Chapter VIII: Part 8

Not unnaturally, then, did the Hebrews regard with reluctance two of the leading features of Christianity; the death of the Messiah, and the freedom from the law. The Epistle addressed to them was designed to soothe their uneasiness, and to show that, if the Mosaic institutions were superseded, it was in conformity with principles and analogies contained within themselves. With great address, the writer links the two difficulties together, and makes the one explain the other. He finds a ready means of effecting this, in the sacrificial ideas familiar to every Hebrew; for by representing the death of Jesus as a commutation for legal observances, he is only ascribing to it an operation acknowledged to have place in the death of every lamb slain as a sin-offering at the altar. These offerings were a distinct recognition, on the part of the Levitical code, of a principle of _equivalents_ for its ordinances; a proof that, under certain conditions, they might yield: nothing more, therefore, was necessary, than to show that the death of Christ established those conditions. And such a method of argument was attended by this advantage, that, while the _practical end_ would be obtained of terminating all ceremonial observance, the law was yet treated as _in theory_ perpetual; not as ignominiously abrogated, but as legitimately commuted. Just as the Israelite, in paying his offering at the altar to compensate for ritual omissions, recognized thereby the claims of the law, while he obtained impunity for its neglect; so, if Providence could be shown to have provided a legal substitute for the system, its authority was acknowledged at the moment that its abolition was secured.

Let us advert, then, to the functions of the Mosaic sin-offerings, to which the writer has recourse to illustrate his main position. They were of the nature of a _mulct or acknowledgment rendered for unconscious or inevitable disregard of ceremonial liabilities, and contraction of ceremonial uncleanness_. Such uncleanness might be incurred from various causes; and, while unremoved by the appointed methods of purification, disqualified from attendance at the sanctuary, and "cut off" "the guilty" "from among the congregation." To touch a dead body, to enter a tent where a corpse lay, rendered a person "unclean for seven days"; to come in contact with a forbidden animal, a bone, a grave, to be next to any one struck with sudden death, to be afflicted with certain kinds of bodily disease and infirmity, unwittingly to lay a finger on a person unclean, occasioned defilement, and necessitated a purification or an atonement. Independently of these offences, enforced upon the Israelite by the accidents of life, it was not easy for even the most cautious worshipper to keep pace with the complicated series of petty debts which the law of ordinances was always running up against him. If his offering had an invisible blemish; if he omitted a tithe, because "he wist it not"; or inadvertently fell into arrear, by a single day, with respect to a known liability; if absent from disease, he was compelled to let his ritual account accumulate; "though it be hidden from him," he must "be guilty, and bear his iniquity," and bring his victim. On the birth of a child, the mother, after the lapse of a prescribed period, made her pilgrimage to the temple, presented her sin-offering, and "the priest made atonement for her." The poor leper, long banished from the face of men, and unclean by the nature of his disease, became a debtor to the sanctuary, and on return from his tedious quarantine brought his lamb of atonement, and departed thence, clear from neglected obligations to his law. It was impossible, however, to provide by specific enactment for every case of ritual transgression and impurity, arising from inadvertence or necessity. Scarcely could it be expected that the courts of worship themselves would escape defilement, from imperfections in the offerings, or unconscious disqualification in people or in priest. To clear off the whole invisible residue of such sins, an annual "day of atonement" was appointed; the people thronged the avenues and approaches of the tabernacle; in their presence a kid was slain for their own transgressions, and for the high-priest the more dignified expiation of a heifer; charged with the blood of each successively, he sprinkled not only the exterior altar open to the sky, but, passing through the first and holy chamber into the Holy of Holies (never entered else), he touched, with finger dipped in blood, the sacred lid (the Mercy-seat) and foreground of the Ark. At that moment, while he yet lingers behind the veil, the purification is complete; on no worshipper of Israel does any legal unholiness rest; and were it possible for the high-priest to remain in that interior retreat of Jehovah, still protracting the expiatory act, so long would this national purity continue, and the debt of ordinances be effaced as it arose. But he must return; the sanctifying rite must end; the people be dismissed; the priests resume the daily ministrations; the law open its stern account afresh; and in the mixture of national exactitude and neglects, defilements multiply again till the recurring anniversary lifts off the burden once more. Every year, then, the necessity comes round of "making atonement for the holy sanctuary," "for the tabernacle," "for the altar," "for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation." Yet, though requiring periodical renewal, the rite, so far as it went, had an efficacy which no Hebrew could deny; for ceremonial sins, unconscious or inevitable (to which all atonement was limited[19]), it was accepted as an indemnity; and put it beyond doubt that Mosaic obedience was commutable.

Such was the system of ideas, by availing himself of which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews would persuade his correspondents to forsake their legal observances. "You can look without uneasiness," he suggests, "on your ritual omissions, when the blood of some victim has been presented instead, and the penetralia of your sanctuary have been sprinkled with the offering: well, on no other terms would I soothe your anxiety; precisely such equivalent sacrifice does Christianity exhibit, only of so peculiar a nature, that, for _all_ ceremonial neglects, intentional no less than inadvertent, you may rely upon indemnity." The Jews entertained a belief respecting their temple, which enabled the writer to give a singular force and precision to his analogy. They conceived that the tabernacle of their worship was but the copy of a divine structure, devised by God himself, made by no created hand, and preserved eternally in heaven: this was "the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man"; which no mortal had beheld, except Moses in the mount, that he might "make all things according to that pattern"; within whose Holy of Holies dwelt no emblem or emanation of God's presence, but his own immediate Spirit; and the celestial furniture of which required, in proportion to its dignity, the purification of a nobler sacrifice, and the ministrations of a diviner priest, than befitted the "worldly sanctuary" below. And who then can mistake the meaning of Christ's departure from this world, or doubt what office he conducts above? He is called by his ascension to the pontificate of heaven; consecrated, "not after the law of any carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life"; he drew aside the veil of his mortality, and passed into the inmost court of God: and as he must needs "have somewhat to offer," he takes the only blood he had ever shed,--which was his own,--and, like the High-Priest before the Mercy-seat, sanctifies therewith the people that stand without, "redeeming the transgressions" which "the first covenant" of rites entailed. And he has not returned; still is he hid within that holiest place; and still the multitude he serves turn thither a silent and expectant gaze; he prolongs the purification still; and while he appears not, no other rites can be resumed, nor any legal defilement be contracted. Thus, meanwhile, ordinances cease their obligation, and the sin against them has lost its power. How different this from the offerings of Jerusalem, whose temple was but the "symbol and shadow" of that sanctuary above. In the Hebrew "sacrifices there was a remembrance again made of sins every year"; "the high-priest annually entered the holy place"; being but a mortal, he could not go in with his own blood and _remain_, but must take that of other creatures and _return_; and hence it became "not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should _take away_ sins," for instantly they began to accumulate again. But to the very nature of Christ's offering a perpetuity of efficacy belongs; bearing no other than "_his own_ blood," he was immortal when his ministration began, and "ever liveth to make his intercession"; he could "not offer himself often, for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world,"--and "it is appointed unto men _only once_ to die"; so that "_once for all_ he entered into the holy place, and obtained a redemption that is _perpetual_"; "_once_ in the end of the world hath he appeared, and by sacrificing himself hath absolutely _put away_ sin"; "this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God," "for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." The ceremonial, then, with its periodical transgressions and atonements, is suspended; the services of the outer tabernacle cease, for the holiest of all is made manifest; one who is "priest for ever" dwells therein;--one "consecrated for evermore," "holy, harmless, undefiled, in his celestial dwelling quite separate from sinners; who needeth not _daily_, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's; for this he did _once for all_ when he offered up himself."[20]

Nor is it in its perpetuity alone that the efficacy of the Christian sacrifice transcends the atonements of the law; it removes a higher order of ritual transgressions. It cannot be supposed, indeed, that Messiah's life is no nobler offering than that of a creature from the herd or flock, and will confer no more immunity. Accordingly, it goes beyond those "_sins of ignorance_," those ceremonial inadvertences, for which alone there was remission in Israel; and reaches to _voluntary_ neglects of the sacerdotal ordinances; insuring indemnity for legal omissions, when incurred not simply by the accidents of the flesh, but even by intention of the conscience. This is no greater boon than the dignity of the sacrifice requires; and does but give to his people below that living relation of soul to God which he himself sustains above. "If the blood of bulls and of goats ... sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purify (even) your conscience from dead works (ritual observances) to serve the living God!" Let then the ordinances go, and the Lord "put his laws _into the mind_, and write them _in the heart_"; and let all have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by this new and living way which he hath consecrated for us"; "provoking each other to love and to good works."

See, then, in brief, the objection of the Hebrews to the Gospel; and the reply of their instructor. They said: "What a blank is this; you have no temple, no priest, no ritual! How is it that, in his ancient covenant, God is so strict about ceremonial service, and permits no neglect, however incidental, without atonement; yet in this new economy throws the whole system away, letting us run up an everlasting debt to a law confessedly unrepealed, without redemption of it or atonement for it?"

"Not without redemption and atonement," replies their evangelical teacher; "temple, sacrifice, priest, remain to us also, only glorified into proportions worthy of a heavenly dispensation; our temple, in the skies; our sacrifice, Messiah's mortal person; our priest, his ever-living spirit. How poor the efficacy of your former offerings! year after year, your ritual debt began again: for the blood dried and vanished from the tabernacle which it purified; the priest returned from the inner shrine; and when there, he stood, with the interceding blood, before the emblem, not the reality, of God. But Christ, not at the end of a year, but at the end of the great world-era of the Lord, has come to offer up himself,--no lamb so unblemished as he; his voluntary and immortal spirit, than which was nothing ever more divinely consecrate, becomes officiating priest, and strikes his own person with immolating blow; it falls and bleeds on earth, as on the outer altar, standing on the threshold of the sanctuary of heaven: thither he ascends with the memorials of his death, vanishes into the Holy of Holies of the skies, presents himself before the very living God, and sanctifies the temple there and worshippers here; saying to us, 'Drop now for ever the legal burdens that weigh you down; doubt not that you are free, as my glorified spirit here, from the defilements you are wont to dread; I stay behind this veil of visible things, to clear you of all such taint, and put away such sin eternally. Trust, then, in me, and take up the freedom of your souls: burst the dead works, that cling round your conscience like cerements of the grave; and rise to me, by the living power of duty, and a loving allegiance to God.'"

So far, then, as the death of Christ is treated in Scripture dogmatically, rather than historically, its effects are viewed in contrast with the different order of things which must have been expected, had he, as Messiah, _not_ died. And thus regarded, it presented itself to the minds of the Apostles in three relations:--

First, to the Gentiles, whom it drew in to be subjects of the Messiah, by breaking down the barriers of his Hebrew personality, and rendering him spiritual as well as immortal.

Secondly, to the unbelieving Jews; whom his retirement from this world delivered from the judgment due to them, on the principles of their own law, both for their _general_ violation of the _conditions_ of their covenant, and for their positive rejection of him. His absence reopened their opportunities; and to tender them this act of long-suffering, he took on himself the death which had been incurred by them.

Thirdly, to the believing Jews; the terms of whose discipleship the Messiah's death had changed, destroying all the benefits of their lineage, and substituting an act of the mind, the simpler claim of faith. It was therefore a commutation for the Ritual Law, and gave them impunity and atonement for all its violations.

With the last two of these relations, beyond their remarkable historical interest, we have no personal concern. The first remains, and ever will remain, worthy of the glorious joy with which Paul regarded and expounded it. God has committed the rule of this world to no exclusive prince, and no sacerdotal power, and no earthly majesty; but to one whose spirit, too divine to be limited to place and time, broke through clouds of sorrow into the clearest heaven; and thither has since been drawing our human love, though for ages now he has been unseen and immortal. An impartial God, a holy and spiritual law, an infinite hope for all men, are given to us by that generous cross.

It is evident that all three of the relations which I have described belonged to the death of Jesus, _in his capacity of Messiah_; and could have had no existence if he had not borne this character, but had been simply a private martyr to his convictions. The foregoing exposition gives a direct answer to the inquiry, pressed without the slightest pertinence upon the Unitarian, why the phraseology of the cross is never found applied to Paul or Peter, or any other noble confessor, who died in attestation of the truth; why "no record is given that we are justified by the blood of Stephen; or that he bare our sins in his own body, and made reconciliation for us."[22] I know not why such a question should be submitted to us; we have assuredly no concern with it; having never dreamt that the Apostles could have written as they did respecting the death on Calvary, if they had thought of it only as a scene of martyrdom. We have passed under review the whole language of the New Testament on this subject; and in the interpretation of it have _not even once_ had recourse to this, which is said to be our only view of the cross. We have seen the Apostles justly announcing their Lord's death as a _proper propitiation_; because it placed whole classes of men, without any meritorious change in their character, in saving relations: declaring it a _strict substitute_ for others' punishment; on the ground that there were those who must have perished, if he had not; and that he died and retired, that they might remain and live: describing it as a _sacrifice which put away sin_; because it did that for ever, which the Levitical atonements achieved for a day: but we have not found them ever appealing to it either as a satisfaction to the justice of God, or an example of martyrdom to men. The Trinitarians have one idea of this event themselves; and their fancy provides their opponents with one idea of it; of the former not a trace exists, on any page of Scripture; and of the latter the Unitarian need not avail himself at all, in explaining the language whereof it is said to be his solitary key.

Nowhere, then, in Scripture do we meet with anything corresponding with the prevailing notions of vicarious redemption; everywhere, and most emphatically in the personal instructions of our Lord, do we find a doctrine of forgiveness, and an idea of salvation, utterly inconsistent with it. He spake often of the unqualified clemency of God to his returning children; never once of the satisfaction demanded by his justice. He spake of the joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth; but was silent on the sacrificial faith, without which penitence is said to be unavailing. Nor did he, like his modern disciples, teach that there are _two separate salvations_, which must follow each other in a fixed order: first, redemption from the penalty, secondly, from the spirit, of sin; pardon for the past, before sanctification in the present; a removal of the "hinderance in God," previous to its annihilation in ourselves. If indeed there were in Christianity two deliverances, discriminated and successive, it would be more in accordance with its spirit to invert this order;--to recall from alienation first, and announce forgiveness afterwards; to restore from guilt, before cancelling the penalty; and permit the _healing_ to anticipate the _pardoning_ love. At least, there would seem, in such arrangement, to be a greater jealousy for the holiness of the divine law, a severer reservation of God's complacency for those who have broken from the service of sin, than in the system which proclaims impunity to the rebel will, ere yet its estrangement is renounced. If the outward remission precedes the inward sanctification, then does God admit to favor the yet unsanctified; guilt keeps us in no exile from him: and though the Holy Spirit is to follow afterwards, it becomes the peculiar office of the cross to lift us as we are, with every stain upon the soul and every vile habit unretraced, from the brink of perdition to the assurance of glory: the divine lot is given to us, before the divine love is awakened in us; and the heirs of heaven have yet to become the children of holiness. With what consistency can the advocates of such an economy accuse its opponents of dealing lightly with sin, of deluding men into a false trust, and administering seductive flatteries to human nature?[23] What! shall we, who plant in every soul of sin a hell, whence no foreign force, no external God, can pluck us, any more than they can tear us from our identity,--we, who hide the fires of torment in no viewless gulf, but make them ubiquitous as guilt,--we, who suffer no outward agent from Eden, or the Abyss, or Calvary, to encroach upon the solitude of man's responsibility, and confuse the simplicity of conscience,--we, who teach that God will not, and even cannot, spare the froward, till they be froward no more, but must permit the burning lash to fall, till they cry aloud for mercy, and throw themselves freely into his embrace;--shall we be rebuked for a lax administration of peace, by those who think that a moment may turn the alien into the elect? It is no flattery of our nature, to reverence deeply its moral capacities: we only discern in them the more solemn trust, and see in their abuse the fouler shame. And it is not of what men _are_, but of what they _might be_, that we encourage noble and cheerful thoughts. Doubtless, we think exaggeration possible (which our opponents apparently do not) even in the portraiture of their actual character: and perhaps we are not the less likely to awaken true convictions of sin, that we strive to speak of it with the voice of discriminative justice, instead of the monotonous thunders of vengeance; and to draw its image in the natural tints provided by the conscience, rather than in the preternatural flame-color mingled in the crucibles of hell.

In making _penal_ redemption and _moral_ redemption separate and successive, the vicarious scheme, we submit, is inconsistent with the Christian idea of salvation. Not that we take the second, and reject the first, as our Trinitarian friends imagine; nor that we invert their order. We accept them both; putting them, however, not in succession, but in super-position, so that they coalesce. The power and the punishment of sin perish together; and together begin the holiness and the bliss of heaven. Whatever extracts the poison cools the sting: nor can the divine vigor of spiritual health enter, without its freedom and its joy. That there can be any separate dealings with our past guilt and with our present character, is not a truth of God, but a fiction of the schools. The sanctification of the one is the redemption of the other. The mind given up to passion, or chained to self, or anyhow alienated from the love and life divine, dwells, whatever be its faith, in the dark and terrible abyss; while he, and he only, that, in the freedom and tranquillity of great affections, communes with God and toils for men, understands the meaning, and wins the promises, of heaven. Am I asked: "What, then, is to persuade the sinful heart thus to draw near to God;--what, but a proclamation of absolute pardon, can break down the secret distrust, which keeps our nature back, wrapped in the reserve of conscious guilt?" I reply; however much these fears and hesitations might cling round us, and restrain us from the mystic Deity of Nature, they can have no place in our intercourse with the Father whom Jesus represents. It needs only that Christ be truly his image, to know "that the hinderance is not with him, but entirely in ourselves";[24] to see that there is no anger in his look; to feel that he invites us to unreserved confession, and accepts our self-abandonment to him,--that he lifts the repentant, prostrate at his feet, and speaks the words of severe, but truest hope. Am I told, "that only the gratitude excited by personal rescue from tremendous danger, by an unconditional and entire deliverance, is capable of winning our reluctant nature, of opening the soul to the access of the Divine Spirit, and bringing it to the service of the Everlasting Will"? I rejoice to acknowledge, that _some_ such disinterested power must be awakened, some mighty forces of the heart be called out, ere the regeneration can take place that renders us children of the Highest; ere we can break, with true new birth, from the shell of self, and try and train our wings in the atmosphere of God. The permanent work of duty must be wrought by the affections; not by the constraint, however solemn, of hope and fear; no self-perfectionating process, elaborated by an anxious will, has warmth enough to ripen the soul's diviner fruits; the walks of outward morality, and the slopes of deliberate meditation, it may keep smooth and trim; but cannot make the true life-blossoms set, as in a garden of the Lord, and the foliage wave as with the voice of God among the trees. I gladly admit that, to a believer in the vicarious sacrifice, the sense of pardon, the love of the Great Deliverer, may well fulfil this blessed office, of carrying him out of himself in genuine allegiance to a being most benign and holy. And perceiving that, if this doctrine were removed, there is not, _in the system of which it forms a part_, and which else would be all terror, anything that could perform the same generous part, I can understand why it seems to its advocates an _essential_ power in the renovation of the character. But great as it may be, within the limits of its own narrow scheme, ideas possessed of higher moral efficacy are not wanting, when we pass into a region of nobler and more Christian thought. Shall we say that the view of the Infinite Ruler, given in the spoken wisdom or the living spirit of Christ, has no sanctifying power? Yet where is there any trace in it of the satisfactionist's redemption? When we sit at Messiah's feet, that transforming gratitude for an extinguished penalty, on which the prevailing theology insists, as its central emotion, becomes replaced by a similar and profounder sentiment towards the Eternal Father. If to rescue men from a dreadful fate in the future be a just title to our reverence, _never to have designed_ that fate claims an affection yet more devoted; if there be a divine mercy in annihilating an awful curse, in shedding only blessing there is surely a diviner still. Shall the love restored to us after long delay, and in consideration of an equivalent, work mightily on the heart,--and shall that which asked no purchase, which has been veiled by no cloud, which has enfolded us always in its tranquillity, nor can ever quit the soul opened to receive it, fail to penetrate the conscience, and dissolve the frosts of our self-love by some holier flame? Never shall it be found true, that God must threaten us with vengeance, ere we can feel the shelter of his grace!

In truth, the Christian idea of salvation cannot be better illustrated, than by the doubt which has been entertained respecting the proper translation of my text. Some, referring it to spiritual redemption, adhere to the common version; others, seeing that the Apostle Peter is explaining "by what power or by what name" he had cured the lame man at the temple gate, refer the words to this miracle of deliverance, and render them thus: "Neither is there _healing_ in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we can be _healed_." It matters little which it is; for whether we speak of body or of mind, Jesus "_saves_" us by "_making us whole_"; by putting forth upon us a divine and healing power, by which past suffering and present decrepitude disappear together; which supplies the defective elements of our nature, cools the burning of inward fever, or calls into being new senses and perceptions, opening a diviner universe to our experience. The deformed and crooked will, bowed by Satan, lo! these many years, and nowise able to lift up itself, he loosens and makes straight in uprightness. The moral paralytic, collapsed and prostrate amid the stir of life, and incapably gazing on the moving waters in which others find their health, has often started up at the summons of that voice, though perchance "he wist not who it was"; and, going his way, has found it to be "the sabbath," and owned the "work" of one who is in the spirit of "the Father." From the eye long dark and blind to duty and to God, he has caused the film to pass away; and shown the solemn look of life beneath a heaven so tranquil and sublime. Even the dead of soul, close wrapped in bandages of selfishness,--that greediest of graves,--have been quickened by his piercing call, and have come forth, to learn, "when risen," that only in the meekness that can obey is there the power to command, only in the love that serves is there the life of heart-felt liberty. To call, then, on the name and trust in the spirit of Christ, is to invoke the restoring power of God; to give symmetry and speed to our lame affections, and the vigor of an athlete to our limping wills. There is not any Christian _salvation_ that is not thus identical with Christian _perfection_: "nor any other name under heaven given among men, whereby we may be (thus) _made whole_." Let all that would "be perfect be thus minded"; seek "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ"; and they shall find in him a "power to become the sons of God."

FOOTNOTES:

[13] See Rev. II. M'Neile's Lecture, The Proper Deity of our Lord the only Ground of Consistency in the Work of Redemption, pp. 339, 340.

[14] "Either he" ("the Deity of the Unitarians") "must show no mercy, in order to continue true; or he must show no truth, in order to exercise mercy. If he overlook man's guilt, _admit him to the enjoyment of his favor, and proceed_ by corrective discipline to restore his character, he unsettles the foundations of all equitable government, obliterates the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, spreads consternation in heaven, and proclaims impunity in hell. Such a God would not be worth serving. _Such_ tenderness, instead of inspiring filial affection, would lead only to reckless contempt."--_Mr. M'Neile's Lecture_, p. 313.

Surely this is a description, not of the Unitarian, but of the Lecturer's own creed. It certainly is no part of his opponents' belief, that God first admits the guilty to his favor, and _then "proceeds"_ "to restore his character." This arrangement, by which pardon _precedes_ moral restoration, is that feature in the Orthodox theory of the Divine dealings against which Unitarians protest, and which Mr. M'Neile himself insists upon as essential throughout his Lecture. "We think," he says, "that _before_ man can be introduced to the only true process of improvement, he must _first_ have forgiveness of his guilt." What is this "first" step, of pardon, but an "overlooking of man's guilt"; and what is the second, of "sanctification," but a "restoring of character"; whether we say by "corrective discipline," or the "influence of the Holy Spirit," matters not. Is it said that the guilt is not overlooked, if Christ endured its penalty? I ask, again, whether justice regards only the _infliction_ of suffering, or its _quantity_, without caring about its _direction_? Was it impossible for the stern righteousness of God freely to forgive the penitent? And how was the injustice of liberating the guilty mended by the torments of the innocent? Here is the verdict against sin: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And how is this verdict executed? The soul that had sinned does _not_ die; and one "that knew no sin" dies instead. And this is called a divine union of _truth_ and _mercy_; being the most precise negation of both, of which any conception can be formed. First, to hang the destinies of all mankind upon a solitary volition of their first parents, and then let loose a diabolic power on that volition to break it down; to vitiate the human constitution in punishment for the fall, and yet continue to demand obedience to the original and perfect moral law; to assert the absolute inflexibility of that holy law, yet all the while have in view for the offenders a method of escape, which violates every one of its provisions, and makes it all a solemn pretence; to forgive that which is in itself unpardonable, on condition of the suicide of a God, is to shock and confound all notions of rectitude, without affording even the sublimity of a savage grandeur. This will be called "blasphemy"; and it is so; but the blasphemy is not in the _words_, but in the _thing_.

Unitarians are falsely accused of representing God as "overlooking man's guilt." They hold, that _no guilt is overlooked till it is eradicated from the soul_; and that pardon proceeds _pari passu_ with sanctification.

[15] Mr. Buddicom has the following note, intimating his approbation of this rendering: "Some of the best commentators have connected εν τω αυτου αιματι, not with δια της πιστεως, but with ἱλαστηριον and, accordingly, Bishop Bull renders the passage, 'Quem proposuit Deus placamentum in sanguine suo per fidem.'"--_Lecture on Atonement_, p. 496.

[16] John i. 29. For an example of the use of the word "_world_" to denote the Gentiles, see Rom. xi. 12-15; where St. Paul, speaking of the rejection of the Messiah by the Jews, declares that it is only temporary; and as it has given occasion for the adoption of the Gentiles, so will this lead, by ultimate reaction, to the readmission of Israel; a consummation in which the Gentiles should rejoice without boasting or high-mindedness. "If," he says, "the fall of them (the Israelites) be the riches of _the world_ (the Gentiles), and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness! For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the Apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify my office; if, by any means, I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh (the Jews), and save some of them; for if the casting away of them be the _reconciling of the world_, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?"

[17] Acts xx. 28. It is hardly necessary to say, that the reading of our common version, "_church of God_," wants the support of the best authorities; and that, with the general consent of the most competent critics, Griesbach reads "_church of the Lord_."

[18] Gal. iii. 13. Even here the Apostle cannot refrain from adverting to his _Gentile_ interpretation of the cross; for he adds,--"that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ."

[19] In three or four instances, it is true, a sin-offering is demanded from the perpetrator of some act of _moral wrong_. But in all these cases a suitable punishment was ordained also; a circumstance inconsistent with the idea, that the expiation procured remission of guilt. The _sacrifice_ appended to the _penal infliction_ indicates the twofold character of the act,--at once a _ceremonial defilement_ and a _crime_; and requiring, to remedy the one, an atoning rite,--to chastise the other, a judicial penalty. See an excellent tract by Rev. Edward Higginson, of Hull, entitled, "The Sacrifice of Christ scripturally and rationally interpreted," particularly pp. 30-34.

[20] Heb. vii. 27. Let the reader look carefully again into the verbal and logical structure of this verse; and then ask himself whether it is not as plain as words can make it, that Christ "once for all" _offered up_ "_a sacrifice first for_ HIS OWN SINS, and _then for the people's_." The argument surely is this: "He need not do the _daily_ thing, for he has done it _once for all_; the never-finished work of other pontiffs, a single act of his achieved." The sentiment loses its meaning, unless that which he did once is _the selfsame thing_ which they did always: and what was that?--the offering by the high-priest of a sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the people's. With what propriety, then, can Mr. Buddicom ask us this question: "Why is he said to have excelled the Jewish high-priest in _not_ offering a sacrifice for himself?" I submit, that no such thing is said; but that, on the contrary, it is positively affirmed that Christ _did_ offer sacrifice for his own sins. So plain indeed is this, that Trinitarian commentators are forced to slip in a restraining word and an additional sentiment into the last clause of the verse. Thus Pierce: "Who has no need, like the priests under the law, from time to time to offer up sacrifice first for his own sins, and after that for the people's. For this _latter_ he did once for all when he offered up himself; _and as to the former, he had no occasion to do it at all_." And no doubt the writer of the Epistle _ought_ to have said just this, if he intended to draw the kind of contrast which orthodox theology requires, between Jesus and the Hebrew priests. He limits the opposition between them to _one_ particular;--the Son of Aaron made offering _daily_,--the Son of God _once for all_. Divines must add _another_ particular;--that the Jewish priest atoned for _two_ classes of sins, his own and the people's,--Christ for the people's only. Suppose for a moment that this was the author's design; that the word "_this_," instead of having its proper grammatical antecedent, may be restrained, as in the commentary cited above, to the sacrifice for _the people's_ sins; then the word "daily" may be left out, without disturbance to the other substantive particular of the contrast: the verse will then stand thus: "Who needeth not, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice for his own sins; _for_ he offered up sacrifice for the people's sins, when he offered up himself." Here, all the reasoning is obviously gone, and the sentence becomes a mere inanity: to make sense, we want, instead of the latter clause, the sentiment of Pierce,--_for_ "he had no occasion to do this at all." This, however, is an invention of the expositor, more jealous for his author's orthodoxy than for his composition. I think it necessary to add, that, by leaving out the most emphatic word in this verse (the word _once_) Mr. Buddicom has suppressed the author's antithesis, and favored the suggestion of his own. I have no doubt that this was unconsciously done; but it shows how system rubs off the angles of Scriptural difficulties.--I subjoin a part of the note of John Crell on the passage: "De pontifice Christo loquitur. Quid verô fecit semel Christus? quid aliud, quam quod Pontifex antiquus statâ die quotannis[21] faciebat? Principaliter autem hic non de oblatione pro peccatis populi; sed de oblatione pro ipsius Pontificis peccatis agi, ex superioribus, ipsoque rationum contextu manifestum est."

The sins which his sacrifice cancelled must have been of the same order in the people and in himself; certainly therefore not moral in their character, but ceremonial. His death was, for himself no less than for his Hebrew disciples, a commutation for the Mosaic ordinances. Had he not died, he must have continued under their power; "were he on earth, he would not be a priest," or have "obtained that more excellent ministry," by which he clears away, in the courts above, all possibilities of ritual sin below, and himself emerges from legal to spiritual relations.

[21] This is obviously the meaning of καθ ἡμεραν in this passage; _from time to time_, and in the case alluded to, _yearly_; not, as in the common version, _daily_.

[22] Mr. Buddicom's Lecture on the Atonement, p. 471.

[23] See Mr. M'Neile's Lecture, pp. 302, 311, 328, 340, 341.

[24] Mr. M'Neile's Lecture, p. 338.

MEDIATORIAL RELIGION.

_The Nature of the Atonement, and its Relation to Remission of
Sins and Eternal Life._ By JOHN M'LEOD CAMPBELL. Cambridge:
Macmillan & Co. 1856.

This is a strange book. A Greek would have hated it. A Puritan would have found it savory, even where it was unsound. Rosenkranz, who has written on the _Æsthetik des Hässlichen_, would have been thankful for such a fund of illustration. Cumbrous, tiresome, monotonous, it has few attractions for the natural man, who may have a weakness in favor of pure English and nice grammar. It despises the graces of carnal literature, and treats all the color and music of language as the Roundheads treated a cathedral, silencing the "box of whistles" and smashing the "mighty big angels in glass." And yet, if you can get over its grating way of delivering itself, you will find it no barbaric product, but the utterance of a deep and practised thinker, charged with the richest experiences of the Christian life, and resolute to clear them from every tangle of fiction or pretence. Beneath the uncouth form there is not only severe truth, but great tenderness and beauty,--a fine apprehension of the real inner strife of tempted men, and an intense faith in an open way of escape from it, without compromise of any sanctity. The author, though not tuneful in his speech, has the gifts of a true prophet; and often enables one to fancy what Isaiah might have been if he had heard nothing but the bagpipe, and had set his "burdens" to its drone. Whether Mr. Campbell's style has been formed north of the Tweed, we know not. In any case, it is trained in the school of Calvinism; is untouched therefore by any feeling for art; and runs on with a sort of extemporaneous habit, insufficiently relieved by occasional flashes of grotesque and forcible expression. It is only in exterior aspect, however, that he presents the features of the rugged old Calvinism: and though the first-born of that system and its younger sons are distinguished like Isaac's children, "Esau is a hairy man, and Jacob is a smooth man," yet no true patriarch of the school can be so blind as not to see beneath our author's goat-skin dress, and know that he is other than the heir. In fact, the peculiarity of this work as a theological phenomenon is, that it is a destruction of Calvinism without any revolt from it,--an escape from it through its own interior. Its postulates are not denied. Its phraseology is not rejected. Its statement of the problem of redemption is in the main accepted. Its provision for the solution,--the Incarnation of the Son,--is sacredly preserved. Yet these elements are put into such play as to make it checkmate itself on its own area. Its definitions are shown to be suicidal; and its sharp-edged logic is used to cut through the ligaments that constrain and shape it.

We have spoken first of the _style_ of this book, because it strikes the reader at the outset, and is not unlikely to repel him if he is not warned. Of one other feature, derived from the same school, we must say a word, to qualify the admiration and gratitude which we shall then ungrudgingly tender to the author. In common with all the great masters of the "Evangelical" school, he is too much at home with the Divine economy; knows too well how the same thing appears from the finite and the infinite point of view; can tell too surely how a mixed nature, both divine and human, would feel on looking from both ends at once; and altogether goes with too close a search to the "secret place of the Most High." Not that he speaks unworthily on these high themes; we have nothing truer to suggest, except more silence. But we must confess that when a teacher lays down the conditions of divine possibility, expatiates psychologically on the sentiments of the Father and the Son, and seems as though he had been allowed a peep into the autobiography of God, we shrink from the sharp outlines, and feel that we shall believe more if we are shown less. With so many soundings taken, and so many channels buoyed, the sense of the shoreless sea is gone, and we find only a port of traffic, with coast-lights instead of stars. The temptation to this theological map-making has always proved peculiarly strong among the disciples of Geneva: and the reason is to be found in the very nature of the problem they have attempted to resolve. Religion has two foci to determine,--the divine nature and the human. Athanasius and the Greek influence fixed the doctrine of the Godhead: Augustine and the Latin Church defined the spiritual state of man. The one, it has been said, produced a theology; the other, an anthropology. In the construction of the former, it is obvious that the appeal could be made only to positive authority, whether of Scripture or the Church. On the Nicene question no one could pretend to have personal insight or scientific data: it must be decided by arbitrary vote on impressions of testimony. But for establishing a doctrine of humanity, the living resources of consciousness and experience were present with perpetual witness; every proposition advanced could be confronted with its corresponding reality: the disciple could not help carrying the dogma inward to the test of his self-knowledge. The scheme of the Trinity partook of the nature of a _Gnosis_, which dwelt apart from the stir of phenomena, and, having once set and crystallized, could only be hung up for preservation. The dogmas of human depravity and helplessness partook of the nature of a _Science_, coming in contact with the facts of life and character at every point. Moral experience had something to say to them: and unless they could keep good terms with it, they could not hope to hold their ground. Hence the Augustinian divines have been constrained to seek a _philosophy_ of religion, and to collate the text of their Scriptural system with the running paraphrase of actual life. No writers have contributed so much to lay bare the inmost springs of human action and emotion; have tracked with so much subtilty the windings of guilty self-deception, or so found the secret sorrow that lies at the core of every unconsecrated joy. If we must concede to the Roman Catholic casuists and the problems of the confessional the merit of creating an ethical Art embodied in systems of rules, we owe to the deeper Evangelical spirit, whether in its action or its reaction, the ground-lines of an ethical Philosophy;--or, if you deny that such a thing as yet exists, at least the true idea and undying quest of it. The disciples of Augustine, belonging to an anthropological school, have been naturally distinguished by a reflective and psychologic habit.

If it was the function of the Greek period to settle the doctrine of God, and of its Latin successor to define the nature of man, it was the aim of the _Reformation_, leaving these two extremes undisturbed, to find the way of mediation between them. So long as the great sacerdotal Church, living continuator of Christ's presence, was intrusted with the business, private Christians wanted no theory on the subject; all nice questions went into the ecclesiastical closet and disappeared. But as soon as ever the hierarchy fell out of this position, there was an immense void left to be filled. On the one hand, Infinite Holiness, quite alienated; on the other, Human Pravity, quite helpless: how was any approximation to be rendered conceivable? True, the great original Mediation on Calvary, which the papal priesthood pretended to prolong, remained; for it was fixed in history. But it lay a great way off, a fact in the old past; and its intervention was required to-day by Melancthon, and Carlstadt, and a whole generation quite remote from it. How was its power to be fetched into the present? how applied to men walking about in Wittenberg or Zürich? This was the problem which flew open by the cancelling of the Romish credentials: and the various answers to it constitute the body of Protestant theology. In one point they all agree, that, to replace the priestly media that are thrust out, _Personal Faith_ is the element that must be brought in. In what way this subjective state of the individual mind draws or appropriates the efficacy of the Incarnation; in what _order_ the redeeming process runs among the three given terms,--the alienated Father, the mediating Son, the believing disciple; whether any part of the process is moral and real, or all is legal and virtual;--these are questions which the Reformation has found it easier to open than to close. But answer them as you will, they entangle your thoughts in the mutual relations and sentiments of three persons; and cannot be discussed without establishing some principles of moral psychology, as the common grounds of intercommunion between minds finite and infinite, and dealing with hypothetical problems of divine as well as human casuistry. Hence the inevitable tendency of the doctrine of Mediation to venture on a natural history of the Divine Mind,--to construct a drama of Providence and Grace, with plot too artfully wrought for the free hand of Heaven, and traits too specific and minute for reverent contemplation.