a witness on their side, by asking us to believe that its ends are attained provided that somebody or other is punished. When we reply that _this_ is not justice, we are promptly bidden not to be presumptuous and argue from our human ideas of justice as to the course that ought to be pursued by the absolute justice of God. "Then why appeal to it at all?" we urge; "why talk of justice in the matter if we are totally unable to judge as to the rights and wrongs of the case?" At this point we are commonly overwhelmed with Paul's notable argument--"Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" But if Christians value the simplicity and straightforwardness of their own minds, they should not use words which convey a certain accepted meaning in this shuffling, double sense. When we speak of "justice," we speak of a certain well-understood quality, and we do not speak of a mysterious divine attribute, which has not only nothing in common with human justice, but which is in direct opposition to that which we understand by that name. Suppose a man condemned to death for murder: the judge is about to sentence him, when a bystander--as it chances, the judge's own son--interposes: "My Lord, the prisoner is guilty and deserves to be hanged; but if you will let him go, I will die in his place." The offer is accepted, the prisoner is set free, the judge's son is hanged in his stead. What is all this? Self-sacrifice (however misdirected), love, enthusiasm--what you will; but certainly not _justice_--nay, the grossest injustice, a second murder, an ineffaceable stain on the ermine of the outraged law. I imagine that, in this supposed case, no Christian will be found to assert that justice was done; yet call the judge God, the prisoner mankind, the substitute Jesus, and the trial scene is exactly reproduced. Then, in the name of candour and common sense, why call that just in God which we see would be so unjust and immoral in man? This vicarious nature of the Atonement also degrades the divine name, by making him utterly careless in the matter of punishment: all he is anxious for, according to this detestable theory, is that he should strike a blow _somewhere_. Like a child in a passion, he only feels the desire to hurt somebody, and strikes out vaguely and at random. There is no discrimination used; the thunderbolt is launched into a crowd: it falls on the head of the "sinless son," and crushes the innocent, while the sinner goes free. What matter? It has fallen somewhere, and the "burning fire of his-wrath" is cooled. This is what men call the vindication of the justice of the Moral Governor of the universe: this is "the act of God's awful holiness," which marks his hatred of sin, and his immovable determination to punish it. But when we reflect that this justice is consistent with letting off the guilty and punishing the innocent person, we feel dread misgivings steal into our minds. The justice of our Moral Governor has nothing in common with our justice--indeed, it violates all our notions of right and wrong. What if, as Mr. Vance Smith suggests, this strange justice be consistent also with a double punishment of sin; and what if the Moral Governor should bethink himself that, having confused morality by an unjust--humanly speaking, of course--punishment, it would be well to set things straight again by punishing the guilty after all? We can never dare to feel safe in the hands of this unjust--humanly speaking--Moral Governor, or predicate from our instinctive notions of right and wrong what his requirements may be. One is lost in astonishment that men should believe such things of God, and not have manhood enough to rise up rebellious against such injustice--should, instead, crouch at his feet, and while trying to hide themselves from his wrath should force their trembling lips to murmur some incoherent acknowledgment of his mercy. Ah! they do not believe it; they assert it in words, but, thank God, it makes no impression on their hearts; and they would die a thousand deaths rather than imitate, in their dealings with their fellow-men, the fearful cruelty which the Church has taught them to call the justice of the Judge of all the earth.

The Atonement is not only doubly unjust, but it is perfectly futile. We are told that Christ took away the sins of the world; we have a right to ask, "how?" So far as we can judge, we bear our sins in our own bodies still, and the Atonement helps us not at all. Has he borne the physical consequences of sin, such as the loss of health caused by intemperance of all kinds? Not at all, this penalty remains, and, from the nature of things, cannot be transferred. Has he borne the social consequences, shame, loss of credit, and so on? They remain still to hinder us as we strive to rise after our fall. Has he at least borne the pangs of remorse for us, the stings of conscience? By no means; the tears of sorrow are no less bitter, the prickings of repentance no less keen. Perhaps he has struck at the root of evil, and has put away sin itself out of a redeemed world? Alas! the wailing that goes up to heaven from a world oppressed with sin weeps out a sorrowfully emphatic, "no, this he has _not_ done." What has he then borne for us? Nothing, save the phantom wrath of a phantom tyrant; all that is real exists the same as before. We turn away, then, from the offered atonement with a feeling that would be impatience at such trifling, were it not all too sorrowful, and leave the Christians to impose on their imagined sacrifice, the imagined burden of the guilt of the accursed race.

Further, the Atonement is, from the nature of things, entirely impossible: we have seen how Christ fails to bear our sins in any intelligible sense, but can he, in any way, bear the "punishment" of sin? The idea that the punishment of sin can be transferred from one person to another is radically false, and arises from a wrong conception of the punishment consequent on sin, and from the ecclesiastical guilt, so to speak, thought to be incurred thereby. _The only true punishment of sin is the injury caused by it to our moral nature_: all the indirect punishments, we have seen, Christ has not taken away, and the true punishment can fall only on ourselves. For sin is nothing more than the transgression of law. All law, when broken, entails _of necessity_ an appropriate penalty, and recoils, as it were, on the transgressor. A natural law, when broken, avenges itself by consequent suffering, and so does a spiritual law: the injury wrought by the latter is not less real, although less obvious. Physical sin brings physical suffering; spiritual, moral, mental sin brings each its own appropriate punishment. "Sin" has become such a cant term that we lose sight, in using it, of its real simple meaning, a breaking of law. Imagine any sane man coming and saying, "My dear friend; if you like to put your hand into the fire I will bear the punishment of being burnt, and you shall not suffer." It is quite as absurd to imagine that if I sin Jesus can bear my consequent suffering. If a man lies habitually, for instance, he grows thoroughly untrue: let him repent ever so vigorously, he must bear the consequences of his past deeds, and fight his way back slowly to truthfulness of word and thought: no atonement, nothing in heaven or earth save his own labour, will restore to him the forfeited jewel of instinctive candour. Thus the "punishment" of untruthfulness is the loss of the power of being true, just as the punishment of putting the hand into the fire is the loss of the power of grasping. But in addition to this simple and most just and natural "retribution," theologians have invented certain arbitrary penalties as a punishment of sin, the wrath of God and hell fire. These imaginary penalties are discharged by an equally imaginary atonement, the natural punishment remaining as before; so after all we only reject the two sets of inventions which balance each other, and find ourselves just in the same position as they are, having gained infinitely in simplicity and naturalness. The punishment of sin is not an arbitrary penalty, but an inevitable sequence: Jesus may bear, if his worshippers will have it so, the theological fiction of the "guilt of sin," an idea derived from the ceremonial uncleanness of the Levitical law, but let him leave alone the solemn realities connected with the sacred and immutable laws of God.

Doubly unjust, useless, and impossible, it might be deemed a work of supererogation to argue yet further against the Atonement; but its hold on men's minds is too firm to allow us to lay down a single weapon which can be turned against it. So, in addition to these defects, I remark that, viewed as a propitiatory sacrifice to Almighty God, it is thoroughly inadequate. If God, being righteous, as we believe Him to be, regarded man with anger because of man's sinfulness, what is obviously the required propitiation? Surely the removal of the cause of anger, _i.e._, of sin itself, and the seeking by man of righteousness. The old Hebrew prophet saw this plainly, and his idea of atonement is the true one: "wherewith shall I come before the Lord," he is asked, with burnt-offerings or--choicer still--parental anguish over a first-born's corpse? "What doth the Lord require of thee," is the reproving answer, "but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" But what is the propitiatory element in the Christian Atonement? let Canon Liddon answer: "the ignominy and pain _needed_ for the redemption." Ignominy, agony, blood, death, these are what Christians offer up as an acceptable sacrifice to the Spirit of Love. But what have all these in common with the demands of the Eternal Righteousness, and how can pain atone for sin? they have no relation to each other; there is no appropriateness in the offered exchange. These terrible offerings are in keeping with the barbarous ideas of uncivilized nations, and we understand the feelings which prompt the savage to immolate tortured victims on the altars of his gloomy gods; they are appropriate sacrifices to the foes of mankind, who are to be bought off from injuring us by our offering them an equivalent pain to that they desire to inflict, but they are offensive when given to Him who is the Friend and Lover of Humanity. An Atonement which offers suffering as a propitiation can have nothing in common with God's will for man, and must be utterly beside the mark, perfectly inadequate. If we must have Atonement, let it at least consist of something which will suit the Righteousness and Love of God, and be in keeping with his perfection; let it not borrow the language of ancient savagery, and breathe of blood and dying victims, and tortured human frames, racked with pain.

Lastly, I impeach the Atonement as injurious in several ways to human morality. It has been extolled as "meeting the needs of the awakened sinner" by soothing his fears of punishment with the gift of a substitute who has already suffered his sentence for him; but nothing can be more pernicious than to console a sinner with the promise that he shall escape the punishment he has justly deserved. The Atonement may meet the first superficial feelings of a man startled into the consciousness of his sinfulness, it may soothe the first vague fears and act as an opiate to the awakened conscience; but it does not fulfil the cravings of a heart deeply yearning after righteousness; it offers a legal justification to a soul which is longing for purity, it offers freedom from punishment to a soul longing for freedom from sin. The true penitent does not seek to be shielded from the consequences of his past errors: he accepts them meekly, bravely, humbly, learning through pain the lesson of future purity. An atonement which steps in between us and this fatherly discipline ordained by God, would be a curse and not a blessing; it would rob us of our education and deprive us of a priceless instruction. The force of temptation is fearfully added to by the idea that repentance lays the righteous penalty of transgression on another head; this doctrine gives a direct encouragement to sin, as even Paul perceived when he said, "shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Some one has remarked, I think, that though Paul ejaculates, "God forbid," his fears were well founded and have been widely realised. To the Atonement we owe the morbid sentiment which believes in the holy death of a ruffianly murderer, because, goaded by ungovernable terror, he has snatched at the offered safety and been "washed in the blood of the lamb." To it we owe the unwholesome glorying in the pious sentiments of such an one, who ought to go out of this life sadly and silently, without a sickening parade of feelings of love towards the God whose laws, as long as he could, he has broken and despised. But the Christian teachers will extol the "saving grace" which has made the felon die with words of joyful assurance, meet only for the lips of one who crowns a saintly life with a peaceful death. The Atonement has weakened that stern condemnation of sin which is the safeguard of purity; it has softened down moral differences, and placed the penitent above the saint; it has dulled the feeling of responsibility in the soul; it has taken away the help, such as it is, of fear of punishment for sin; it has confused man's sense of justice, outraged his feeling of right, blunted his conscience, and misdirected his repentance. It has chilled his love to God by representing the universal father as a cruel tyrant and a remorseless and unjust judge. It has been the fruitful parent of all asceticism, for, since God was pacified by suffering once, he would, of course, be pleased with suffering at all times, and so men have logically ruined their bodies to save their souls, and crushed their feelings and lacerated their hearts to propitiate the awful form frowning behind the cross of Christ. To the Atonement we owe it that God is served by fear instead of by love, that monasticism holds its head above the sweet sanctities of love and home, that religion is crowned with thorns and not with roses, that the _miserere_ and not the _gloria_ is the strain from earth to heaven. The Atonement teaches men to crouch at the feet of God, instead of raising loving, joyful faces to meet his radiant smile; it shuts out his sunshine from us, and veils us in the night of an impenetrable dread. What is the sentiment with which Canon Liddon closes a sermon on the death of Christ? I quote it to show the slavish feeling engendered by this doctrine in a very noble human soul: "In ourselves, indeed, there is nothing that should stay His (God's) arm or invite his mercy. But may he have respect to the acts and the sufferings of his sinless son? Only while contemplating the inestimable merits of the Redeemer can we dare to hope that our heavenly Father will overlook the countless provocations which he receives at the hands of the redeemed." Is this a wholesome sentiment, either as regards our feelings towards God or our efforts towards holiness? Is it well to look to the purity of another as a makewight for our personal shortcomings? All these injuries to morality done by the atonement are completed by the crowning one, that it offers to the sinner a veil of "imputed righteousness." Not only does it take from him his saving punishment, but it nullifies his strivings after holiness by offering him a righteousness which is not his own. It introduces into the solemn region of duty to God the legal fiction of a gift of holiness, which is imputed, not won. We are taught to believe that we can blind the eyes of God and satisfy him with a pretended purity. But that every one whose purity we seek to claim as ours, that fair blossom of humanity, Jesus of Nazareth, whose mission we so misconstrue, launched his anathema at whited sepulchres, pure without and foul within. What would he have said of the whitewash of unimputed righteousness? Stern and sharp would have been his rebuke, methinks, to a device so untrue, and well-deserved would have been his thundered "woe" on a hypocrisy that would fain deceive God as well as man.

These considerations have carried so great a weight with the most enlightened and progressive minds among Christians themselves, that there has grown up a party in the Church whose repudiation of an atonement of agony and death is as complete as even we could wish. They denounce with the utmost fervour the hideous notion of a "bloody sacrifice," and are urgent in their representations of the dishonour done to God by ascribing to him "pleasure in the death of him that dieth," or satisfaction in the sight of pain. They point out that there is no virtue in blood to wash away sin, not even "in the blood of a God." Maurice eloquently pleads against the idea that the suffering of the "well-beloved Son" was in itself an acceptable sacrifice to the Almighty Father, and he sees the atoning element in the "holiness and graciousness of the Son." Writers of this school perceive that a moral and not a physical sacrifice can be the only acceptable offering to the Father of spirits, but the great objection lies against their theory also, that the Atonement is still vicarious. Christ still suffers _for_ man, in order to make men acceptable to God. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to say this of the school as a whole, since the opinions of Broad Church divines differ widely from each other, ranging from the orthodox to the Socinian standing-point. Yet, roughly speaking, we may say that while they have given up the error of thinking that the death of Christ reconciles God to-us, they yet believe that his death, in some mysterious manner, reconciles us to God. It is a matter of deep thankfulness that they give up the old cruel idea of propitiating God, and so prepare the way for a higher creed. Their more humane teaching reaches hearts which are as yet sealed against us, and they are the John Baptist of the Theistic Christ. We must still urge on them that an atonement at all is superfluous, that all the parade of reconciliation by means of a mediator is perfectly unnecessary as between God and his child, man; that the notion put forward that Christ realised the ideal of humanity and propitiated God by showing what a man _could_ be, is objectionable in that it represents God as needing to be taught what were the capacities of his creatures, and is further untrue, because the powers of God in man are not really the equivalent of the capabilities of a simple man. Broad Churchmen are still hampered by the difficulties surrounding a divine Christ, and are puzzled to find for him a place in their theology which is at once suitable for his dignity, and consistent with a reasonable belief. They feel obliged to acknowledge that some unusual benefit to the race must result from the incarnation and death of a God, and are swayed alternately by their reason, which places the crucifixion of Jesus in the roll of martyrs' deaths, and by their prejudices, which assign to it a position unique and unrivalled in the history of the race. There are, however, many signs that the deity of Jesus is, as an article of faith, tottering from its pedestal in the Broad Church school. The hold on it by such men as the Rev. J. S. Brooke is very slight, and his interpretation of the incarnation is regarded by orthodox divines with unmingled horror. Their _moral_ atonement, in turn, is as the dawn before the sunrise, and we may hope that it will soon develop into the real truth: namely, that the dealings of Jesus with the Father were a purely private matter between his own soul and God, and that his value to mankind consists in his being one of the teachers of the race, one "with a genius for religion," one of the schoolmasters appointed to lead humanity to God.

The theory of M'Leod Campbell stands alone, and is highly interesting and ingenious--it is the more valuable and hopeful as coming from Scotland, the home of the dreariest belief as to the relations existing between man and God. He rejects the penal character of the Atonement, and makes it consist, so to speak, in leading God and man to understand one another. He considers that Christ witnessed to men on behalf of God, and vindicated the father's heart by showing what he could be to the son who trusted in him. He witnessed to God on behalf of men--and this is the weakest point in the book, verging, as it does, on substitution--showing in humanity a perfect sympathy with God's feelings towards sin, and offering to God for man a perfect repentance for human transgression. I purposely say "verging," because Campbell does not _intend_ substitution; he represents this sorrow of Jesus as what he must inevitably feel at seeing his brother-men unconscious of their sin and danger, so no fiction is supposed as between God and Christ. But he considers that God, having seen the perfection of repentance in Jesus, accepts the repentance of man, imperfect as it is, because it is _in kind_ the same as that of Jesus, and is the germ of that feeling of which his is the perfect flower; in this sense, and only in this sense, is the repentance of man accepted "for Christ's sake." He considers that men must share in the mind of Christ as towards God and towards sin, in order to be benefited by the work of Christ, and that each man must thus actually take part in the work of atonement. The sufferings of Jesus he regards as necessary in order to test the reality of the life of sonship towards God, and brotherhood towards men, which he came to earth to exemplify. I trust I have done no injustice in this short summary to a very able and thoughtful book, which presents, perhaps, the only view of the Atonement compatible with the love and the justice of God; and this only, of course, if the idea of _any_ atonement can fairly be said to be consistent with justice. The merits of this view are practically that this work of Jesus is not an "atonement" in the theological sense at all. The defects of Campbell's book are inseparable from his creed, as he argues from a belief in the deity of Jesus, from an unconscious limitation of God's knowledge (as though God did not understand man till he was revealed to him by Jesus) and from a wrong conception of the punishment due to sin. I said, at starting, that the Atonement was the _raison d'etre_ of Christianity, and, in conclusion, I would challenge all thoughtful men and women to say whether good cause has or has not been shown for rejecting this pillar "of the faith." The Atonement has but to be studied in order to be rejected. The difficulty is to persuade people to _think_ about their creed, Yet the question of this doctrine must be faced and answered. "I have too much faith in the common sense and justice of Englishmen when once awakened to face any question fairly, to doubt what that answer will be."

ON THE MEDIATION AND SALVATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL CHRISTIANITY.

THE whole Christian scheme turns on the assumption of the inherent necessity of some one standing between the Creator and the creature, and shielding the all-weak from the power of the All-mighty. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God;" such is the key-note of the strain which is chanted alike by Roman Catholicism, with its thousand intercessors, and by Protestantism, with its "one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus." "Speak _thou_ for me," cries man to his favourite mouthpiece, whoever it may be; "go thou near, but let me not see the face of God, lest I die." The heroes, the saints, the idols of humanity, have been the men who have dared to search into the Unseen, and to gaze straight up into the awful Face of God. They have dashed aside all that intervened between their souls and the Eternal Soul, and have found it, as one of them quaintly phrases it, "a profitable sweet necessity to fall on the naked arm of Jehovah." Then, because they dared to-trust Him who had called them into existence, and to stretch out beseeching hands to the Everlasting Father, they have been forced into a position they would have been the very first to protest against, and have been made into mediators for men less bold, for children less confiding. Those who dared not seek God for themselves have clung to the garments of the braver souls, who have thus become, involuntarily, veils between their brother-men and the Supreme. There is, perhaps, no better way of demonstrating the radical errors from which spring all the so-called "schemes of redemption" and "economies of Divine grace" than by starting from the Christian hypothesis.

We will admit, for argument's sake, the Deity of Jesus, in order that we may thus see the more distinctly that a mediator of any kind between God and man is utterly uncalled for. It is mediation, in itself, that is wrong in principle; we object to it as a whole, not to any special manifestation of it. Divine or human mediators, Jesus or his mother, saint, angel, or priest, we reject them each and all; our birthright as human beings is to be the offspring of the Universal Father, and we refuse to have any interloper pressing in between our hearts and His.

We will take mediation first in its highest form, and speak of it as if Jesus were really God as well as man. All Christians agree in asserting that the coming of the Son into the world to save sinners was the result of the love of the Father for these sinners; _i.e._, "_God_ so loved the world that _He_ sent His Son." The motive-power of the redemption of the world is, then, according to Christians, the deep love of the Creator for the work of His hands. This it was that exiled the Son from the bosom of the Father, and caused the Eternal to be born into time. But now a startling change occurs in the aspect of affairs. Jesus has "atoned for the sins of the world;" he "has made peace through the blood of his cross;" and having done so, he suddenly appears as the mediator for men. What does this pleading of the Son on behalf of sinners imply? Only this--_a complete change in the Father's mind towards the world_. After the yearning love of which we have heard, after this absolute sacrifice to win His children's hearts, He at last succeeds. He sees His children at His feet, repentant for the past, eager to make amends in the future; human hands appealing to Him, human eyes streaming with tears. He turns His back on the souls He has been labouring to win; He refuses to clasp around His penitents the arms outstretched to them so long, unless they are presented to Him by an accredited intercessor, and come armed with a formal recommendation. The inconsistency of such a procedure must be palpable to all minds; and in order to account for one absurdity, theologians have invented another; having created one difficulty, they are forced to make a second, in order to escape from the first. So they represent God as loving sinners, and desiring to forgive and welcome them. This feeling is the Mercy of God; but, in opposition to the dictates of Mercy, Justice starts up, and forbids any favour to the sinner unless its own claims are first satisfied to the utmost. A Christian writer has represented Mercy and Justice as standing before the Eternal: Mercy pleads for forgiveness and pity, Justice clamours for punishment. Two attributes of the Godhead are personified and placed in opposition to each other, and require to be reconciled. But when we remember that each personified quality is really but a portion, so to speak, of the Divine character, we find that God is divided against Himself. Thus, this theory introduces discord into the harmonious mind which inspires the perfect melodies of the universe. It sees warring elements in the Serenity of the Infinite One; it pictures successive waves of love and anger ruffling that ineffable Calm; it imagines clouds of changing motives sweeping across the sun of that unchanging Will. Such a theory as this must be rejected as soon as realised by the thoughtful mind. God is not a man, to be swayed first by one motive and then by another. His mercy and justice ever point unwaveringly in the same direction: perfect justice requires the same as perfect mercy. If God's justice could fail, the whole moral universe would be in confusion, and that would be the greatest cruelty that could be inflicted on intelligent beings. The weak pliability, miscalled mercy, which is supposed to be worked upon by a mediator, is a human infirmity which men have transferred to their idea of God.

A man who has announced his intention to punish may be persuaded out of his resolution. New arguments may be adduced for the condemned one's innocence, new reasons for clemency may be suggested; or the judge may have been over-strict, or have been swayed by prejudice. Here a mediator may indeed step in, and find good work to do; but, in the name of the Eternal Perfection, what has all this to do with the judgment of God? Can His knowledge be imperfect, His mercy increased? Can His sentence be swayed by prejudice, or made harsh by over-severity?

But if His judgment is already perfect, any change implies imperfection, and all left for the mediator to do is to persuade God to make a change, _i.e._, to become imperfect; or, God having decided that sin shall be punished, the mediator steps in, and actually so works upon God's feelings that He revokes His decision, and--most cruel of mercies--lets it go unnoticed. Like an unwise parent, God is persuaded not to punish the erring child. But such is not the case. God is just, and because He is just He is most truly merciful: in that justice rests the certainty of the due punishment of sin, and, therefore of the purification of the sinner! and no mediator--thanks be to God for it!--shall ever cause to waver for one instant that Rock of Justice on which reposes the hope of Humanity.

But the theory we are considering has another fatal error in it: it ascribes imperfection to Almighty God. For God is represented as desiring to forgive sinners, and this desire must be either right or wrong. If it be right, it can at once be gratified; but if Justice opposes this forgiveness, then the desire to forgive is not wholly right. Theologians are thus placed in this dilemma: if God is perfect--as He is--any desire of His must likewise be flawlessly perfect, and its fulfilment must be the very best thing that could happen to His whole creation; on the other hand, if there is any barrier of right--and Justice _is_ right--interposed between God and His desire, then His Will is not the most perfect Good. Theologians must then choose between admitting that the desire of God to welcome sinners is just, or detracting from the Eternal Perfection.

It is obvious that we do not weaken our case by admitting, for the moment, the Deity of Jesus; for we are striking at the root-idea of mediation. That the mediator should be God is totally beside the question, and in no way strengthens our adversaries' hands. His Deity does nothing more than introduce a new element of confusion into the affair; for we become entangled in a maze of contradictions. God, who is One, even according to Christians, is at one and the same time estranged from sinners, pleading for sinners, and admitting the pleading. God pleads to Himself--but we are confounding the persons: one God pleads to another--but we are dividing the substance. Alas and alas for the creed which compels its votaries to deny their reason, and degrade their Maker! which babbles of a Nature it cannot comprehend, and forces its foolish contradictions on indignant souls! If Jesus be God, his mediation is at once impossible and unnecessary; if he be God, his will is the will of God; and if he wills to welcome sinners, it is God who wills to welcome them. If he, who is God, is content to pardon and embrace, what further do sinners require? Christians tell us that Jesus is one with God: it is well, we reply; for you say he is the Friend of sinners, and the Redeemer of the lost. If he be God, we both agree as to the friendliness of God to sinners. You need no mediator between you and Jesus; and, since he is God, you need no mediator with God. This reasoning is irrefragable, unless Christians are content to assign to their mediator some place which is less than divine; for they certainly derogate from his dignity when they imagine him as content to receive those whom Almighty God chases from before His face. And in making this difference between Jesus and the Father they make a fatal admission that he is distinct in feeling from God, and therefore cannot be the One God. It is the proper perception of this fact which has introduced into the Roman Church the human mediators whose intercession is constantly implored. Jesus, being God, is too awful to be approached: his mother, his apostles, some saint or martyr, must come between. I have read a Roman Catholic paper about the mediation of Mary which would be accepted by the most orthodox Protestant were Mary replaced by Jesus, and Jesus by the Father. For Jesus is there painted, as the Father is painted by the orthodox, in stern majesty, hard, implacable, exacting the uttermost farthing; and Mary is represented as standing between him and the sinners for whom she pleads. It is only a further development of the idea which makes the man Jesus the Mediator between God and man. As the deification of Mary progresses, following in slow but certain steps the deification of Jesus, a mediator will be required through whom to approach _her_; and then Jesus, too, will fade out of the hearts of men, as the Father has faded out of the hearts of Christians, and this superstition of mediation will sink lower and lower, till it is rejected by all earnest hearts, and is loathed by human souls which are aching for the living God.

We see, then, that mediation implies an absurd and inexplicable change in the supposed attitude of God towards man, and destroys all confidence in the justice of the Supreme Ruler. We should further take into consideration the strange feeling towards the Universal _Heart_ implied in man's endeavour to push some one in between himself and the Eternal Father. As we study Nature and try to discover from its workings something of the characteristics of the Worker therein, we find not only a ruling Intelligence--a _Supreme Reason_, before which we bow our heads in an adoration too deep for words--but we catch also beautiful glimpses of a ruling Love--a _Supreme Heart_, to which our hearts turn with a glad relief from the dark mysteries of pain and evil which press us in on every side. Simple belief in God at all, that is to say, in a Power which works in the Universe, is quite sufficient to disperse any of that feeling of fear which finds its fit expression in the longing for a mediator. For being placed here without our request, and even without our consent, we have surely, as a simple matter of justice, a right to demand that the Power which placed us here shall provide us with means by which we can secure our happiness. I speak, of course, as of a _conscious_ Power, because a blind Force is necessarily irresponsible; but those who believe in a God are bound to acknowledge that He is responsible for their well-being. If any one should suggest that to say thus is to criticise God's dealings and to speak with presumptuous irreverence, I retort that the irreverence lies with those who ascribe to the Supreme a course of action towards His creatures that they themselves would be ashamed to pursue towards their own children, and that they who fling at us the reproach of blasphemy because we will not bow the knee before their idol, would themselves lie open to the charge, were it not that their ignorance shields them from the sterner censure. All good in man--poor shallow streamlet though it be--flows down from the pure depths of the Fountain of Good, and any throb of Love on earth is a pulsation caused by the ceaseless beating of the Universal Father-Heart. Yet men fear to trust that Heart, lest it should cease beating; they fear to rest on God, lest He should play them false. When will they catch even a glimpse of that great ocean of love which encircles the universe as the atmosphere the earth, which is infinite because God is infinite? If there is no spot in the universe of which it can be said, "God is not here," then is there also no spot where love does not rule; if there is no life existing without the support of the Life-Giver and the Life-Sustainer, then is there also no life which is not cradled in the arms of Love. Who then will dare to push himself in between man and a God like this? In the light of the Universal Reason and the Universal Heart mediation stands confessed as an impertinent absurdity. Away with any and all of those who interfere in the most sacred concerns of the soul, who press in between the Creator and His offspring; between the heart of man and the parent Heart of God. Whoever it may be, saint or martyr, or the king of saints and martyrs, Jesus of Nazareth, let him come down from a position which none can rightly hold. To elevate the noblest son of man into this place of mediator is to make him into an offence to his brethren, and to cause their love to turn into anger, and their reverence into indignation. If men persist in talking about the need of a mediator before they dare to approach God, we must remind them that, if there be a God at all, He _must_ be just, and that, therefore, they are perfectly safe In His hands; if they begin to babble about forgiveness "_for the sake of Jesus Christ?_ we must ask them what in the world they mean by the forgiveness of sin?" Surely they do not think that God is like man, quick to revenge affront and jealous of His dignity; even were it possible for man to injure, in any sense, the Majesty of God, do they conceive that God is an irascible and revengeful Potentate? Those who think thus of God can never--I assert boldly--have caught the smallest glimpse of _God_. They may have seen a "magnified man," but they have seen nothing more; they have never prostrated themselves before that Universal Spirit who dwells in this vast universe; they have never felt their own littleness in a place so great. How _can_ sin be forgiven? can a past act be undone, or the hands go back on the sun-dial of Time? All God's so-called chastisements are but the natural and inevitable results of broken laws--laws invariable in their action, neither to be escaped or defied. Obedience to law results in happiness, and the suffering consequent on the transgression of law is not inflicted by an angry God, but is the simple natural outcome of the broken law itself. Put your hand in the fire, and no mediator can save you from burning; cry earnestly to God to save you, and then cast yourself from a precipice, and will a mediator come between you and the doom you have provoked? We should do more wisely if we studied laws and tried to conform ourselves to them, instead of going blundering about with our eyes shut, trusting that some one will interpose to shield us from the effects of our own folly and stupidity. Happily for mankind, mediation is impossible in that beautiful realm of law in which we are placed; when men have quite made up their minds that their happiness depends entirely on their own exertions, there will at last be some chance for the advancement of Humanity, for then they will work for things instead of praying for them. It is of real practical importance that this Christian notion of mediation should be destroyed, because on it hang all the ideas about trusting to some one else to do our own work. This plan has not answered: we judge it by results, and it has failed. Surely we may hope that as men get to see that prayer has not succeeded in its efforts to "move the arm which moves the world, to bring salvation down," they may turn to the more difficult, but also the more hopeful task, of moving their own arms to work out their own salvation. For the past, it is past, and none can reverse it; none can stay the action of the eternal law which links sorrow with transgression, and joy and peace with obedience. When we slip back on our path upward, we may repent and call on God or man for forgiveness as we list, but only through toil and suffering can the lost way be recovered, and the rugged path must be trodden with bleeding feet; for there is none who can lift the sinner over the hindrances he has built up for himself, or carry him over the rocks with which he has strewed his road.

Does the sentimental weakness of our age shrink from this doctrine, and whimper out that it is cold and stern? Ay, it is cold with the cold of the bracing sea-breeze, stringing to action the nerves enfeebled by hot-houses and soft-living; ay, it is stern with the blessed sternness of changeless law, of law which never fails us, never varies a hair's breadth. But in that law is strength; man's arm is feeble, but let him submit to the laws of steam, and his arm becomes dowered with a giant's force; conform to a law, and the mighty power of that law is on your side; "humble yourself under the mighty hand of God," who is the Universal Law, "and He shall lift you up."

So much for mediation. We turn with a still deeper repugnance to study the Christian idea of "Salvation." Mediation at least leaves us God, however it degrades and blasphemes Him, but salvation takes us altogether out of His Hands. Not content with placing a mediator between themselves and God, Christians cry out that He is still too near them; they must push Him yet further back, they must have a Saviour too, through whom all His benefits shall filter.

"Saviour," is an expression often found in the Old Testament, where it bears a very definite and noble meaning. God is the Saviour of men from the power of sin, and although we may consider that God does _not_ save from sin in this direct manner, we are yet bound to acknowledge that there is nothing in this idea which is either dishonouring or repulsive. But the word "Saviour" has been degraded by Christianity, and the salvation He brings is not a salvation from sin. "The Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ" is the Saviour of men, not because he delivers them from sin, but "because he saves them from hell, and from the fiery wrath of God." Salvation is no longer the equivalent of righteousness, the antithesis of sin; in Christian life it means nothing more than the antithesis of damnation. It is true that Christians may retort that Jesus "saves his people from their sins;" we gladly acknowledge the nobleness and the beauty of many a Christian life, but nevertheless this is _not_ the primary idea attached by popular Christianity to the word "salvation." "Being saved" is to be delivered out of "those hands of the living God," into which, as they are taught by their Bible, it is so fearful a thing to fall. "Being saved" is the _immediate_ result of conversion, and is the opposite of "being lost." "Being saved" is being hidden "in the riven side of Jesus," and so preserved from the awful flames of the destroying wrath of God. Against all this we, believers in an Almighty Love, in a Universal Father, enter our solemn and deliberate protest, with a depth of abhorrence, with a passion of indignation which is far too intense to find any adequate expression in words. There is no language strong enough to show our deeply-rooted repugnance to the idea that we can be safer anywhere or at any time than we are already here; we cannot repel with sufficient warmth the officious interference which offers to take us out of the hands of God. To push some one in between our souls and Him was bad enough; but to go further and to offer us salvation from our Maker, to try and threaten us away from the arms of His Love, to suggest that another's hands are more tender, another's heart more loving than the Supreme Heart,--these are blasphemies to which we will not listen in silence. It is true that to us these suggestions are only matters of laughter; dimly as we guess at the Deity, we know enough not to be afraid of Him, and these crude and childish conceptions about Him are among ourselves too contemptible to refute.

"Non ragione di lor, mai guardo e passo."

But we see how these ideas colour men's thoughts and lives, how they cripple their intellect and outrage their hearts, and we rise to trample down these superstitions, not because they are in themselves worth refuting, but simply because they degrade our brother-men. We believe in no wisdom that improves on Nature's laws, and one of those laws, written on our hearts, is that sorrow shall tread on the heels of sin. We are conscious that men should learn to welcome this law, and not to shrink from it. To fly from the suffering following on broken law is the last thing we should do; we ought to have no gratitude for a "Saviour" who should bear our punishment, and so cheat us out of our necessary lesson, turn us into spoiled children, and check our moral growth; such an offer as this, could it really be made, ought to be met with stern refusal. We should trust the Supreme so utterly, and adore His wisdom with a humility so profound, that if we could change His laws we should not dare to interfere; nor ought we, even when our lot is saddest, to complain of it, or do anything more than labour to improve it in steadfast obedience to law. We should ask for no salvation; we should desire to fall--were it possible that we _could_ be out of them--into the hands of God.

Further, is it impossible to make Christians understand that were Jesus all they say he is, we should still reject him; that were God all they say He is, we would, in that case, throw back His salvation. For were this awful picture of a soul-destroying Jehovah, of a blood-craving Moloch, endowed with a cruelty beyond human imagination, a true description of the Supreme Being, then would we take the advice of Job's wife, we would "curse God and die?" we would hide in the burning depths of His hell rather than dwell within sight of Him whose brightness would mock at the gloom of His creatures, and whose bliss would be a sneer at their despair. Were it thus indeed--

"O King of our salvation,
Many would curse to thee, and I for one!
Fling Thee Thy bliss, and snatch at Thy damnation,
Scorn and abhor the rising of Thy sun.

"Is it not worth while to believe," blandly urges a Christian writer, "if it is true, as it is true, that they who deny will suffer everlasting torments?" No! we thunder back at him, _it is not worth while_; it is not worth while to believe a lie, or to acknowledge as true that which our hearts and intellects alike reject as false; it is not worth while to sell our souls for a heaven, or to defile our honesty to escape a hell; it is not worth while to bow our knee to a Satan or bend our heads before a spectre. Better, far better, to "dwell with everlasting burnings" than to degrade our humanity by calling a lie, truth, and cruelty, love, and unreasonableness, justice; better to suffer in hell, than to have our hearts so hard that we could enjoy while others suffer; could rejoice while others are tormented, could sing alleluias to the music of golden harps, while our lyrics are echoed by the anguished wailing of the lost. God Himself--were He such as Christians paint Him--could not blot out of our souls our love of truth, of righteousness, of justice. While we have these we are _ourselves_, and we can suffer and be happy; but we cannot afford to pay down these as the price of our admission to heaven. We should be miserable even as we paced the golden streets, and should sit in tears beside the river of the water of life. Yet _this_ is salvation; _this_ is what Christians offer us in the name of Jesus; _this_ is the glad tidings brought to us as the gospel of the Saviour, as the "good news of God;" and this we reject, wholly and utterly, laughing it to scorn from the depths of our glad hearts which the Truth has made free; this we denounce, with a stern and bitter determination, in the name of the Universal Father, in the name of the self-reliance of humanity, in the name of all that is holy, and just, and loving.