Part 3 (1/2)

+True of all higher human experience.+--The same thing holds good in a lesser degree of everything worthy of Jesus in human experience. We do not account for any man's goodness or greatness by pointing to his ancestry. Heredity may account for a great deal, but it is inadequate as an explanation of genius or high moral achievement. If we go back far enough, we shall find that our ancestry was barbarous, and, judging from its tendencies, not at all likely to produce the Christ-man of future ages. Wherever the Christ-man appears, we have to acknowledge that the princ.i.p.al factor in his evolution is the incoming of the divine spirit. It is only another way of stating what has already been stated above, that the true man or higher self is divine and eternal, integral to the being of G.o.d, and that this divine manhood is gradually but surely manifesting on the physical plane. The lower cannot produce the higher, but the higher is shaping and transforming the lower; every moral and spiritual advance is therefore of the nature of a virgin birth--a quickening from above. The spiritual birth described in the conversation between our Lord and Nicodemus as given in the third of John is, properly speaking, a virgin birth. ”That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” ”Ye must be born anew,” or, literally, ”quickened from above.” Every man who deliberately faces towards the highest, and feels himself reenforced by the Spirit of G.o.d in so doing, is quickened from above; the divinely human Christ is born in him, the Word has become flesh and is manifested to the world.

+Human history one long incarnation.+--If now we can turn our thoughts away for a moment from the individual to the race and think of humanity as one being, or the expression of one being, we shall read this truth on a larger scale. All human history represents the incarnation or manifesting of the eternal Son or Christ of G.o.d. The incarnation cannot be limited to one life only, however great that life may be. It is quite a false idea to think of Jesus and no one else as the Son of G.o.d incarnate. It is easy to understand the loving reverence for Jesus which would lead men to regard Him as being and expressing something to which none of the rest of us can ever attain, but in affirming this we actually rob Him of a glory He ought to receive. We make Him unreal, reduce His earthly life to a sort of drama, and effect a drastic distinction in kind between Him and ourselves. If He came from the farther side of the gulf and we only from the hither; if we are humanity without divinity, and He divinity that has only a.s.sumed humanity,--perfect fellows.h.i.+p between Him and ourselves is impossible.

But it is untrue to say that any such distinction exists. Let us go on thinking of Jesus as Christ, the very Christ of glory, but let us realise that that same Christ is seeking expression through every human soul. He is incarnate in the race in order that by means of limitation He may manifest the innermost of G.o.d, the life and love eternal. To say this does not dethrone Jesus; it lends significance to His life and work. He is on the throne and the sceptre is in His hand. We can rise toward Him by trusting, loving, and serving Him; and by so doing we shall demonstrate that we too are Christ the eternal Son.

To think of all human life as a manifestation of the eternal Son, renders it sacred. Our very struggles and sufferings become full of meaning. Sin is but the failure to realise it; it is being false to ourselves and our divine origin; it is the centrifugal tendency in human nature just as love is the centripetal. There is no life, however depraved, which does not occasionally emit some sign of its kins.h.i.+p to Jesus and its eternal sons.h.i.+p to G.o.d. Wherever you see self-sacrifice at work you see the very spirit of Jesus, the spirit of the Christ incarnate. I find it everywhere, and it interprets life for me as nothing else can. Take up any work of fiction, no matter what, and you will find the author instinctively preaching this truth. Look into any commonplace, everyday life, no matter whose, and you will find it exemplified. Many a selfish bad man has one tender spot in his nature, his affection for his child, and for the sake of that child he will deny himself as he has never dreamed of doing for anything else; so far as that one influence is concerned he actually reverses the principle which governs the rest of his life. I have read of an African negress who on one occasion was beaten nearly to death by the brute to whom she was slave and paramour. Her murderer, for such he was, was arrested and placed on trial for his misdemeanour, in accordance with the rough justice of the white man in his dealings with the native. In the night the poor dying woman crawled painfully to the tree against which the ruffian lay bound, cut his cords, and set him free. It was her last act in this life; in the morning she was found lying dead on the spot whence the prisoner had fled. This particular story may or may not be true, but the same kind of thing has been true a million times in human history. What was the spirit in this benighted woman of the African wilds but the Christ spirit, the self-giving spirit seen with such unique sublimity in the life of Jesus?

Look abroad all through the world, look back upon the slow, upward progress of humanity to its home in G.o.d, and you will read the story of the incarnation of the eternal Son. Never has there been an hour so dark but that some gleams of this eternal light have pierced the murky pall of human ignorance and sin; never have bitter hate and fiendish cruelty gone altogether unrelieved by the human tenderness and self-devotion that testify of G.o.d. Indeed without the limitation, the struggle, and the pain, how would this Christ spirit ever have known itself? Granted that self-surrender had never been called for by the conditions of life, granted that our resources had always known themselves infinite, and that which is worthiest and sublimest in the nature of G.o.d and man alike could never have been revealed. This is why the eternal Son has become incarnate; this is what we are here to do, and upon the faithful doing of it depends our experience of the joy that the world can neither give nor take away. The life and death of Jesus are the central expression and ideal embodiment of this age-long process, a process the consummation of which will be the glorious return and triumphant ingathering of a redeemed and perfectly unified humanity to G.o.d. ”And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that G.o.d may be all in all.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE ATONEMENT

+I. a.s.sociation of the Doctrine with Jesus+

+Importance of the subject.+--This brings us to a subject, which, more than any other, with the exception of that of the person of Jesus, has come under discussion at the present time. In the course of Christian history it has created a more extensive literature than probably any other doctrine. I mean the subject variously known as Salvation, Redemption, Atonement, and with which the terms Forgiveness, Expiation, Reconciliation, Ransom, Justification, Propitiation, Satisfaction, Sanctification, and such like have been commonly a.s.sociated. The Christian doctrine of Atonement, as we may call it for convenience, bulks so large in Christian thought that all others may be held to be dependent upon it, even that of the person of Jesus; for, according to the received theology, Jesus became incarnate for our redemption, and that redemption can only be accomplished by one who is very G.o.d.

+The need for an adequate explanation.+--But there is no subject upon which modern Christian thought is less coherent than this. We are constantly hearing the statement that a rational theory of the Atonement is badly wanted, or that it is our duty to preach the fact without a theory, or that the Atonement is such a mystery that no theory is possible and we must just accept it on faith. This confession of helplessness shows that there is something seriously wrong with the conventional presentation of the doctrine. But I do not think the Atonement is such a very great mystery after all, and it ought to be possible to get at the heart of it without stultifying the intellect. Anyhow, let us try.

+The usual theological method of expounding it.+--As a rule treatises on the Atonement begin with an examination of the Scripture pa.s.sages which are supposed to have a bearing upon it. Then follows a careful examination and criticism of the various theories of it which have successively held the field during its history; the author concludes by giving us his own. I do not propose to follow that method, for it does not possess a living interest for the mind of to-day; the psychological should take precedence of the historical. I do not feel called upon to take the doctrine of Atonement for granted and then proceed to try to find a place for it in Christian experience. On the contrary, I prefer to take human nature for granted and inquire whether it needs anything like a doctrine of Atonement. If it does not, let the doctrine go; if it does, let us see that the doctrine is presented in a reasonable fas.h.i.+on. If it cannot be presented reasonably, it is not wanted. But I think it is wanted, and more than wanted; it is already taken for granted by everyone who thinks seriously about life, whether it is called by its theological name or not.

+Outline of present-day accepted belief in regard to it.+--Before I proceed to attempt to justify these statements let me ask my readers to call to mind the outline of what they have been taught in reference to this great fundamental of the Christian faith. Part of it has already been indicated, for it was hardly possible to avoid it when considering such a subject as that of the nature of evil or the divinity of Jesus.

Roughly stated it is as follows: Our fallen humanity is separated from and under the displeasure of G.o.d. G.o.d longs to save us from our sin, but justice demands that He must punish us. The world is already an unhappy place because of sin, but what we endure here is nothing to what we shall have to endure presently when we cross the river of death; we shall all go to h.e.l.l, a place of never-ending torment, unless some means can be found of justifying us before G.o.d ere we pa.s.s over.

This means has been found in the self-devotion of the second person in the Trinity. The sinless Son of G.o.d took upon Himself the likeness of sinful humanity, was born into this world, lived here for a few years, suffered a violent death, and then reascended to His Father to make unceasing intercession for mankind. It was the dying of the death that was the all-important thing. It was in consideration of this death that G.o.d agreed to pardon sin. Jesus was put to death because G.o.d had arranged that He should be put to death, and because Jesus was willing to be put to death, in order that a satisfactory offering might be made to divine justice for the sins of the world. G.o.d had to punish someone before he could be free to forgive His erring children, and therefore with the consent of Jesus He punished Him. The whole scheme was prearranged in heaven, cross and all, and therefore Jesus was not taken by surprise when the end came; He was, in fact, a party to it, and His murderers were in a sense only the instruments of a beneficent, foreordained plan. G.o.d accepts this sacrifice as a full and complete equivalent for all that humanity deserves, but we must individually appropriate it by faith or it will not avail for us; we shall go to h.e.l.l all the same. If on the other hand we do claim the benefit of this finished work, the merits of the Redeemer are imputed to us; we are held to be justified before G.o.d, and are gradually sanctified by the Holy Spirit operating within our souls and fas.h.i.+oning us into the moral likeness of our Lord.

+Conventional view both true and false.+--To say that these statements are wholly untrue is impossible, for they everyone contain a truth of considerable value, but as popularly stated they are misleading. This view of the Atonement is unethical, and, in my judgment and that of many others, has wrought a good deal of mischief in the past and bewilderment in the present. Some readers of these pages will no doubt find fault with me for stating it so baldly, and will maintain that no front-rank theologian or preacher would enunciate it in these terms to-day. Once again I can only repeat that they use language which implies it, and it seems impossible to resist the conclusion that they are driven to use the vaguer language because of their own feeling that the balder statement, which their predecessors made without hesitation, is intellectually and morally impossible, and yet they do not know what to put in its place. They are reluctant to give up the belief that in some way or other the death of Jesus on Calvary actually effected something in the unseen by making G.o.d propitious toward us and removing the barrier which prevented Him from freely forgiving human sin. Of course they add other and valuable elements in their discussion of the theme, but this is their central idea and they seldom get away from it.

The typical theologian never seems to think of looking at the death of Jesus from the purely human point of view, and yet surely this is the only legitimate thing to do when trying to get at the heart of the subject. It is what we should do in any other case of a like kind; we should never dream of doing anything else. We have no business to begin speculating upon transcendental questions until we have examined the purely human causes of such an event as the crucifixion of Jesus.

When an adherent of the so-called orthodox view of the doctrine of the Atonement is pressed to say just what he supposes the death of Jesus to have effected in the mind of G.o.d so as to free humanity from its curse, he usually takes refuge in phrases about the ”mystery of the cross,”

and so on. He does not say in plain language exactly what he means, for the truth is he does not know; he only believes what he has been told, and has persuaded himself that it is of the utmost value to Christian experience, which it is not and never was. The doctrine as popularly held is not only not true but it ought not to be true; it is a serious hindrance to spiritual religion. Why in the world should G.o.d require such a sacrifice before feeling Himself free to forgive His erring children? And why should it be regarded as in any real sense a subst.i.tute for what is due from us or any equivalent for what we should otherwise have to bear? Once more, perhaps, the dogmatic theologian will pull me up sharply and say that I am misrepresenting him, but I think I am on fairly safe ground in declaring that this is what the ordinary man in the pew as well as the man in the street understands by the saving work of Jesus, and he does so because of the language of the pulpit backed by the theological college preceptor. If this is the Atonement, there is little wonder that thoughtful minds will have nothing to say to it and that so many good people are puzzled to know what to think about it.

+The human causes of the crucifixion of Jesus.+--If the death of Jesus took place under similar circ.u.mstances to-day, we should be in no doubt as to what to call it. It was a barbarous and wicked murder instigated by base and unscrupulous men who wanted to get rid of a dangerous teacher. We do not need to search far in order to find reasons for the tragedy. There were reasons enough in the antagonism which had long existed between Jesus and the ecclesiastical rulers of Judea. Jesus held and taught a certain ideal concerning human life and its relation to G.o.d. At the beginning of His brief public ministry He seems to have thought that His invitation to men to realise their divine sons.h.i.+p would meet with a ready response, and that therefore the kingdom of G.o.d would without great difficulty be established upon earth through the working of the spirit of love in human hearts. At first He gained an extensive hearing because the Jewish people were willing and ready to listen to any teacher who would hold out to them some hope of a better and happier day. Consequently He was for a time extremely popular, and even the Pharisees deliberated as to whether He might prove to be the long-expected leader who should restore the kingdom to Israel. But this att.i.tude soon changed. People and rulers alike became disappointed with Jesus. They were looking for a kingdom which should come by force, and Jesus for one which should come by love. They wanted material benefits forthwith, while to Jesus these were altogether a secondary matter. Then, too, He became an inconvenience.

His standard of rect.i.tude was exacting. He saw through the hypocrisies and villanies of many of those who posed as the guides and directors of the nation, and He was not silent about them. He spoke out without fear or hesitation. What other people had been thinking and dared not say He said without pausing to consider what the consequences might be.

No wonder the ecclesiastics came to feel that He must be silenced at any cost. It can hardly be supposed that people in general were offended by His plain language concerning those in high places, but then they wanted Him to do something besides talk. They wanted to see Him drive out the Roman without delay and inaugurate the era of power and plenty. Jesus saw well enough what the end of all this must be.

He must either temporise a little, or go away and hide, or go straight on doing His work until the night came and He could work no more. He decided for the last-named course, leaving the results to G.o.d. It was in the line of His duty to go up to Jerusalem for the feast of the Pa.s.sover, so to Jerusalem He went. He could hardly have been under any delusion as to what awaited Him there. The crowds in the capital were very excited about Him; His name was on every lip, and there were many who would have declared for Him at once if He had only offered Himself as the national champion against the foreigner. But by this time priests, Pharisees, and scribes understood that, in their sense of the word, a national champion He would never be. The crisis was reached at the cleansing of the Temple. The moral greatness, the tremendous impressiveness, of the personality of Jesus were never more clearly demonstrated than on this occasion. There was no earthly reason why dove-sellers, money-changers, priests, and Temple officials should be driven pell-mell out of precincts they had come to look upon as their own, except that they were overawed by the stern majesty of this wonderful Galilean. For a brief hour Jesus was master of the situation; the next day He was arrested. The thing had to be done secretly and quickly, but those who planned it calculated rightly. No sooner was Jesus made a prisoner than the populace turned against Him and clamoured for His destruction. Those who know something of mob psychology will readily understand this. Human pa.s.sion easily swings from adoration to hate, as history has shown over and over again. If a strong man fails in a conflict of forces in a time of great public excitement, he is rarely allowed to sink quietly into oblivion; the mob turns upon him with the savagery of a wild beast. Napoleon was one day driving through the streets of Paris amid cheering crowds. One of his suite remarked to him that it must be gratifying to see how his subjects loved him. ”Bah!” said the Emperor, ”The same rabble would cheer just as madly if I were going to the guillotine.” He was right.

It was just the same with this Jerusalem crowd. The populace thought that the Jesus who had seemed so strong was not so strong after all, and therefore their base fury vented itself upon Him just as priests and Pharisees had foreseen.

These were the immediate causes of the death of Jesus. His execution was a judicial murder done to gratify sacerdotal spite and popular pa.s.sion, and the men who took part in it were guilty of what has proved to be the blackest deed in history. The same type of man exists to-day, as he has existed in every age, and if Jesus came again without saying who He was, history would repeat itself. I do not suppose His enemies would nail Him on a wooden cross,--public opinion would forbid that now, thanks to nineteen centuries of His gospel,--but they would find some means of making Him suffer, and they would invoke His own name to justify them in doing it.

+The reason why there was no supernatural interference.+--But is this all that can be said about the matter? Where does G.o.d come in? Why was a crime of this sort ever permitted? Why has the memory of it actually become a religious dogma? Other people have been put to death quite as unjustly, and the results, though great, are not to be compared with those which have followed from the death of Jesus. Why is this? As we have already seen, the popular view of the doctrine of Atonement presumes that this foul deed was in some way, as the scripture has it, by ”the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of G.o.d.” Was it really so? Was the whole dreadful drama merely a programme to be gone through in all its appointed stages, ending with the cry of the victim, ”It is finished”?

There is one sense, and only one, in which such a deed can be said to have been by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of G.o.d, and that is that G.o.d did not interfere to save Jesus from the last dread ordeal.

He allowed wickedness to do its worst, and thereby made the disinterested n.o.bleness of the character of Jesus all the clearer. In such a time as that in which Jesus lived such a life as His was sure to end on a Calvary of some kind, unless He ran away from it, or G.o.d supernaturally intervened to save Him. Neither event happened. If Jesus had shrunk from the full consequences of His actions; if He had temporised, concealed Himself, tried to gain time, or adopted any other subterfuge or expedient in order to save His life--that life would not have the moral power it possesses or s.h.i.+ne with such glorious l.u.s.tre in the world to-day. Supernatural interference would have dimmed the moral beauty of the faith, courage, and perfect self-devotion of Jesus.