Chapter V: Part 5

So long, then, as this belief does lie at the foundation of all the great churches of Christendom, so long as it is employed in all the criticisms of us who do not any longer accept it, it seems to me that it is worth our while to reconsider the question for a little while, so that we may clear our minds and thoughts, and may fix our attention definitely and earnestly on that which ought to be the goal of all our endeavor, our enthusiasm and our hope.

Let us, then, look for just a few moments at this theory, and see what it means and implies.

It is said that our first father was put on probation, was called upon to decide, not for himself only, but for all his descendants, as to what the future history of the inhabitants of this planet should be. Two famous books were published only a few years ago by Dr. Edward Beecher, the eldest son in that famous family. These were "The Conflict of Ages" and "The Concord of Ages." Dr. Beecher argued that anything like a fair probation on the part of Adam was an impossibility. This in the face of the prevailing beliefs of the time when the books were written. He said that, if a man were to choose on such a momentous question as this, choose adequately, choose fairly, he must be so circumstanced and endowed that he could comprehend the entire result of his choice. He must be able to look down the ages imaginatively, and see on one hand all the line of sin and misery, of death, finite and eternal, which should issue from his choosing in one direction. He must be able to comprehend all the good, the music, the joy, the beauty, the glory, the infinite perfectibility, in this world and the next, which should follow his choice in the other direction. And he said that Adam had no such opportunity as that, and was not endowed with the ability or the experience to make any such momentous choice; in other words, that the fundamental basis of the whole theological scheme of the world was unjust and unfair.

This was Dr. Beecher's contention. How did he get over the difficulty? He believed in the pre-existence of human souls, and that in some other life before Adam there must have been an intelligent and fair choice, and that we here and now are only fighting out one stage of the results of that far-off decision. But, if you will stop to think of it a moment, you will see that this puts the difficulty only a little further back: it does not solve it. How does this first person, if it is so, countless millions of ages ago, happen to be endowed with intelligence and experience and ability enough to make such a momentous choice?

And now just consider a moment. Is it conceivable that a sane person should intelligently choose evil, unless he had some inherited bias or tendency in that direction? For what does the choice of evil mean? It means sorrow, it means pain, it means death, it means everything horrible, everything undesirable, and means that a person deliberately and intelligently pits himself against an infinite and almighty power in what he knows must be an eternally losing battle. Can you conceive of a sane person making such a choice as that?

If one of these first ancestors in the Garden of Eden, or no matter how far back, had a right to choose for himself, I deny his right to choose for me. What right had he to choose for you? What right had he to determine that you should be born with a perverted and corrupt nature, so that you would be certain to choose evil instead of good, helpless in the hands of a fate like this?

Now you may look at this theory any way you please, place this probationary choice at the beginning of human history on this planet, or place it just as far back as you will, it is inconceivable, it is unfair, it is unjust, it is insane, it is everything that is foolish and wrong. And yet, note clearly one thing. So long as the world believes this, so long as the one end and aim of human life, as held up to people, is to be saved, think of the waste, think of the time, the anxiety, the enthusiasms, the prayers, the consecrations; think of the wealth, think of the intellectual faculties, think of the moral devotion, this whole power of the world expended on a false issue, turned into wrong channels!

Is this a dead question? Is there no reason for us to consider it here in this latter part of the nineteenth century? Why, nine-tenths of Christendom to-day is spending its time in trying to propitiate a God who is not angry and trying to "save" souls that are not "lost." Expending its energies along mistaken channels towards issues that are entirely imaginary! Think, for example, if during the last two thousand years all the time and the money, all the intelligence, all the consecration, could have been spent on those things that would have really helped men to find out the meaning of life, and to illustrate that meaning in earnest living; suppose the money that has been spent on the cathedrals, on the monasteries, spent in supporting hordes and hordes of priests, spent in all the endeavor to save men in a future life, if all this had been used in educating men and training them into a comprehension of what kind of beings they really are, what kind of a world this is in which they have found themselves, spent in training them into mastery of themselves, spent in teaching them how to understand and control the forces of nature in order to serve and develop the higher life, think what a civilization might have been developed here on this poor old planet by this time! How much of the disease, how much of the corruption, how much of the unkindness, how much of the cruelty, how much of all that still remains in us of the animal, might have been outgrown, sloughed off, put underneath our feet!

Is it not, then, a vital question, so long as so many thousands, so many millions of people are still consecrating their time, their money, their energy, in the attempt to do that which does not need to be done?

Let us turn, now, and for a little while face another theory of human life; try to find out, or to suggest, what we are here on this planet for, what may be accomplished, how much of grand and true may be wrought out as the result of our attempt.

The philosopher Kant has somewhere said that there are three things needed to the success of a human life, "something to do, some one to love, something to hope for." The old Catechism says that the chief end of man is "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." I indorse the words of Kant; I agree most heartily and thoroughly with the Catechism. Philip James Bailey, the author of that once famous poem "Festus," has said,

"Life's but a means unto an end; that end, Beginning, mean, and end to all things, God."

This also I indorse. I believe that life is something inner, something deeper than that which we ordinarily think of as constituting the matters of chief concern regarding it. Let me quote two or three lines again from Bailey's "Festus," familiar to you because so fine.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. "He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."

What is human life, then? What is it for? The object of life is living. But what does living mean? Most people cannot answer that question, because they have never more than half lived, and consequently have never appreciated its depth and significance. As I have had occasion over and over and over again, to say to business men, and I like to say it on every opportunity, it seems to me, as I look over the face of society, that most people live only in some little fragmentary way, some corner of their being.

Most men spend their lives in the attempt to accumulate the means to live, and forget to begin to live at all. Sometimes, as you are riding through the country on a winter evening, you come to a silent farm- house, and you see one window lighted; and, if you should go and knock at the door, you would probably find out that the light is shining from the kitchen, where the family is gathered in the evening, perhaps as a matter of economy to save fire, perhaps to save trouble. And, if you examine the lives of these people, you would find that they live chiefly in the kitchen. They may have a sitting-room where they spend a few leisure hours; perhaps they have the beginning of a library; but they do not spend much time in that. They have little opportunity for the life of the parlor, representing the expansive, social human life which comes into contact with other lives. And so you will find that this, which is a figure, represents that which is true of most of us. We have only begun to live; and we live in the lower ranges of our nature, or perhaps we have touched life on a higher level in some tentative sort of way. But the most of us are only partly alive, have only developed a little of what is possible in us, have only come in contact with some fragments of this wonderful universe that is all around us on every hand.

What, then, is the meaning of life? What shall we try to do? What are we here for? I do not attempt to go into the profound explanation of mysteries too deep for me to answer, as to what must have been in the mind of God when he planned and created this universe of which we are a part. My task is a humbler one. Let us see if I can help you comprehend a little part of it. Take an illustration.

An immensely wealthy man suddenly dies, leaving his estates to a little boy seven or eight years of age. He has wide stretches of land, hill and valley, river, woods, all that is beautiful as making up a landscape. The house represents the accumulated resources of the experiences and the intelligence of a lifetime. There are not only beautiful drawing-rooms, telling of taste, but there is a library in which is all that the world has been able to accumulate of learning, of literature in every department. Here is another room containing instruments of music and the works of the great composers. There is an art gallery, containing some of the finest masterpieces in the way of painting and sculpture; and then there is a room devoted to scientific experiments,-- chemistry, the microscope, the telescope. Here are means and opportunity for finding out what the world has so far developed.

Now has this young boy come into possession of these things? He has inherited them, he is his father's heir. We say they belong to him; but do they belong to him? In what sense and to what extent do they belong to him? They belong to him just in so far and just as fast as he develops himself into capacity of comprehension and enjoyment, no faster, no farther. As he enters upon his inheritance then he is put under tutors. Some man comes to teach him the languages which he does not comprehend; and by and by that part of the library which is composed of books written in other speech than his own begins to belong to him. It belongs to the tutor a good deal more than it does to the child, until the child has learned the lessons of the tutor. And so another teacher comes to instruct him in art; and the masterpieces of art belong to the person of taste, of culture, with appreciation, to the teacher again, to any one who knows and who feels, instead of to the boy, who merely has possession of the title-deeds.

Do you see the suggestion of the picture? Man wakes up here on this planet what sort of a being? Not at first "a little lower than God," as the old Psalmist says of him, but only a little higher than the animals, ignorant of himself, ignorant of his surroundings, weak, undeveloped in every faculty and power. He begins, we say, to live; and what does that mean? He begins to explore this wonderful world, which is his heritage; and do you not see that along with this exploration there goes of necessity a process of self- development? I would pit against that statement of Kant's a phrase something like this. The object of life is threefold: it is to become all possible, it is to serve all possible, it is to enjoy all possible. But I cannot outline completely either one of these suggestions; for they blend, they intermingle, as you will see in a moment. They are like different notes in a piece of music that are so blended together that they constitute one tune, while separate they are only fragments, or discords.

The first thing, then, if a man wishes really to live, is that he should develop himself, unfold the faculties and powers which lie dormant in him. He is a child of God. He is capable of comprehending within his limit that which is divine. He is capable of being touched, played on, by all the phases and forces of the universe surrounding him. He is an instrument of ten thousand strings; and marvellous may be the music of his life.

First, he should be as complete an animal as possible. Then he should develop himself as a being capable of thinking, of knowing. How many men are there that take possession of the intellectual realm that lies around them on every hand? Just think. Let me hint suggestions, illustrations, in one or two directions. A man goes out for a walk in the park, or, better yet, into the country. The park is too artificial, perhaps, to carry just the meaning that I have in mind. Let it be a walk in the country, then. How much do the grasses and the flowers have to say to him?

I have a friend in Washington, a famous botanist, a botanist not only of all things that live and grow to-day, but who has pushed his researches back and down into the prehistoric ages so as to understand and explain the records, the prints, the leaves and twigs, the forms of every kind that are on the rocks and left to tell the story of a life that has passed away many thousands on thousands of years ago. How much of all this marvellous realm, or even a suggestion of it, is revealed to the ordinary man as he walks through the field?

Look in the direction of geology a moment. Here is a river course; here is the shape of a hill top; do they say anything to the ordinary man who walks with his head down, and occupied with some problem of Wall Street, perhaps? Here are marvels of creative power. God shaped the slope of that hill as really as though he smoothed it down with his hand. And he who understands the methods of world building, of landscape-sculpture, may stand in wonder and awe and reverence before the forces that have been at work for millions of years, and are at work the same to-day. How many men have even a conception of the wonders of the microscopic world? To how many men do the star have anything to say at night? A man looks at a bowlder, unlike any other rock there is to be found anywhere in the neighborhood, and perhaps he does not even ask a question about it; while a man who has made a careful study of these things sees spring up before him in his imagination that long ice age before man lived on the planet, when this bowlder was swept from some far-off place by the glacial power, deposited where it is, scraped on its surface by the passing of the ice, as if God himself had left his sign-manual here, his autograph, that he, in after- ages who might make himself capable of reading, might understand.

These merely as fragmentary, brief hints of what it is to live in the intellectual realm.

Go up to that realm where the intellect is blended with the emotions, the glamour of pictures, poetry, sculpture, music, beauty of color and form and sound. What a world this is, infinite resources of an infinite universe, appealing to, and, if a man responds, calling out the faculties and powers of his own nature that are capable of dealing with these things, so that a man may feel that he is thinking over the thoughts of God, tracing his footsteps, listening to the marvellous music of his words! This is one of the results of self-development, if a man is unfolding, developing himself, becoming as much as possible.

Now let us turn sharply to one of these other phases which I spoke of, of doing what we can to help the world. And now note, this universe is so cunningly contrived that a man cannot possibly be successful as a selfish man. It is one of the most conclusive proofs, it seems to me, not only of the divine goodness, but of the moral meaning and scope of the world. Selfishness is not wicked only, it is the most outrageous folly on the face of the earth. If a man develop himself, if he develops that which is finest in him, that which is best and sweetest and truest, he develops not only his power to think, but his capacity to love, his capacity to enjoy, and to bestow enjoyment; and he cannot possibly succeed in the long run, and in the best ways, on selfish lines.

People used to have a notion that he who grasped and retained everything he could get hold of was the fortunate, the successful man. People had an idea in politics, for example, that that nation was happiest which humbled other nations; and, if it was superior to all the rest, by as much as they were poor and devastated, this nation was fortunate. We know now that a nation finds its prosperity in that of other nations, in its ability to exchange, to trade, to carry on all the grand avocations of life with them. If a man writes a book, he wants the world intelligent enough to understand and appreciate it. If a man paints a picture, he wants artistic ability on the part of the public, so that they will appreciate and buy his pictures. If a man carves a statue, he wants the people to appreciate glory of form enough to see how great and true his work is, and reward him for his endeavor. In other words, no man would write a book, and go off with it alone by himself. No man would paint a picture, and hide it. No man would carve a statue, and conceal it from his fellows.

We have learned, and are learning constantly in every direction, that our happiness is involved in the happiness of other people. The world is haunted to-day and I thank God that it is with the thought of the unhappiness, the misery, of men. What does it mean? It means that men have developed so on their sympathetic side that they cannot be happy themselves while the world is unhappy. So you see that this self- development, which I placed as the chief thing at the outset in the meaning of life, carries with it the necessity on the part of those who are developed, of doing everything they can to develop and lift up everybody else; so that making the most of yourself means making the most of everybody else.

And now, if I turn for a moment to that other point, merely to distinguish it by itself, although I have been dealing with it all the while, the end and aim of life once more is to be happy. I am perfectly well aware that the old Puritan theology has taught otherwise, so far as this life is concerned. I was brought up with the feeling that, if I wanted to do anything, the chances were it was wrong, that it was a good deal more likely to be in the way of virtue if it was something that was disagreeable to me. And yet, curiously enough, this old Puritan theology invented and held up before men, as a lure to lead them to virtue, the most tremendous bribe that ever entered into the imaginations of men, eternal felicity on the one hand, and eternal woe on the other. So that it conceded the very thing that it seemed to deny, that men naturally and necessarily sought happiness, and could not possibly do otherwise.

And so we learn to live, to think, to serve others. We are beginning to learn also that this desire for happiness is natural, is necessary, is right. If a man is not happy, you may be sure there is something wrong. If there is pain in the body, it means disease, difficulty, obstruction, something out of the way. It means that God's laws are not perfectly kept. If there is pain up in the mental realm, pain in the moral realm, pain in the spiritual realm, it means always something wrong. Man ought to be happy. He ought to seek happiness as the great end and outcome of human life.

And we are learning, as the natural and necessary result of our experiences in knowing and in serving, that just in so far as we know the laws of God, just in so far as we obey the laws of God, just in so far as we help others to know and obey, just in so far there comes into our lives the blessedness of the blessed God.

The end of life, then, the object of life here on earth, is to develop ourselves to the utmost. It is to learn to know, take possession of our inheritance, this earth, control all its forces for the service of civilization. It is to rejoice in all this self-development, in all this help, in all this knowledge, in all this power. It is to feel ourselves thrilling with the consciousness that we are sons of God, and are co-operating with him in bringing about the grand result of the ages, the perfection of man.

And then what? Death? This is only one stage of our career. We are here at school; we learn our lessons or we do not; we attain the ends we seek after or we only partly attain them or do not attain them at all; and then we go on. Does that mean that it ends there? I do not believe it. I believe that it simply means that we go out into a larger opportunity, from the planet to the system, to the galaxy, to the universe, wider knowledge answering to more magnificent resources in the infinite universe. We, with undeveloped powers that may increase and advance forever, and a universe so complete, so exhaustless, that it may match and lure and lead and rejoice us forever; we being trained as God's children in God's likeness and helping others to attain the same magnificent ends, this I believe to be the significance, the meaning, the purpose, of life.

Are there any here this morning who think or fear that the taking away of the old idea concerning the results of Lying may remove moral motive, may undermine character, nay make people less careful to do right? It seems to me hat, if people understand the significance of this universe, and their relation to it, they will find that all the carelessness of motive, the ease of salvation, as they call it, is with the old idea. Our theory is a more strenuous and insistent one. Children are learning as they become wiser that evil is not only evil, but it is folly. A man wishes life, health, happiness, prosperity, all good. He learns, as he goes on, that the universe is in favor of the keeping of its own laws; and that, f he flings himself against the forces of the universe, he is only broken for his pains. If you wish to be healthful, sappy, strong, wish to attain any desirable thing, it is to be bound not in defiance of the laws of the universe, but in loving and tender obedience.

And, then, if you only remember that in this universe and coder the universal law of cause and effect you are building to-morrow out of to-day, and next week and next year, and all he future, that every thought, every word, every action, is cemented together as a part of this structure that you build, hat you can make your own future for good or ill, and that you cannot build it successfully except in accordance with he eternal laws of things, then you find that here are the most insistent and tremendous motives it is possible for the human mind to conceive.

This life of ours, if we lead it nobly and truly, then, we shall find to be a growth into the likeness of the Divine, a growth into an increasing opportunity to share the work of our Father in building and helping men, and that, as the result of this, joy, infinite joy, is to fill our hearts until we share the very blessedness of our Father.

God made our lives to be a song Sweet as the music of the spheres, That still their harmonies prolong For him who rightly hears. The heavens and the earth do play Upon us, if we be in tune: Winter shouts hoarse his roundelay, And tender sweet pipes June. But oftentimes the songs are pain, And discord mars our harmonies: Our strings are snapped by selfish strain, And harsh hands break our keys. But God meant music; and we may, If we will keep our lives in tune, Hear the whole year sing roundelay, December answering June. God ever at his keyboard plays, Harmonics, right; and discords, wrong: "He that hath ears," and who obeys, May hear the mystic song.

SIN AND ATONEMENT.

For the sake of clearness, and in order that you may definitely comprehend the doctrine of sin and atonement which I believe to be the true one, I need in the first place to outline as a background that which lies at the foundation of all the popular theologies of Christendom. I am perfectly well aware that at least a part of the time, while I am doing this, I shall be traversing ground with which you are already familiar. Some of it, however, I think may be somewhat strange to you.

The tradition begins with the story of a war in heaven. In some way rebellion began among the angels; and he who had been Lucifer, the light-bearer, prince among the glorious sons of God, took up arms of rebellion against the Almighty. Naturally, he failed in this inevitably losing battle, and was cast out into the abyss, with a third part of all the angels, who had followed him. Then the tradition goes on: God decided to create the world, that the sons of men born and trained here might ultimately take the places that had been held by the angels who had been cast out on account of their sin. But Satan, seeing this fair and beautiful earth, this wondrous handiwork of God, determined, if possible, to thwart and defeat the purposes of the Almighty. He therefore invades this beautiful world. He finds Adam and Eve in their condition of perfect felicity, innocent, but inexperienced; and they fall a ready prey to his intention.

They then share his rebellion, accept him instead of God as king. Henceforth they are followers of him in his age-long warfare against light and truth, and, unless in some way saved, are to be sharers of his eternal destiny, cast out into chains and darkness forever.

Now comes the necessity for noting for a moment the nature of sin on this theory. You see it is not ignorance, it is not weakness merely, it is not inherited passion only: it is conscious and purposeful rebellion against God, putting yourself at enmity with his truth, his righteousness, his love. In action it is some specific deed done against God or against his truth or his right. As a state of mind, it is a heart perverted, choosing always that which is evil, a heart at enmity with God and with all that is good; and the theologians have always been obliged, as a matter of consistency, to hold, no matter how noble, how unselfish men might appear to be, that the natural man has inherently, always, necessarily been evil. He carries about with him the taint of original sin; that is, sin of constitution, ingrained, inherited, that which is of the very fibre of his being. This is the character of man as required by the old theological systems; and this is how it happened to come about. Evil is not something natural, not imperfection, not something undeveloped, not yet outgrown. Sin originated outside of this world, invaded it, and worked its ruin and destruction.

Now comes the device that has been called the Atonement, by which it is supposed that God is going to be able to save at least a part of this rebellious humanity. There have been a good many different theories of the atonement that have been held, eighteen or twenty varieties of the doctrine, three or four of which I must outline, in order to make them clear to your mind, that you may see what have been the devices by which the theologians have supposed that they could find a way for the deliverance of man from this condition of loss, and fit him to share the felicity for which he was originally intended.

Of course, the main point in the whole scheme is that the Second Person of the Trinity becomes incarnate, comes down here to this world, is born, grows up, teaches, suffers and at last is put to an ignominious death. This is the central idea of the doctrine of the atonement; or, rather, the Christ is the central figure in that doctrine. But how is it supposed to work out the atonement that is necessary, in order that man may be saved? You will see that the world, according to the ideas I have been delineating, is in a condition of rebellion. What men need is to be persuaded that they are wrong, convinced of sin, in theological language, and then made repentant, and in some way be forgiven for the wrong which they have done.

Now it is supposed that God must invent some scheme by which to make it possible for him to save these lost and fallen men. If you read the parable of the Prodigal Son as Jesus has so tenderly, touchingly, beautifully outlined it for us, you will see that there is no thought or plan or necessity for either in that. The son left his home, followed the impulses and passions of youth, had gone among those that were degraded, had soiled his character, done despite to his father's love, injured his own nature, degraded himself by his associations and actions. But when at last he awakes, becomes conscious of his father's love and righteousness and truth, and says, "I will arise, and go to my father," there is no talk of God's not being ready to receive him, or not being able to receive him, or needing to have something done before he can receive him, no thought of anybody's suffering any more in order that he may be forgiven. You see all these elements that are associated with the popular doctrines of atonement are not once thought of, never even alluded to. He simply arises, and goes to his father; and his father is so anxious to help him that he goes to meet him before he reaches the father's house, and gladly falls on his neck and kisses him and folds him in his arms. It only needs that the son should recognize the righteousness and goodness of his father, and should wish to go back. That is the doctrine of Jesus as taught in this wonderfully sweet and beautiful parable.

Now what are the theories of atonement as outlined in the popular theology? For the first thousand years of Christian history one of the strangest conceptions possessed the ecclesiastical mind that has ever been dreamed of. It was held literally that through the sin of Adam the human race had become the rightful subjects of Satan, that they belonged to him. He was their king, their emperor, their ruler, and had a right to them in this world and the next. And so some diplomatic negotiations must be entered into with the Devil, in order to deliver a certain part of these his subjects, and open the way for them to be saved. So the Church Fathers taught that Satan recognized in Christ his old adversary in heaven, and he entered into a bargain with God that, if he could have Christ delivered over to him, in exchange for that he would give up his right to so many of the souls of men as were to be saved as the result of this compact. So the work of the atonement used to be preached as being this sort of bargain entered into with Satan.

But note what quaint, naive ideas possessed the minds of people at that time. Satan did not know that Jesus possessed a divine nature, and that, consequently, he could not beholden of death; and so, when he entered into this bargain, he was cheated, he found out to his dismay that he had lost not only humanity, but Christ also, had been defrauded of them both. This was the doctrine of the atonement that was preached during the early centuries of the Christian Church, at least in certain parts of Europe.

But later there came another doctrine, the belief that the sufferings of the Christ were a substitute offered to God for what would have been the sufferings of the lost. He was made sin for us, he who had known no sin, as the New Testament phraseology has it. So that he, being infinite, in a brief space of time during his little earthly career, during his suspension on the cross and his descent into hell, was able to suffer as much pain as all the lost would have suffered throughout eternity. And this suffering of the Christ was supposed to be accepted on the part of God as the substitute for that which he would have exacted on the part of the souls of those that for his sake were to be saved.

There is still another theory that I must mention briefly, that which is called the governmental theory, that which I was taught during my course of theological instruction. The idea was that God had a moral government to maintain, not only on this earth, but throughout the range of the universe among all his intelligent creatures, and, if he permitted his laws to be broken without exacting an adequate penalty, then all governmental authority would be overthrown. In other words, men took their poor human legal devices, their political ideals, and lifted them into the heavens, made them the models after which it was supposed God was to govern his great, intelligent universe.

So they said that God would be willing to forgive, he would like to forgive, he was loving and tender and kind, but it was not safe, safe for the interests of his universal government, for him to forgive any one until an adequate penalty had been paid in expiation of human sin.

You see, according to this theory, it does not apparently make much difference who it is that suffers, whether it is the person who has committed the sin or not; but somebody must pay an adequate penalty, and Jesus volunteered to do this, to be the victim, and so to deliver man from the righteous deserts which he had incurred as a transgressor of the law of God.

Gradually, however, as the world became civilized, as wider and broader thoughts manifested themselves in the human mind, as tenderer and truer feelings took possession of the human heart, these theories receded into the background; and there came to the front I remember the bitter controversies over it in my younger days what was called the Moral Theory of the Atonement. The originator and sponsor for this theory was the famous Dr. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford. He taught that God did not need the punishment of anybody to uphold the integrity of his moral government. He taught that God was not angry with the race, and did not care to exact a penalty before he was ready to forgive human sin. He taught that the inner nature of God was love, and that in the Second Person of the Trinity he came to earth, was born, grew up, taught, suffered, died, as a manifestation to the world of his love, of his goodness, of his readiness to forgive and help, and that the efficacy of the atonement as thus wrought on the part of the Christ was in its revelation to men of the love and saving power of righteousness.

This was the moral theory of the atonement. It was not supposed to work any result in the nature of God or his disposition towards men. Its effect was to work along the lines of human thought and human action: it was to affect men, and make them willing to be saved instead of making God willing to save them. This was the moral theory of the atonement; and you will see how it gradually approaches that which intelligent and free men, it seems to me, must hold to-day in the light of their careful study of human history and human nature. It is almost the theory which is being held by the freest and noblest men of to-day. The difference between it and that which I shall in a moment try to set forth is chiefly that Dr. Bushnell confines this work of the atonement to the person and history and character of one man instead of letting all men share in this divine and atoning work which is being wrought out through all the ages.

Let me now come to set forth what I believe to be the simple and demonstrated truth. My objections against this old theory are threefold. I will mention them, and have done with them in a word.

In the first place, the supposed origin of sin in heaven seems to me so absurd as to be utterly unthinkable. This idea of war in heaven, rebellion against God, smacks too much of the Old World traditions, of the mythologies of Greece and Rome and of other peoples. Jupiter could dethrone his father, the god Saturn, because Saturn was not almighty and all-wise. These gods of the ancient time were merely exaggerated types of human heroes and despots. There could be war among them, and one of them overthrown; and Jupiter could divide the universe, after he had conquered and dethroned his father, with his two brothers.

All this is reasonable, when you are talking about finite creatures; but try to think for one moment of an archangel, a pure and clear-eyed intelligence, deliberately choosing to rebel against Omnipotence! He must have known it would be utterly, absolutely, forever hopeless! Intelligent creatures do not rebel under conditions like that, particularly when you combine with the absolute hopelessness of the case the fact that he knew he was choosing misery, suffering, forever.

As I said, the whole conception of the origin of evil that implies the rebellion of a spiritual being who knew what he was doing is inexpressibly absurd, so absurd that we may dismiss it as impossible. If there were any such rebellion, if you waive the absurdity for the moment and consider the possibility, God would be responsible; for he made him. The whole theory is not only absurd: it is unjust in its implications towards both God and man. And then, and perhaps we need not say any more about it, we know that it is not true. It did not even originate in the Bible, it did not even originate among the Jews: it is nothing in the world but a pagan myth imported into Jewish tradition just a few hundred years before the birth of Jesus. It is of no more authority in rational human thought than the story of Jason or Hercules, not one particle.

Let us now turn, then, to what we know, from the history of man and the scientific study of the universe, to be something approaching the reality of things. People have always been talking about the origin of evil. It is not the origin of evil that we have to face or deal with or explain at all. Let me ask you to consider for a moment the condition of the world when man first appeared on this planet. Here among the lower animals were what? All the vices and all the crimes that we can conceive of, only they were not vices nor crimes at all. There were all the external actions and all the internal feelings and passions; but they were not vices, and they were not crimes. Why? Because there was no moral sense which recognized anything better, no moral standard in the light of which they might be judged.

Here, for example, in this lower world, were all hatreds, jealousies, envies, cruelties, thefts, greeds, murders, every kind of action that we speak of as evil in man. And yet I said there was no evil there, no moral evil there, because there was no consciousness, no recognition, of the distinction between the lower and the higher. This was a part of the natural and intended order of the development of life, not an accident, not an invasion from the outside, not a thwarting of the will of God, not an interference with his purpose, all of this a part of the working out of his purpose.

Now, when man appeared, what happened? The origin, not of evil, but the origin of goodness. A conscience was born. Man came into possession of a moral ideal, in the light of which he recognized something higher than this animalism that was all around him, and became conscious of the fact that he must battle against that, and put it under his feet. So that the life of the world, from that day to this, has been the growth, the gradual increase, and the gradual conquest of good over that which was in existence before.

There is no fall of man, then, there is no conscious and purposeful rebellion against God to be accounted for, there is no need of any devil to explain the facts. He is only an encumbrance, only in the way, only makes it difficult and practically impossible to solve our problem.

The old story was that, after the rebellion, pain and death and all evil came into the human world; and the natural world was blighted. Thorns and briers and thistles sprang up on every hand; and animals which before had been peaceful began to fight and destroy each other. We all know this to be a childish myth, and pagan. The actual history of the world has been something entirely other than that.

Now I do not wish that you should suppose that I minimize evil, that I make light of sin, that I do not properly estimate the cruelties and the wrongs that have devastated the world. I need only suggest to you that you look in this direction and that to see how hideous all these evils may be; how bitter, how cruel, is the fruit of wrong thoughts and of wrong actions. Look at a man, for example, divine in the possibilities of his being, but through vice, through drink, through habits of one kind and another, corrupted until it is an insult to a brute to call him brutal. We do not deny all this. Notice the cruelties of men towards each other, the jealousies, the envies, the strifes, the warfares. How one class looks down upon and treats with contempt another that is a little lower! How masters have used their slaves; how tyrants like Nero and Caligula have made themselves hideous spectacles of what is possible to humanity, on a stage that is world-wide and illuminated by the flash-lights of history!

I do not wish you to suppose for a moment that I belittle, that I underestimate these evils, only we do not need anything other than the scientific and historic facts of the world in order to account for them. What is sin, as science looks at it and treats it? Not something consciously and purposely developed, not something originating in a rebellion in some other world than this. It seems to me that we can very easily account for it when we recognize that man has been gradually coming up from the lower orders of life, and that he still has in him the snake and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all the wild, fierce passions of the animal world only partly sloughed off, not yet outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not understand yet the meaning of these divine laws and the divine life, glimpses of which now and then attract his attention and lure him on; when you remember that selfishness, misguided by ignorance, can believe that one man can get something for his behoof and happiness and good at the expense of the welfare of somebody else, and harm come only to the person that is defrauded. Right in here, if I had time to treat it in still further detail, it seems to me we have a simple and adequate explanation of all the evil that has ever blasted, blighted, and darkened the history of man.

Now, man being this kind of a creature, having an animal origin as well as a divine one, gradually climbing up out of this lower life and looking towards God as his ideal, what is it that he needs? Is there any need of atonement? All need of atonement! What does atonement mean? The word itself carries its clearest explanation. In its root it means "atonement," healing the division, whatever its nature or kind, bringing man into one-ness with God and men into one-ness with each other.

Now let me suggest to you a little as to the things that keep man and God apart, keep men away from each other; and they will suggest the atonement that is needed to heal all these divisions, and bring about that ideal condition of things that we dream of and pray for and talk about, when men shall perfectly love God, and when they shall love each other as themselves.

What is it that keeps man from God? First, it seems to me, it is ignorance. What man needs in order to bring him into oneness with God is first to have some clear conceptions of the divine, some high, sweet, noble thoughts of God, some knowledge of the laws of God as embodied in himself and in the universe around him. Man needs intelligence, then, to help him, needs education.

In the next place, he needs such a picture of God as shall; make him seem lovable. You cannot make the human heart love that which seems hateful. The picture of God, as he has been outlined to the world in the past, has repelled the human heart; and I do not wonder. I do not think it strange that humanity should be at enmity with that conception of the divine. Make God the ideal of all that is noble and sweet and lovely, and the heart will be as naturally attracted and drawn to him as a flower is toward the sun.

Then man needs to have his spiritual side developed, that in him which is akin to God, so that he shall naturally live out the divine love. Education, then, is all on man's side, you will see. God does not need to be changed: we need to know him, to love him, to come into conscious relationship with him. This is what we need, so far as our relation to God is concerned.

Now for the more important side; for it is infinitely the more important practically. Let me speak a little while of the work of atonement between man and man. If we trace the history of humanity, we find that men were scattered in groups all over the world, isolated, separated from each other, ignorant of each other, misunderstanding each other, hating each other, fighting each other; and the work of some other world than this. It seems to me that we can very easily account for it when we recognize that man has been gradually coming up from the lower orders of life, and that he still has in him the snake and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all the wild, fierce passions of the animal world only partly sloughed off, not yet outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not understand yet the meaning of these divine laws and the divine life, glimpses of which now and then attract his attention and lure him on; when you remember that selfishness, misguided by ignorance, can believe that one man can get something for his behoof and happiness and good at the expense of the welfare of somebody else, and harm come only to the person that is defrauded. Right in here, if I had time to treat it in still further detail, it seems to me we have a simple and adequate explanation of all the evil that has ever blasted, blighted, and darkened the history of man.

Now, man being this kind of a creature, having an animal origin as well as a divine one, gradually climbing up out of this lower life and looking towards God as his ideal, what is it that he needs? Is there any need of atonement? All need of atonement! What does atonement mean? The word itself carries its clearest explanation. In its root it means "atonement," healing the division, whatever its nature or kind, bringing man into one-ness with God and men into one- ness with each other.

Now let me suggest to you a little as to the things that keep man and God apart, keep men away from each other; and they will suggest the atonement that is needed to heal all these divisions, and bring about that ideal condition of things that we dream of and pray for and talk about, when men shall perfectly love God, and when they shall love each other as themselves.

What is it that keeps man from God? First, it seems to me, it is ignorance. What man needs in order to bring him into oneness with God is first to have some clear conceptions of the divine, some high, sweet, noble thoughts of God, some knowledge of the laws of God as embodied in himself and in the universe around him. Man needs intelligence, then, to help him, needs education.

In the next place, he needs such a picture of God as shall: make him seem lovable. You cannot make the human heart: love that which seems hateful. The picture of God, as he has been outlined to the world in the past, has repelled the human heart; and I do not wonder. I do not think it strange that humanity should be at enmity with that conception of the divine. Make God the ideal of all that is noble and sweet and lovely, and the heart will be as naturally attracted and drawn to him as a flower is toward the sun.

Then man needs to have his spiritual side developed, that in him which is akin to God, so that he shall naturally live out the divine love. Education, then, is all on man's side, you will see. God does not need to be changed: we need to know him, to love him, to come into conscious relationship with him. This is what we need, so far as our relation to God is concerned.