Part 5 (1/2)

[9] Archbishop Whately, speaking of the word ?e?e?? and its meaning, says: ”This is an office a.s.signed to none under the Gospel scheme, except the ONE great High-Priest, of whom the Jewish priests were types.” (Elements of Logic. Appendix: Note on the word ”Priest.”) Of the ”_Gospel scheme_” this is quite true; of the _Church-of-England scheme_ it is not. There lies before me Duport's Greek version of the Prayer-Book and Offices of the Anglican Church: and turning to the Communion Service, I find the officiating clergyman called ?e?e??

throughout. The _absence_ of this word from the records of the primitive Gospel, and its _presence_ in the Prayer-Book, is perfectly expressive of the difference in the spirit of the two systems;--the difference between the Church _with_, and the ”Christianity _without_ Priest.”

[10] See Rom. vi. 2-4: ”How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Mr. Locke observes of ”St. Paul's argument,” that it ”is to show in what state of life we ought to be raised out of baptism, in similitude and conformity to that state of life Christ was raised into from the grave.” See also Col. ii. 12: ”Ye are ... buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of G.o.d, who hath raised him from the dead.” The force of the image clearly depends on the sinking and rising in the water.

[11] Mr. Dalton's Lecture on the Eternity of Future Rewards and Punishments, p. 760.

[12] Mr. Dalton's Lecture, p. 760.

INCONSISTENCY OF THE SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION.

”Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”--Acts iv. 12.

The scene which we have this evening to visit and explore, is separated from us by the s.p.a.ce of eighteen centuries; yet of nothing on this earth has Providence left, within the shadows of the past, so vivid and divine an image. Gently rising above the mighty ”field of the world,” Calvary's mournful hill appears, covered with silence now, but distinctly showing the heavenly light that struggled there through the stormiest elements of guilt. Nor need we only gaze, as on a motionless picture that closes the vista of Christian ages. Permitting history to take us by the hand, we may pace back in pilgrimage to the hour, till its groups stand around us, and pa.s.s by us, and its voices of pa.s.sion and of grief mock and wail upon our ear. As we mingle with the crowd which, amid noise and dust, follows the condemned prisoners to the place of execution, and fix our eye on the faint and panting figure of one that bears his cross, could we but whisper to the sleek priests close by, how might we startle them, by telling them the future fate of this brief tragedy,--brief in act, in blessing everlasting; that this Galilean convict shall be the world's confessed deliverer, while they that have brought him to this shall be the scorn and by-word of the nations; that that vile instrument of torture, now so abject that it makes the dying slave more servile, shall be made, by this victim and this hour, the symbol of whatever is holy and sublime; the emblem of hope and love; pressed to the lips of ages; consecrated by a veneration which makes the sceptre seem trivial as an infant's toy. Meanwhile, the sacerdotal hypocrites, unconscious of the part they play, watch to the end the public murder which they have privately suborned; stealing a phrase from Scripture, that they may mock with holy lips; and leaving to the plebeian soldiers the mutual jest and brutal laugh, that serve to beguile the hired but hated work of agony, and that draw forth from the sufferer that burst of forgiving prayer, which sunk at least into their centurion's heart. One there is, who should have been spared the hearing of these scoffs; and perhaps she heard them not; for before his nature was exhausted more, his eye detects and his voice addresses her, and twines round her the filial arm of that disciple, who had been ever the most loving as well as most beloved. She at least lost the religion of that hour in its humanity, and beheld not the prophet, but the son:--had not her own hands wrought that seamless robe for which the soldiers' lot is cast; and her own lips taught him that strain of sacred poetry, ”My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?” but never had she thought to hear it _thus_. As the cries become fainter and fainter, scarcely do they reach Peter standing afar off. The last notice of him had been the rebuking look that sent him to weep bitterly; and now the voice that alone can tell him his forgiveness will soon be gone! Broken hardly less, though without remorse, is the youthful John, to see that head, lately resting on his bosom, drooping pa.s.sively in death; and to hear the involuntary shriek of Mary, as the spear struck upon the lifeless body, moving now only as it is moved;--whence he alone, on whom she leaned, records the fact. Well might the Galilean friends stand at a distance gazing; unable to depart, yet not daring to approach; well might the mult.i.tudes that had cried ”Crucify him!” in the morning, shudder at the thought of that clamor ere night; ”beholding the things that had come to pa.s.s, they smote their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and returned.”

This is the scene of which we have to seek the interpretation. Our first natural impression is, that it requires no interpretation, but speaks for itself; that it has no mystery, except that which belongs to the triumphs of deep guilt, and the sanct.i.ties of disinterested love. To raise our eye to that serene countenance, to listen to that submissive voice, to note the subjects of its utterance, would give us no idea of any mystic horror concealed behind the human features of the scene; of any invisible contortions, as from the lash of demons, in the soul of that holy victim; of any sympathetic connection of that cross with the bottomless pit on the one hand, and the highest heaven on the other; of any moral revolution throughout our portion of the universe, of which this public execution is but the outward signal.

The historians drop no hint that its sufferings, its affections, its relations, were other than human,--raised indeed to distinction by miraculous accompaniments; but intrinsically, however signally, human.

They mention, as if bearing some appreciable proportion to the whole series of incidents, particulars so slight, as to vanish before any other than the obvious historical view of the transaction; the thirst, the sponge, the rent clothes, the mingled drink. They ascribe no sentiment to the crucified, except such as might be expressed by one of like nature with ourselves, in the consciousness of a finished work of duty, and a fidelity never broken under the strain of heaviest trial. The narrative is clearly the production of minds filled, not with theological antic.i.p.ations, but with historical recollections.

With this view of Christ's death, which is such as might be entertained by any of the primitive churches, having one of the Gospels only, without any of the Epistles, we are content. I conceive of it, then, as manifesting the last degree of moral perfection in the Holy One of G.o.d; and believe that, in thus being an expression of character, it has its primary and everlasting value. I conceive of it as the needful preliminary to his resurrection and ascension, by which the severest difficulties in the theory of Providence, life, and duty are alleviated or solved. I conceive of it as immediately procuring the universality and spirituality of the Gospel; by dissolving those corporeal ties which gave nationality to Jesus, and making him, in his heavenly and immortal form, the Messiah of humanity; blessing, sanctifying, regenerating, not a people from the centre of Jerusalem, but a world from his station in the heavens. And these views, under unimportant modifications, I submit, are the only ones of which Scripture contains a trace.

All this, however, we are a.s.sured, is the mere outside aspect of the crucifixion; and wholly insignificant compared with the invisible character and relations of the scene; which, localized only on earth, has its chief effect in h.e.l.l; and, though presenting itself among the occurrences of time, is a repeal of the decretals of Eternity. The being who hangs upon that cross is not man alone; but also the everlasting G.o.d, who created and upholds all things, even the sun that now darkens its face upon him, and the murderers who are waiting for his expiring cry. The anguish he endures is not chiefly that which falls so poignantly on the eye and ear of the spectator; the injured human affections, the dreadful momentary doubt; the pulses of physical torture, doubling on him with full or broken wave, till driven back by the overwhelming power of love disinterested and divine. But he is judicially abandoned by the Infinite Father; who expends on him the immeasurable wrath due to an apostate race, gathers up into an hour the lightnings of Eternity, and lets them loose upon that bended head. It is the moment of retributive justice; the expiation of all human guilt: that open brow hides beneath it the despair of millions of men; and to the intensity of agony there, no human wail could give expression.

Meanwhile, the future brightens on the elect; the tempests that hung over their horizon are spent. The vengeance of the lawgiver having had its way, the suns.h.i.+ne of a Father's grace breaks forth, and lights up, with hope and beauty, the earth, which had been a desert of despair and sin. According to this theory, Christ, in his death, was a proper expiatory sacrifice; he turned aside, by enduring it for them, the infinite punishment of sin from all past or future believers in this efficacy of the cross; and transferred to them the natural rewards of his own righteousness. An acceptance of this doctrine is declared to be the prime condition of the Divine forgiveness; for no one who does not _see_ the pardon can _have_ it. And this pardon, again, this clear score for the past, is a necessary preliminary to all sanctification; to all practical opening of a disinterested heart towards our Creator and man.

Pardon, and the perception of it, are the needful preludes to that conforming love to G.o.d and men, which is the true Christian salvation.

The evidence in support of this theory is derived partly from natural appearances, partly from Scriptural announcements. Involving, as it does, statements respecting the actual condition of human nature, and the world in which we live, some appeal to experience, and to the rational interpretation of life and Providence, is inevitable; and hence certain propositions, affecting to be of a philosophical character, are laid down as fundamental by the advocates of this system. Yet it is admitted, that direct revelation only could have acquainted us, either with our lost condition, or our vicarious recovery; and that all we can expect to accomplish with nature, is to harmonize what we observe there with what we read in the written records of G.o.d's will; so that the main stress of the argument rests on the interpretation of Scripture. The principles deduced from the nature of things, and laid down as a basis for this doctrine, may be thus represented:--

That man needs a Redeemer; having obviously fallen, by some disaster, into a state of misery and guilt, from which the worst penal consequences must be apprehended; and were it not for the probability of such lapse from the condition in which it was fas.h.i.+oned, it would be impossible to reconcile the phenomena of the world with the justice and benevolence of its Creator.

That Deity only can redeem; since, to preserve veracity, the penalty of sin must be inflicted; and the diversion only, not the annihilation of it, is possible. To let it fall on angels would fail of the desired end; because human sin, having been directed against an Infinite Being, has incurred an infinitude of punishment; which on no created beings could be exhausted in any period short of eternity. Only a nature strictly infinite can compress within itself, in the compa.s.s of an hour, the woes distributed over the immortality of mankind. Hence, were G.o.d personally One, like man, no redemption could be effected; for there would be no Deity to suffer, except the very One who must punish. But the triplicity of the G.o.dhead relieves all difficulty; for, while one Infinite inflicts, another Infinite endures; and resources are furnished for the atonement.

Amid a great variety of forms in which the theory of atonement exists, I have selected the foregoing; which, if I understand aright, is that which is vindicated in the present controversy. I am not aware that I have added anything to the language in which it is stated by its powerful advocate, unless it be a few phrases, leaving its essential meaning the same, but needful to render it compact and clear.

The Scriptural evidence is found princ.i.p.ally in certain of the Apostolical Epistles; and this circ.u.mstance will render it necessary to conduct a separate search into the historical writings of the New Testament, that we may ascertain how they express the corresponding set of ideas. Taking up successively these two branches of the subject, the natural and the Biblical, I propose to show, first, that this doctrine is inconsistent with itself; secondly, that it is inconsistent with the Christian idea of salvation.

I. It is inconsistent with itself.

(1.) In its manner of treating the principles of natural religion.

Our faith in the infinite benevolence of G.o.d is represented as dest.i.tute of adequate support from the testimony of nature. It requires, we are a.s.sured, the suppression of a ma.s.s of appearances, that would scare it away in an instant, were it to venture into their presence; and is a dream of sickly and effeminate minds, whose belief is the inward growth of amiable sentimentality, rather than a genuine production from G.o.d's own facts. The appeal to the order and magnificence of creation, to the structures and relations of the inorganic, the vegetable, the animal, the spiritual forms, that fill the ascending ranks of this visible and conscious universe;--to the arrangements which make it a blessing to be born, far more than a suffering to die,--which enable us to extract the relish of life from its toils, the affections of our nature from its sufferings, the triumphs of goodness from its temptations;--to the seeming plan of general progress, which elicits truth by the self-destruction of error, and by the extinction of generations gives perpetual rejuvenescence to the world;--this appeal, which is another name for the scheme of natural religion, is dismissed with scorn; and sin and sorrow and death are flung in defiance across our path,--barriers which we must remove, ere we can reach the presence of a benignant G.o.d. Come with us, it is said, and listen to the wail of the sick infant; look into the dingy haunts where poverty moans its life away; bend down your ear to the accursed hum that strays from the busy hives of guilt; spy into the hold of the slave-s.h.i.+p; from the factory follow the wasted child to the gin-shop first, and then to the cellar called its home; or look even at your own tempted and sin-bound souls, and your own peris.h.i.+ng race, s.n.a.t.c.hed off into the dark by handfuls through the activity of a destroying G.o.d; and tell us, did our benevolent Creator make a creature and a world like this? A Calvinist who puts this question is playing with fire. But I answer the question explicitly: All these things we have met steadily, and face to face; in full view of them, we have taken up our faith in the goodness of G.o.d; and in full view of them we will hold fast that faith. Nor is it just or true to affirm, that our system hides these evils, or that our practice refuses to grapple with them. And if you confess that these ills of life would be too much for your natural piety, if you declare, that these rugged foundations and tempestuous elements of Providence would starve and crush your confidence in G.o.d, while ours strikes its roots in the rock, and throws out its branches to brave the storm, are you ent.i.tled to taunt us with a faith of puny growth? Meanwhile, we willingly a.s.sent to the principle which this appeal to evil is designed to establish; that, with much apparent order, there is some apparent disorder in the phenomena of the world; that from the latter, by itself, we should be unable to infer any goodness and benevolence in G.o.d; and that, were not the former clearly the predominant result of natural laws, the character of the Great Cause of all things would be involved in agonizing gloom. The ma.s.s of physical and moral evil we do not profess fully to explain; we think that in no system whatever is there any approach to an explanation; and we are accustomed to touch on that dread subject with the humility of filial trust, not with the confidence of dogmatic elucidation.

Surely the fall of our first parents, I shall be reminded, gives the requisite solution. The disaster which then befell the human race has changed the primeval const.i.tution of things; introduced mortality and all the infirmities of which it is the result; introduced sin, and all the seeds of vile affections which it compels us to inherit; introduced also the penalties of sin, visible in part on this scene of life, and developing themselves in another in anguish everlasting. Fresh from the hand of his Creator, man was innocent, happy, and holy; and he it is, not G.o.d, who has deformed the world with guilt and grief.

Now, _as a statement of fact_, all this may or may not be true. Of this I say nothing. But who does not see that, _as an explanation_, it is inconsistent with itself, partial in its application, and leaves matters incomparably worse than it found them? It is inconsistent with itself; for Adam, perfectly pure and holy as he is reputed to have been, gave the only proof that could exist of his being neither, by succ.u.mbing to the first temptation that came in his way; and though finding no enjoyment but in the contemplation of G.o.d, gave himself up to the first advances of the Devil. Never surely was a reputation for sanct.i.ty so cheaply won. The canonizations of the Romish Calendar have been curiously bestowed on beings sufficiently remote from just ideas of excellence; but usually there is _something_ to be affirmed of them, legendary or otherwise, which, _if true_, might justify a momentary admiration. But our first parent was not laid even under this necessity, to obtain a glory greater than canonization; he had simply to do nothing, except to fall, in order to be esteemed the most perfectly holy of created minds. Most partial, too, is this theory in its application; for disease and hards.h.i.+p, and death unmerited as the infant's, afflict the lower animal creation. Is this, too, the result of the fall? If so, it is an _unredeemed_ effect; if not, it presses on the benevolence of the Maker, and, by the physical a.n.a.logies which connect man with the inferior creatures, forces on us the impression, that his corporeal sufferings have an original source not dissimilar from theirs. And again, this explanation only serves to make matters worse than before.

For how puerile is it to suppose that men will rest satisfied with tracing back their ills to Adam, and refrain from asking who was Adam's cause! And then comes upon us at once the ancient dilemma about evil; was it a mistake, or was it malignity, that created so poor a creature as our progenitor, and staked on so precarious a will the blessedness of a race and the well-being of a world? So far, this theory, falsely and injuriously ascribed to Christianity, would leave us where we were: but it carries us into deeper and gratuitous difficulties, of which natural religion knows nothing, by appending eternal consequences to Adam's transgression; a large portion of which, after the most sanguine extension of the efficacy of the atonement, must remain unredeemed. So that if, under the eye of naturalism, the world, with its generations dropping into the grave, must appear (as we heard it recently described[13]) like the populous precincts of some castle, whose governor called his servants, after a brief indulgence of liberty and peace, into a dark and inscrutable dungeon, never to return or be seen again, the only new feature which this theory introduces into the prospect is this: that the interior of that cavernous prison-house is disclosed; and while a few of the departed are seen to have emerged into a fairer light, and to be traversing greener fields, and sharing a more blessed liberty than they knew before, the vast mult.i.tude are discerned in the gripe of everlasting chains and the twist of unimaginable torture. And all this infliction is a penal consequence of a first ancestor's transgression! Singular spectacle to be offered in vindication of the character of G.o.d!

We are warned, however, not to start back from this representation, or to indulge in any rash expression at the view which it gives of the justice of the Most High; for that, beyond all doubt, parallel instances occur in the operations of nature; and that, if the system deduced from Scripture accords with that which is in action in the creation, there arises a strong presumption that both are from the same Author. The arrangement which is the prime subject of objection in the foregoing theory, viz. the vicarious transmission of consequences from acts of vice and virtue, is said to be familiar to our observation as a _fact_; and ought, therefore, to present no difficulties in the way of the admission of a _doctrine_. Is it not obvious, for example, that the guilt of a parent may entail disease and premature death on his child, or even remoter descendants? And if it be consistent with the Divine perfections that the innocent should suffer for others' sins at the distance of one generation, why not at the distance of a thousand? The guiltless victim is not more completely severed from ident.i.ty with Adam, than he is from ident.i.ty with his own father. My reply is brief: I admit both the fact and the a.n.a.logy; but the fact is of the exceptional kind, from which, by itself, I could not infer the justice or the benevolence of the Creator; and which, were it of large and prevalent amount, I could not even reconcile with these perfections. If then you take it out of the list of exceptions and difficulties, and erect it into a cardinal rule, if you interpret by it the whole invisible portion of G.o.d's government, you turn the scale at once against the character of the Supreme, and plant creation under a tyrant's sway. And this is the fatal principle pervading all a.n.a.logical arguments in defence of Trinitarian Christianity. No resemblances to the system can be found in the universe, except in those anomalies and seeming deformities which perplex the student of Providence, and which would undermine his faith, were they not lost in the vast spectacle of beauty and of good. These disorders are selected and spread out to view, as specimens of the Divine government of nature; the mysteries and horrors which offend us in the popular theology are extended by their side; the comparison is made, point by point, till the similitude is undeniably made out; and when the argument is closed it amounts to this: Do you doubt whether G.o.d could break men's limbs? You mistake his strength of character; only see how he puts out their eyes! What kind of impression this reasoning may have, seems to me doubtful even to agony. Both Trinitarian theology and nature, it is triumphantly urged, must proceed from the same Author; ay, but what sort of author is that? You have led me, in your quest after a.n.a.logies, through the great infirmary of G.o.d's creation; and so haunted am I by the sights and sounds of the lazar-house, that scarce can I believe in anything but pestilence; so sick of soul have I become, that the mountain breeze has lost its scent of health; and you say, it is all the same in the other world, and wherever the same rule extends: then I know my fate, that in this universe Justice has no throne. And thus, my friends, it comes to pa.s.s, that these reasoners often gain indeed their victory; but it is known only to the Searcher of Hearts, whether it is a victory against natural religion, or in favor of revealed. For this reason I consider the ”a.n.a.logy” of Bishop Butler (one of the profoundest of thinkers, and on purely moral subjects one of the justest too) as containing, with a design directly contrary, the most terrible persuasives to Atheism that have ever been produced. The essential error consists in selecting the difficulties,--which are the rare, exceptional phenomena of nature,--as the basis of a.n.a.logy and argument. In the comprehensive and generous study of Providence, the mind may, indeed, already have overcome the difficulties, and, with the lights recently gained from the harmony, design, and order of creation, have made those shadows pa.s.s imperceptibly away; but when forced again into their very centre, compelled to adopt them as a fixed station and point of mental vision, they deepen round the heart again, and, instead of ill.u.s.trating anything, become solid darkness themselves.

I cannot quit this topic without observing, however, that there appears to be nothing in nature and life at all a.n.a.logous to the vicarious principle attributed to G.o.d in the Trinitarian scheme of Redemption. There is nowhere to be found any proper transfer or exchange, either of the qualities, or of the consequences, of vice and virtue. The good and evil acts of men do indeed affect others _as well_ as themselves; the innocent suffer _with_ the guilty, as in the case before adduced, of a child suffering in health by the excesses of a parent. But there is here no endurance _for_ another, similar to Christ's alleged endurance in the place of men; the infliction on the child is not deducted from the parent; it does nothing to lighten his load, or make it less than it would have been, had he been without descendants; nor does any one suppose his guilt alleviated by the existence of this innocent fellow-sufferer. There is a nearer approach to a.n.a.logy in those cases of crime, where the perpetrator seems to escape, and to leave the consequences of his act to descend on others; as when the successful cheat eludes pursuit, and from the stolen gains of neighbors constructs a life of luxury for himself; or when a spendthrift government, forgetful of its high trust, turning the professions of patriotism into a lie, is permitted to run a prosperous career for one generation, and is personally gone before the popular retribution falls, in the next, on innocent successors. Here, no doubt, the harmless suffer _by_ the guilty, in a certain sense _in the place of_ the guilty: but not in the sense which the a.n.a.logy requires. For there is still no subst.i.tution; the distress of the unoffending party is not struck out of the offender's punishment; does not lessen, but rather aggravates, his guilt; and, instead of fitting him for pardon, tempts the natural sentiments of justice to follow him with severer condemnation. Nor does the scheme receive any better ill.u.s.tration from the fact, that whoever attempts the cure of misery must himself suffer; must have the shadows of ill cast upon his spirit from every sadness he alleviates; and interpose himself to stay the plague which, in a world diseased, threatens to pa.s.s to the living from the dead. The parallel fails, because there is still no transference: the appropriate sufferings of sin are not given to the philanthropist; and the n.o.ble pains of goodness in him, the glorious strife of his self-sacrifice, are no part of the penal consequences of others' guilt; they do not cancel one iota of those consequences, or make the crimes which have demanded them, in any way, more ready for forgiveness. Indeed, it is not in the good man's _sufferings_, considered as such, that any efficacy resides; but in his _efforts_, which may be made with great sacrifice or without it, as the case may be. Nor, at best, is there any proper annihilation of consequences at all accruing from his toils; the past acts of wrong which call up his resisting energies are irrevocable, the guilt incurred, the penalty indestructible; the series of effects, foreign to the mind of the perpetrator, may be abbreviated; prevention applied to new ills which threaten to arise; but by all this the personal fitness of the delinquent for forgiveness is wholly unaffected; the volition of sin has gone forth, and on it flies, as surely as sound on a vibration of the air, the verdict of judgment.