__________________________________________________________________

           Title: The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded in Principles of Universal
                  Obligation.
      Creator(s): Bushnell, Horace (1802-1876)
     Print Basis: Charles Scribner & Co., 1871
   CCEL Subjects: All; Theology
     __________________________________________________________________

THE

VICARIOUS SACRIFICE,

GROUNDED IN PRINCIPLES

OF

UNIVERSAL OBLIGATION:

BY

HORACE BUSHNELL.

  NEW YORK:
  CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., 654 BROADWAY.
  1871

   ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
   CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO.,
   In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
   for the Southern District of New York.

   STEREOTYPED BY R H. HOBBS,

   Hartford, Conn.
     __________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION.

   IT will commonly be found that half the merit of an argument lies in
   the genuineness of its aim, or object. If it is a campaign raised
   against some principle or doctrine established by the general consent
   of ages, there will always be a certain lightness in the matter of it
   that amounts to a doom of failure. If it is, instead, a contribution
   rather of such help as may forward the settlement of a doctrine never
   yet fully matured, or at least not supposed to be, the genuineness of
   the purpose may be taken as a weighty pledge for the solidity of the
   material. Nothing, meantime, steadies the vigor and fixes the tenacity
   of an argument, like that real insight which distinguishes accurately
   the present stage of the question, and the issue that begins already to
   be dimly foretokened. It quiets, too, in like manner, the confidence of
   the public addressed, and steadies the patience of their judgments, if
   they can discover beforehand, that it is no mere innovator that asks
   their attention, but one who is trying, in good faith, to make up some
   deficit, more or less consciously felt by every body, and bring on just
   that stage of progress in the truth, which its own past ages of history
   have been steadily preparing and asking for. No investigator appears,
   in this view, to be quite fair to himself, who does not somehow raise
   the suspicion, beforehand, that a hasty judgment allowed against him
   may be a real injustice to the truth.

   Under impressions like these, I undertook, at first, to pre pare, and
   actually prepared for the treatise that follows, a long, carefully
   studied, historical chapter, showing, as accurately as I was able, the
   precise point of progress at which we have now arrived, as regards the
   subject of it. In this investigation, I was able, as I believe, to make
   out these two very important conclusions:

   (1.) That no doctrine of the atonement or reconciling work of Christ,
   has ever yet been developed, that can be said to have received the
   consent of the Christian world.

   (2.) That attempts have been made, in all ages, and continually
   renewed, in spite of continually successive failures, to assert, in one
   form or another, what is called "the moral view" of the atonement, and
   resolve it by the power it wields in human character; and that
   Christian expectation just now presses in this direction more strongly
   than ever; raising a clear presumption, that the final doctrine of the
   subject will emerge at this point and be concluded in this form.
   Probably it may be so enlarged and qualified as to practically include
   much that is valued in current modes of belief supposed to be the true
   orthodoxy, but the grand ruling conception finally established will be,
   that Christ, by his suffering life and ministry, becomes a reconciling
   power in character, the power of God unto salvation. Or if it should
   still be said that he reconciles God to men by his death, that kind of
   declaration will be taken as being only a more popular, objective way
   of saying, that God is in him, reconciling men to Himself.

   Having shown the steadily converging movement of history on this point,
   I was promising myself, as an advantage thus gained, that I should be
   regarded, in the treatise that follows, rather as fulfilling the
   history, than as raising a conflict with it. And yet, on further
   reflection, I have concluded to sur. render so great a hope of
   advantage and sacrifice the labor I had thus expended. I do it because
   the history made out, however satisfactorily to myself, is likely to be
   controverted by others--as what matter of dogmatic history is not?--and
   then I shall only have it upon me, before the public, to maintain a
   double issue, first of history, and then of truth; when I should evince
   a confidence worthier of the truth, in staking every thing on this
   issue by itself. The result of such a canvassing of history was just
   now indicated, and that must be enough. Relinquishing thus every
   adventitious help beyond this mere suggestion, I consent to let the
   doctrine I may offer stand by its own inherent merits.

   At the same time it will be so convenient, in the course of my
   argument, to refer occasionally to Anselm's really wonderful treatise,
   Cur Deus Homo, that I am tempted briefly to review the doctrine he
   gives. This treatise was the first of all the deliberately attempted
   expositions of the work of Christ. It is the seed view, in a sense, of
   the almost annual harvest that has followed; and as all choice
   seedlings are apt to degenerate in their successive propagations, we
   are obliged to admit that this original, first form of the doctrine was
   incomparably better than almost any of the revisions, or enlarged
   expositions of it since given.

   It is a great deal better, too, than the multitude of these theologic
   revisions and dogmatic expositions ever conceive it to be. No writer
   was ever more unfortunate than Anselm is, in the feeble, undiscerning
   constructions put upon his argument, by the immense following that has
   accepted his mastership. They take what he says of debt, as if it were
   a matter of book-account that Christ has come to settle; or what he
   says of justice, as if he were engaged to even up the score of penalty;
   or, what he says of pay, as if he had come to bring in some
   compensative quantity of suffering valuable for the total amount, and
   not in any sense valuable for the quality or expression, by which it
   may restore the honors of God infringed by disobedience. His obedience,
   too, is taken as if it were a satisfaction, not because of the
   righteousness declared, but on account of the pains contributed in it.

   Passing by matters of subordinate consequence, the scheme of his
   doctrine is briefly this. Considering what sin is, he finds it to be
   "nothing else than not to render God his due. The will of every
   rational creature ought to be subject completely to the will of God.
   This is the debt [debitum] which both angels and men owe to God, and
   none who pays this debt commits sin. This is justice, [justitia] or
   rectitude of will, which makes a being just or upright; and this is the
   sole and total debt of honor which we owe to God, and which God demands
   of us. He who does not render God this honor due [debitum] robs God of
   his own, and dishonors him." --(Lib. i. Cap. xi.)

   How then is the grand necessity to be met. Sin has desecrated God
   before the world, taken down his public honor as a father and
   magistrate, weakened his authority, robbed him of his just reverence.
   What is wanted, then, is that the original debt or due of obedience be
   made good; that some equal compensation be offered to God or God's
   magistracy, for the loss of that honor which has been taken away. "For
   God's mere compassion to let go sins, without any payment of the honor
   taken away, does not become Him. Thus to let go sin is the same as not
   to punish it. Not to punish is to let it go unsubjected to order,
   [inordinatum] and it does not become God to let any thing in his
   kingdom go unsubjected. Therefore it is unbecoming for God to let sin
   go thus unpunished. There is another thing which follows, if sin be
   allowed to go unpunished; with God there will be no difference between
   the guilty and the not guilty, which also is unbecoming to God.
   Besides, if sin is neither paid for nor punished, it is really kept
   subject to no law. Injustice, [unrighteousness] if mere compassion lets
   go sin, is more free than justice, [righteousness] which is very
   inconsistent."--(Lib. i. Cap. xii.) Every thing turns here, it will be
   seen, upon the consideration of what is "becoming," or "consistent" in
   God as a ruler; what is due to his authority and public standing, not
   upon the ground of some absolute principle called justice in His moral
   nature, which obliges Him, leaving no right of option, to punish wrong
   by the infliction of vindicatory-pains. There is no semblance of such
   an idea to be found in His language. On the contrary, he maintains, by
   a carefully framed argument, that God has a perfect "liberty," or right
   of option, as regards the matter of forgiveness, restricted only by the
   consideration of what is becoming, or fitting, or against his dignity,
   or due to his magisterial position. Thus, when it is argued that even
   we are required by God himself to forgive our enemies without
   satisfaction, which makes it appear strange, or inconsistent, that He
   also may not do it, the reply is, in effect, that God is a magistrate,
   as we are not. "There is no inconsistency in God's commanding us not to
   take upon ourselves what belongs to Him alone; for to execute vengeance
   belongs to none but Him who is Lord of all; [Dominus omnium] for when
   earthly potentates do this with right, God himself does it, by whom
   they are ordained. What you say of God's liberty, and choice, and
   compassion, is true; but we ought so to interpret these things as that
   they need not interfere with His dignity [magisterial or personal.] For
   there is no liberty, except as regards what is best, or fitting; nor
   should that be called mercy which operates any consequence unbecoming
   to God." He does not throw himself upon some principle of absolute
   philosophy, which leaves no option with God as regards the matter of
   punishment, no counsel or deliberative reason; but there is a why in
   the question, he conceives. "Observe why it is not fitting for God to
   do this. There is nothing less to be endured than that the creature
   should take away the honor due the Creator and not restore what he has
   taken away. Therefore the honor taken away must be repaid or punishment
   must follow; otherwise, either God will not be just to himself, or He
   will be weak in respect to both parties, and this it is impious even to
   think of."--(Lib. i. Cap. xii and xiii.) The whole question it will
   thus be seen, is to Anselm, a question of consequences, turning on the
   consideration of what is "becoming," "due to God's honor," necessary to
   save him from a position of magisterial "weakness."

   Holding this view of the satisfaction needed, no inference follows that
   Christ will make the satisfaction by his own punishment or penal
   suffering. Nothing is wanted, according to Anselm's statement, but some
   fit compensation made to God's honor, such as would be obtained by
   punishment, for punishment, he argues, honors God as being an
   assertion, by force, of his violated lordship. "For either man renders
   due submission to God of his own will, by avoiding sin or making
   payment, or else God subjects him to himself by torments even against
   man's will, and thus shows that he is Lord of man, though man refuses
   to acknowledge it. * * Deprived of happiness and every good, on account
   of his sin, he repays from his own inheritance, what he has stolen,
   though he repay it against his will."--(Lib. i. Cap. xiv.) What is
   wanted then is the equivalent of this punishment, or what will yield an
   equivalent honor. But it does not follow that it must be by
   punishment--enough that it confers upon God's public attitude, by
   whatever method, as great honor and authority. Indeed the language
   employed supposes an alternative between satisfaction and punishment,
   and not a satisfaction by punishment. "Does it seem to you that he
   wholly preserves his honor if he allows himself to be so defrauded of
   it as that he should neither receive satisfaction nor
   punishment?"--(Lib. i. Cap. xiii.)

   The word "justice" [justitia] does indeed recur many times in this
   connection, but never as denoting retributive justice under the
   offended wrath-principle of God's nature. It means simply right, or
   righteousness. As the argument goes, justice comes into view as
   recalling the principle of rectitude. It does not speak of what is due
   to wrong retributively considered, but of what is due to God as the
   being wronged, what is needed to restore his violated honor. Indeed the
   idea of a penal suffering in Christ, and a satisfaction made thereby to
   retributive justice, is expressly rejected as a thing too revolting to
   be thought of. "Where is the justice [righteousness] of delivering to
   death for a sinner, a man most just of all men? What man would not be
   condemned himself who should condemn the innocent to free the
   guilty?"--(Lib. i. Cap. viii.) It is not clear that the word justice
   [justitia] is used by Anselm in a single instance with a penal
   significance, or in the sense of retributive justice. It might seem to
   be so used, when it is asked--"If he allowed himself to be slain for
   the sake of justice, [propter' justitiam] did he not give his life for
   the honor of God"--(Lib. ii. Cap. xviii., b.) But he means here only
   what he has before expressed, when saying that Christ "suffered death
   of his own will, on account of his obedience in maintaining [justitia]
   righteousness."--(Lib. i. Cap. ix.) In the next following chapter,
   (Cap. x.) he does once employ the word poenam, when speaking of the
   death of Christ, but he plainly enough means by it, not punishment, but
   simply bad or suffering liability, and that he came into such liability
   there is no doubt. Besides, it may be seen how profoundly revolting
   this idea of punishment, laid upon the Son, is to him, when he
   exclaims, in this same chapter --"Strange thing is it, if God is so
   delighted with, or so hungers after, the blood of the innocent, that,
   without his death, he will not, or can not, spare the guilty!"

   Retributive justice then, or penal suffering, has nothing to do with
   the supposed satisfaction. But the satisfaction to God's honor turns
   wholly, we shall see, on the matter of Christ's obedience--obedience
   unto death. The conception is that he comes into the world, not simply
   to be murdered, or as being commanded of the Father to die, but that,
   having a specially right work laid upon him by the Father, he is able
   rather to die for it than to renounce it; conferring thus upon the
   Father a superlative honor, according to the righteous tenacity of his
   sacrifice. The point is stated carefully by Anselm, who says (Lib. i.
   Cap. ix.) "we must distinguish between what he did, obedience requiring
   it, and what he suffered, obedience not requiring it, because he
   adhered to obedience"--that is to the principle of right or well-doing,
   which is fundamental with God in all things. Hence the great honor of
   such obedience. "God did not therefore compel Christ to die, but he
   suffered death of his own accord, not yielding up his life as an act of
   obedience to the Father, but on account of his obedience [to first
   principle,] in maintaining right [justitia;] for he held out so
   persistently, that he met death on account of it."--(Lib. i. Cap. ix.)
   The immense value then of his death, or the satisfaction made to God's
   honor, consists in the luster of his righteousness, [justitia] showing
   all created minds what homage even the uncreated Son bears to the
   sovereign law-principle violated by transgression.

   At points farther on, this very simple and beautiful account of the
   supposed satisfaction appears to be a little clouded or obscured. It
   appears to be said that the satisfaction turns more on the death, and
   less on the obedience. But here it will be seen, he is only saying that
   simple obedience, so as to be in God's will, is not enough; it must be
   such a volunteering in Christ, or obedience carried to such a point of
   sacrifice, that he dies, when nowise subject to death on his own
   account. "If we say that he will give himself to God by obedience, so
   as, by steadily maintaining right, [justitia] to render himself subject
   to His will, this will not be giving what God does not require of him,
   for every rational creature owes this obedience to God. Therefore it
   must be in some other way that he gives himself, or something from
   himself to God. Let us see whether it may not perchance be the laying
   down of his life, or the delivering up of himself to death for God's
   honor. For this God will not require of him as a debt, for since he is
   no sinner he is not bound to die. Let us see how this accords with
   reason. If man sinned with sweet facility, is it not fitting that he
   make satisfaction with difficulty? If he is so easily vanquished by the
   devil, that, by sinning, he robs God of his honor, is it not right
   that, in satisfying God for his sin, he overcome the devil for God's
   honor, with as great difficulty? Now nothing can be more difficult for
   man to do for God's honor, than to suffer death voluntarily, when not
   bound by obligation."--(Lib. ii. Cap. xi.) Is it then the difficulty,
   the expense, the death, that satisfies God's honor? No; but it is the
   sublime rectitude of the Son, displayed and proved by so great
   pertinacity. Mere difficulties borne do not help God's honor, but the
   principle of devotion for which they are borne does help it. Besides,
   Christ did not come into the world, according to Anselm in passages
   already cited, just to suffer and die, but only to be in the work for
   which, or on account of which, he should die. If then the dying itself,
   as many say, makes the satisfaction, it becomes a clear inference that
   he did not come to make the satisfaction but to do the work, and that
   what is taken so often to be the main point accomplished is only an
   accident, after all, of his mission.

   Again, two chapters farther on, where it is considered how great value
   the satisfaction offered has, he ceases to speak of the death and
   begins to dwell on the person. No man, he conceives, would knowingly
   kill that person to preserve the whole creation of God. "He is far more
   a good, therefore, [since he outweighs the creation of God] than sins
   are evils. And do you not think that so great a good, in itself so
   lovely, can avail to pay for the sins of the world? Yes, it has even
   infinite value."--(Lib. ii. Cap. xiv.) As if it were the person given
   up to God that paid for the sins. Whereas he only means, by the so
   great person, the death of the person, and then again, by the death of
   the person, that obedience which was proved by his death, and confers
   the tribute of honor that is needed to resanctify the violated honor of
   God.

   The construction I have given to Anselm's doctrine, in this general
   outline, I am happy to add, has the sanction of a scholar in as high
   authority as Neander. He says, "Anselm's doctrine of satisfaction
   certainly included in it the idea of a satisfactio activa, the idea of
   a perfect obedience, which was required in order to satisfaction for
   sin. To the significance of Christ's offering in the sight of God,
   necessarily belongs also the moral worth of the same. Far from Anselm,
   however, was the idea of passive obedience, the idea of a satisfaction
   by suffering, of an expiation by assuming the punishment of mankind;
   for the satisfaction which Christ afforded by what he did, was
   certainly, according to Anselm's doctrine, to be the restoration of
   God's honor violated by sin, and by just this satisfaction, afforded to
   God for mankind, was the remission of sin to be made
   possible."--(History, Vol. iv. p. 500.)

   It is certainly most remarkable, and most honorable to the Christian
   sagacity of this ancient father of the church, that he was able, as a
   pioneer of doctrine concerning this profoundly difficult subject, to
   make out an account of it which shocks no moral sentiment, and violates
   no principle of natural reason, as almost all the doctors and
   dogmatizing teachers have been doing ever since. We may think what we
   please of his argument, as a true and sufficient account of the subject
   matter, but we can not be revolted by it.

   It was the principal misfortune of Anselm, that he was too much afraid
   of looking on the Gospel of the incarnation as having its value, or
   saving efficacy, under laws of expression. The fact-form pictures of
   the life and suffering of Christ were good enough symbols to him,
   doubtless, of God and his love, but the pictures wanted something more
   solid back of them, he conceived, to support them--"for no one paints
   in water or in air, because no traces of the picture remain in them.
   Therefore the rational existence of the truth must first be shown--I
   mean the necessity which proves that God ought to, or could have,
   condescended to those things which we affirm. Afterwards to make the
   body of the truth, so to speak, shine forth more clearly, these
   portrait figures which are pictures in a sense of truth's body, are to
   be displayed."--(Lib. i. Cap. iv.) He has no conception that expression
   is its own evidence. He must make a "solid foundation" by something
   schemed and reasoned, else there is nothing to authenticate the gospel
   facts, and show how it is that men's hearts are at all authorized to be
   affected by them, as the express images and true revelations of God. He
   had no esthetic, or esthetically perceptive culture. Truth did not lie
   in what he might perceive, but in what he might conclude by some
   process of deduction. Cribbed in thus, and cramped by the inexorable
   bars of his over-logical training, he could not think of a gospel
   operating simply by the expression of God, and being only what is
   expressed by the shining tokens of love and sacrifice; it must be
   something more scientific, something to be stiffly reasoned under the
   categories and by the closely defined methods. The result was that his
   truly great soul was rather narrowed than widened into his subject, and
   his subject narrowed, in turn, to the closely-stinted measures of his
   method.

   For this indeed is the inevitable fruit and doom of all attempts to
   logically reduce and dogmatize spiritual subjects--the method itself is
   only a way of finding how great truths may be made small enough to be
   easily handled. The definitions operate astringently, taking some one
   incident or quality, for many and various, and so getting the matters
   defined into such thimbles of meaning as can be confidently managed.
   Accordingly it will be always seen, that one who leads in a dogmatic,
   or closely defined exposition of some doctrine, is gathering his mind,
   as it were, into a precinct within itself, and that, while he is
   putting every thing, as he conceives, into the solid, scientific form,
   he is all the while giving indications, in the manner and matter of his
   argument, of an immense outside wealth of sentiment and perception,
   nowise reducible under the scheme of his dogma.

   Thus, whoever reads the arguments of Athanasius for his doctrine of
   Trinity, will see that his mind is touching something, every moment,
   outside of his doctrine; some figure, image, symbol, analogy,
   comparison, which is, after all, to him, the truth of his truth, and
   wider, and richer, and more vital than his defined statement. And so it
   is with Anselm in the present instance. He speaks, for example, at the
   opening of his subject, (Lib. i. Cap i. and ii.) as if it were the
   great matter of the Gospel that Christ has "restored life to the
   world;" "assumed the littleness and weakness of human nature for the
   sake of its renewal." And, beyond a question, this restoring, this
   renewal of life, was to him the main purpose and point of the Gospel.
   But he makes out still a theory, or dogmatized scheme of the incarnate
   life and passion, that carries nothing to that point. Every thing might
   be done that he describes for the restoration of God's honor, and the
   matter of "restored life" or the "renewal of human nature," be still
   untouched; nay, for aught that appears, it might be quite impossible.
   Indeed it may even yet be a question, whether Christ is to be any
   actual deliverer and regenerator at all.

   But the most remarkable instance of all, to illustrate the detaining
   and restrictive power of a dogmatizing effort, will be found in the
   fact that Anselm, so many times over in the course of his argument,
   strikes the really grand, all-containing matter of the gospel and falls
   directly back as often, into his theory; only half perceiving,
   apparently, the immense significance of what he had touched. Thus he
   brings out his argument upon the very chilling and meager conclusion,
   that inasmuch as Christ has paid to God, in his death, what was not due
   on his own account, God must needs give him a reward for the overplus;
   and then, as he can not do any thing with his reward personally, by
   reason of his infinite sufficiency, he may very naturally ask the
   reward to be put upon somebody else, and why not upon the sinners of
   mankind. "Upon whom would be more properly bestowed the reward accruing
   from his death, than upon those for whose salvation, as right reason
   teaches, he became man, and for whose sake, as we have already said, he
   left an example of suffering death, to preserve holiness. For surely in
   vain will men imitate him, if they be not also partakers of his reward.
   Or whom could he more justly make heirs of the inheritance which he
   does not need, and of the superfluity of his possessions, than his
   parents and brethren?"--(Lib. ii. Cap. xix.)

   What a conception of the self-sacrificing love of Christ that, after
   all, he quite "properly" passes over to sinners "the superfluity" of
   his rewards! And yet the worthy father was looking at the time
   distinctly on the way Christ will get hold of transgressors to
   regenerate their nature, after he has evened their account with God.
   This mighty something, this all-quickening life, which an apostle calls
   "the power of God unto salvation," and evidently thinks to be the very
   matter of the Gospel--he is feeling after it, we can plainly enough
   see, but his dogmatizing effort holds him in so stringently that,
   instead of launching out into the grand, all-significant, moral view of
   Christ, as being come into the world to be the power of God on souls,
   and so the Quickener of their life, puts forward only these two very
   thin, but painfully suggestive words, "example" and "imitation," and is
   by these exhausted!

   Again, twice before, he had been coasting round this point, as if some
   loadstone drew his vessel thither. Thus, when showing how Christ paid
   God's violated "honor," by his death, because he died as being under no
   debt of obligation on his own account, he goes on to add, what has no
   connection whatever with his point--"Do you not perceive that, when he
   bore, with gentle patience, the insults put upon him, violence and even
   crucifixion among thieves, that he might maintain strict holiness, by
   this he set men an example, that they should never turn aside from the
   holiness due to God, on account of personal sacrifice? But how could he
   have done this, had he, as he might have done, avoided the death
   Drought upon him for such a reason?"--(Lib. ii. Cap. xxiii.)

   In the other instance referred to, he seems just upon the verge of
   breaking out through the shell of his dogma and his speculated reasons,
   into the broad open field of what is called "the moral view" of the
   subject, to see in Christ what is more than "example," the transforming
   efficacy of God. Thus he testifies again--"There are also many other
   reasons why it is peculiarly fitting for that man [Christ] to enter
   into the common intercourse of men, and maintain a likeness to them,
   only without sin. And these things are more easily and clearly manifest
   in his life and actions than they can possibly be, by mere reason
   without experience. For who can say how necessary and wise a thing it
   was for him who was to redeem mankind, and lead them back by his
   teaching from the way of death and destruction into the path of life
   and eternal happiness, when he conversed with men, and when he taught
   them by personal intercourse, to set them an example himself of the way
   in which they ought to live? But how could he have given this example
   to weak and dying men, that they should not deviate from holiness
   because of injuries, or scorn, or tortures, or even death, had they not
   been able to recognize all these virtues in himself."--(Lib. ii. Cap.
   xi.)

   It is difficult not to be greatly affected by this almost discovery of
   Anselm; for his mind, as we can plainly see, labors here with a
   suspicion that there is a practical something "in the life and actions"
   of Christ that is not comprehensible by "reason," or by the logical
   methods of theory apart from experience; and "who," he asks, "can say
   how necessary" this divine something is in restoring men to God? How
   very near to another, less speculative, and more complete solution of
   the Cur Deus Homo, did this great father of the church here come! The
   gate stood ajar and he looked in through the opening, but could not
   enter.

   It should justly be said for him, however, that there is nothing very
   peculiar in the detention he suffers at this point. In one way, or
   another, the gospel teachers appear to have been trying every where and
   in all the past ages, if not consciously, yet unconsciously, to get
   beyond their own doctrine, and bring out some practically moral-power
   view of the cross, more fruitful and sanctifying, than by their own
   particular doctrine, it possibly can be. Occasionally the attempt has
   purposely and consciously been to adjust something, or make out some
   formal account of Christ, that would turn the whole significance of his
   incarnate mission upon the power to be exerted in character; showing
   directly how, or by what means, it was to be and is that power. The
   very coarse, and, to us, wild looking doctrine that Anselm exploded,
   and that held the church for so many ages before his time, representing
   Christ as dying in a conflict for us with the devil, or as a ransom
   paid to the devil, was probably nothing but a running down into
   literality and effoeteness of meaning, of those flaming conceptions,
   under which Christ's power over evil in our fallen nature, was
   originally asserted. Faith began to glory in the casting down of the
   devil by the cross. This was gradually converted by repetition into a
   doctrine of the understanding. Then, by the unthinkingness of that and
   reiterations continued, the dogmatic crudity was consummated and Christ
   became a ransom paid to the devil. After Anselm also comes a long roll
   of teachers, reaching down to our own time, who have it as their
   endeavor, more or less distinctly, to unfold some conception of the
   cross, that will make it a salvation by its power on life and
   character. In this line we have Abelard, Hugo of St. Victor, Robert
   Pulleyn, Peter Lombard, Wycliffe, and Wessel, and Tauler; and, closer
   to our own time, John Locke, and Dr. I. Taylor, Kant, De Wette,
   Schleiermacher, and others, too numerous to mention--all strangely
   unlike in their conceptions, and as unequal as possible in their title
   to success.

   But the most impressive thing of all, in the history of this subject,
   is the fact to which I just now alluded; viz., the manifest difficulty
   experienced by the adherents of judicial satisfaction under any form,
   whether of Anselm, or of the Protestant confessions, or even of the
   Romish, in keeping themselves practically in, or under, their doctrine.
   Maintaining it most stringently, or even with a bigot zeal, they still
   can not practically stay in it, but they turn away, as often as they
   can, to preach, or fondle themselves in, the dear luxury of texts
   outside of their confession; such as "The love of Christ constraineth
   us," "God commendeth his love," "The serpent lifted up," "Beholding as
   in a glass," "Christ liveth in me," and a hundred others; traveling
   over, in this manner, as it were, another and really better gospel than
   that of their confession; quite unconscious of the immense wealth they
   are finding that is wholly ignored by it. Even when they preach, in
   ruggedest argument, their doctrine of penal sacrifice and satisfaction,
   asserting the wrath that burns inextinguishably till it finds a victim,
   they will not be satisfied till they have gotten some kind of
   soul-power either out of their doctrine, or most likely from beyond it.
   Tacitly they do all hold to the fact that Christ is here to be, and
   ought to be, and can be duly honored only when he is made to be, a
   softening, illuminating, convincing, or somehow transforming and
   sanctifying power. After all, the great toil of their ministry is so to
   conceive Christ as to speak worthily of him in the matter of his life,
   and get the blessing out of him for lost men that is so richly garnered
   in him. The confession is universally, that whatever preacher fails in
   this, fails utterly.

   But why is this? If Christ has simply died to even up a score of
   penalty, if the total import of his cross is that God's wrath is
   satisfied, and the books made square, there is certainly no beauty in
   that to charm a new feeling into life; on the contrary there is much to
   revolt the soul, at least in God's attitude and even to raise a chill
   of revulsion. It will not pacify the conscience of transgression;
   first, because there is no justice in such kind of suffering; and next,
   because, if there were, such a death of such a being would only harrow
   the guilty soul with a sense of condemnation more awful. It might be
   imagined that such a transaction would make a strong appeal of
   gratitude, and exert great power in that manner over character, and yet
   gratitude is precisely that, which souls under sin are least capable
   of, and especially when the claim is grounded in reasons so spiritual
   and so galling, every way, in the form. No, the power which is so
   continually sought after in the unfolding and preaching of the
   cross--that which, to every really Christian preacher, is the principal
   thing--is not in, or of, any consideration of a penal sacrifice, but is
   wholly extraneous; a Christ outside of the doctrine, dwelling
   altogether in the sublime facts of his person, his miracles and his
   passion.

   And here precisely is the reason why there is so little content in the
   dogmatic solutions of penal atonement; why also the attempts to present
   the gospel on its moral side, by a partially defined statement, or
   theory, seem to fall short and yield in general so little satisfaction.
   It is just because the whole Christ, taken as he is, makes up the
   gospel, fills out the power, and that no summary more comprehensive can
   do more than hint the purpose and manner of it. There is no example of
   mortal conceit more astounding, if we could only see the matter with a
   proper intelligence, than the assumption that the import of Christ's
   mission can be fairly and sufficiently stated in a dogma of three
   lines. The real gospel is the Incarnate Biography itself, making its
   impression and working its effect as a biography--a total life with all
   its acts, and facts, and words, and feelings, and principles of good,
   grouped in the light and shade of their own supernatural unfolding. The
   art of God could reach its mark of benefit, only by so vast a
   combination of matters so transcendent for dignity and expression.
   Whereupon the scientific wordsman, coming after, undertakes to
   adequately tell what the grand biography is, or amounts to, in three or
   four lines of dry abstractive statement! Or we may compare the gospel
   as a power to the impressive grouping, action, suffering and sentiment
   of a picture; for, taken as a medium of divine expression, it comes
   under the same general law; what figure then would any critic expect to
   make who should undertake to give the picture by a scientific formula?
   Or, again, we may conceive the gospel to be a grand supernatural
   tragedy in the world, designed to work on human hearts by all the
   matter of loving, doing, suffering, all the scenes of craft, and
   stratagem, and hate, all the touching, and tender, and heart-breaking,
   and divinely great expression crowded into the four-years plot of it.
   Will then some one undertake to give us Othello by dogmatic article?
   or, if not, will it be more easy to give us the tragedy of Jesus?

   It will be understood, of course, that I do not propose to establish
   any article whatever in this treatise, but only to exhibit, if
   possible, the Christ whom so many centuries of discipleship have so
   visibly been longing and groping after; viz., the loving, helping,
   transforming, sanctifying Christ, the true soul-bread from heaven, the
   quickening Life, the Power of God unto Salvation. If for convenience
   sake I speak of maintaining "the moral view" of the cross, or, what is
   more distinct, "the moral-power view," it will not be understood that I
   am proposing an article, but only that I hint, in this general way, a
   conception of the gospel whose reality and staple value are in the
   facts that embody its power. Perhaps it will sometime be judged that I
   have labored the vast, uncomprehended complexity, and incomprehensible
   mystery of the matter, as carefully, and conscientiously, and perhaps
   also with as true justice, as if I had assumed the power to scheme it
   in a proposition.

   I have called the treatise by a name or title that more nearly
   describes it than any other. It conceives the work of Christ as
   beginning at the point of sacrifice, "Vicarious Sacrifice;" ending at
   the same, and being just this all through--so a power of salvation for
   the world. And yet it endeavors to bring this sacrifice only so much
   closer to our feeling and perception, in the fact that it makes the
   sacrifice and cross of Christ his simple duty, and not any superlative,
   optional kind of good, outside of all the common principles of virtue.
   "Grounded," I have said, "in principles of duty and right that are
   universal." It is not goodness over good, and yielding a surplus of
   merit in that manner for us, but it is only just as good as it ought to
   be, or the highest law of right required it to be; a model, in that
   view for us, and a power, if we can suffer it, of ingenerated life in
   us. I probably do not use the term "vicarious sacrifice" in the
   commonly accepted meaning of the church confessions, and if any one
   should blame the assumption of the title, I may well enough agree with
   him, only holding him responsible for some other and better name that
   more closely accords with the Scripture uses, or more exactly
   represents the distinctive matter of the treatise.

   I ought perhaps to say that the view here presented, was sketched, and,
   for the most part publicly taught, more than ten years ago. It will
   probably be remembered, by some, that sentiments which I published
   about fourteen years ago on this subject, raised a good deal of
   agitation, and a considerable impeachment of heresy. Whether what I now
   publish agrees, in every particular, with what I published then, I have
   not inquired and do not care to know. I can only say that I am not
   aware of any disagreement, and have never been led to regret any thing
   in the view then presented, except a certain immaturity and partiality
   of conception, which it can not be amiss to supplement by a doctrine
   that more sufficiently covers the whole ground of the subject.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    PART I.

NOTHING SUPERLATIVE IN VICARIOUS SACRIFICE, OR ABOVE THE UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF
RIGHT AND DUTY.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER I.

  THE MEANING OF VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.

   IT is a matter of sorrowful indication, that the thing most wanting to
   be cleared in Christianity is still, as it ever has been, the principal
   thing; viz., the meaning and method of reconciliation itself, or of
   what is commonly called the vicarious sacrifice. This fact would even
   be itself a considerable evidence against the gospel, were it not that
   the subject matter--so vast in the reach of its complications, and so
   nearly transcendent in the height of its reasons--yields up easily to
   faith its practical significance, when refusing to be theoretically
   mastered, as yet, by the understanding.

   There has been a litigation of the sacrifice going on for these
   eighteen hundred years, and especially for the last eight hundred; yet
   still it remains an open question with many, whether any such thing as
   vicarious sacrifice pertains to the work of salvation Christ has
   accomplished. On one side the fact is abjured as irrational and
   revolting. On the other it is affirmed as a principal fact of the
   Christian salvation; though I feel obliged to confess that it is too
   commonly maintained under definitions and forms of argument that make
   it revolting. And which of the two is the greater wrong and most to be
   deplored, that by which the fact itself is rejected, or that by which
   it is made fit to be rejected, I will not stay to discuss. Enough that
   Christianity, in either way, suffers incalculable loss; or must, if
   there be any such principal matter in it, as I most certainly believe
   that there is.

   Assuming now, for the subject of this treatise, the main question
   stated, our first point must be to settle What is to be understood by
   vicarious sacrifice. a just and true conception of vicarious sacrifice,
   or of what is the real undertaking of Christ in the matter of such
   sacrifice. For in all such matters, the main issue is commonly decided
   by adjusting other and better conceptions of the question itself, and
   not by forcing old ones through into victory, by the artillery practice
   of better contrived arguments.

   This word vicarious, that has made so conspicuous a figure in the
   debates of theology, it must be admitted is no word of the Scripture.
   The same is true, however, of free agency, character, theology, and of
   many other terms which the conveniences of use have made common. If a
   word appears to be wanted in Christian discussions or teachings, the
   fact that it is not found in the Scripture is no objection to it; we
   have only to be sure that we understand what we mean by it. In the
   case, too, of this particular word vicarious, a special care is needed,
   lest we enter something into the meaning, from ourselves, which is not
   included in the large variety of Scripture terms and expressions the
   word is set to represent.

   Thus we have--"made a curse for us"--"bare our sins"--"hath laid on him
   the iniquity of us all"--"made to be sin for us"--"offered to bear the
   sins of many"--"borne our griefs and carried our sorrows"--"wounded for
   our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities"--"tasted death for
   every man." The whole Gospel is a texture, thus of vicarious
   conceptions, in which Christ is represented, in one way or another, as
   coming into our place, substituted in our stead, bearing our burdens,
   answering for us, and standing in a kind of suffering sponsorship for
   the race.

   Now the word vicarious is chosen to represent, and gather up into
   itself all these varieties of expression. It is the same word, in the
   root, as the word vice in vicegerent, viceroy, vicar, vicar-general,
   vice-president, and the like. It is a word that carries always a face
   of substitution, indicating that one person comes in place, somehow, of
   another. Thus a vice-president is one who is to act in certain
   contingencies, as and for the president; a viceroy, for the king. The
   ecclesiastical vicar too, was a vicar as being sent to act for the
   monastic body, whose duties were laid as a charge upon him; and the
   pope is called the vicar of Christ, in the same way, as being
   authorized to fill Christ's place. Any person acts vicariously, in this
   view, just so far as he comes in place of another. The commercial
   agent, the trustee, the attorney, are examples of vicarious action at
   common law.

   Then if we speak of "sacrifice," any person acts in a way of "vicarious
   sacrifice," not when he burns upon an altar in some other's place, but
   when he makes loss for him, even as he would make loss for himself, in
   the offering of a sacrifice for his sin. The expression is a figure,
   representing that the party making such sacrifice for another, comes
   into burden, pain, weariness, or even to the yielding up of life for
   his sake. The word "vicarious" does not say all, nor the word
   "sacrifice," but the two together make out the true figure of Christ
   and his Gospel.

   In this sense it is that Christianity or the Christian salvation is a
   vicarious sacrifice. It does not mean What vicarious sacrifice does not
   mean. simply that Christ puts himself into the case of man as a helper;
   one man helps another without any vicarious relationship implied or
   supposed. Neither does it mean that Christ undertakes for man in a way
   of influence; one man tries to influence another, without coming at all
   into his place. Neither does the vicarious sacrifice imply that he
   simply comes under common liabilities with us, as when every citizen
   suffers for the wrongs and general misconduct and consequent
   misgovernment of the community to which he belongs. Nor that he simply
   comes into the track of those penal retributions which outrun the
   wrongs they chastise, passing over upon the innocent, as the sins of
   fathers propagate their evils in the generations of their children
   coming after. The idea of Christ's vicarious sacrifice is not matched
   by any of these lighter examples, though it has something in common
   with them all, and is therefore just so much likelier to be confounded
   with them by a lighter and really sophistical interpretation.

   On the other hand, we are not to hold the Scripture terms of vicarious
   sacrifice, as importing a literal substitution of places, by which
   Christ becomes a sinner for sinners, or penally subject to our deserved
   penalties. That is a kind of substitution that offends every strongest
   sentiment of our nature. He can not become guilty for us. Neither, as
   God is a just being, can he be any how punishable in our place--all
   God's moral sentiments would be revolted by that. And if Christ should
   himself consent to such punishment, he would only ask to have all the
   most immovable convictions, both of God's moral nature and our own,
   confounded, or eternally put by.

   Excluding now all these under-stated and over-stated explanations we
   come to the true conception, which is that Christ, in what is called
   his vicarious The positive conception. sacrifice, simply engages, at
   the expense of great suffering and even of death itself, to bring us
   out of our sins themselves and so out of their penalties; being himself
   profoundly identified with us in our fallen state, and burdened in
   feeling with our evils. Nor is there any thing so remote, or difficult,
   or violent, in this vicarious relation, assumed by Christ as many
   appear to suppose. It would rather be a wonder if, being what he is, he
   did not assume it. For we are to see and make our due account of this
   one fact, that a good being is, by the supposition, ready, just
   according to his goodness, to act vicariously in behalf of any bad, or
   miserable being, whose condition he is able to restore. For a good
   being is not simply one who gives bounties and favors, but one who is
   in the principle of love; and it is the nature of love, universally, to
   insert itself into the miseries, and take upon its feeling the burdens
   of others. Love does not consider the ill desert of the subject; he may
   even be a cruel and relentless enemy. It does not consider the expense
   of toil, and sacrifice, and suffering the intervention may cost. It
   stops at nothing but the known impossibility of relief, or benefit;
   asks for nothing as inducement, but the opportunity Love a vicarious
   principle. of success. Love is a principle essentially vicarious in its
   own nature, identifying the subject with others, so as to suffer their
   adversities and pains, and taking on itself the burden of their evils.
   It does not come in officiously and abruptly, and propose to be
   substituted in some formal and literal way that overturns all the moral
   relations of law and desert, but it clings to the evil and lost man as
   in feeling, afflicted for him, burdened by his ill deserts,
   incapacities and pains, encountering gladly any loss or suffering for
   his sake. Approving nothing wrong in him, but faithfully reproving and
   condemning him in all sin, it is yet made sin--plunged, so to speak,
   into all the fortunes of sin, by its friendly sympathy. In this manner
   it is entered vicariously into sacrifice on his account. So naturally
   and easily does the vicarious sacrifice commend itself to our
   intelligence, by the stock ideas and feelings out of which it grows.

   How it was with Christ, and how he bore our sins, we can see exactly,
   from a very impressive and remarkable passage in Matthew's Gospel,
   where he conceives that Christ is entered vicariously into Usus
   loquendi in the sacrificial terms. men's diseases, just as he is
   elsewhere shown to bear, and to be vicariously entered into, the burden
   of their sins. produce the passage, at this early point in the
   discussion, because of the very great and decisive importance it has;
   for it is remarkable as being the one Scripture citation, that gives,
   beyond a question, the exact usus loquendi of all the vicarious and
   sacrificial language of the New Testament.

   Christ has been pouring out his sympathies, all day, in acts of
   healing, run down, as it were, by the wretched multitudes crowding
   about him and imploring his pity. No humblest, most repulsive creature
   is neglected or fails to receive his tenderest, most brotherly
   consideration. His heart accepts each one as a burden upon its feeling,
   and by that feeling he is inserted into the lot, the pain, the
   sickness, the sorrow of each. And so the evangelist, having, as we see,
   no reference whatever to the substitution for sin, says--"That it might
   be fulfilled, which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying--Himself
   took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.'" [1] And the text is the
   more remarkable that the passage he cites from Isaiah, is from his liii
   chapter, which is, in fact, a kind of stock chapter, whence all the
   most vicarious language of the New Testament is drawn. Besides the word
   bare occurs in the citation; a word that is based on the very same
   figure of carrying as that which is used in the expression, "bare our
   sins," "bare the sins of many," and is moreover precisely the same word
   which is used by the Apostle when he says [Bastazete] "bear ye one
   another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." If then we desire
   to know exactly what the substitution of Christ for sin was, and how
   far it went--what it means for example that he bare our sin--we have
   only to revert back to what is here said of his relation to sicknesses,
   and our question is resolved.

   What then does it mean that Christ "bare our sicknesses?" Does it mean
   that he literally had our sicknesses transferred to him, and so taken
   off from us? Does it mean that he became blind for the blind, lame for
   the lame, a leper for the lepers, suffering in himself all the fevers
   and pains he took away from others? No one had ever such a thought. How
   then did he bear our sicknesses, or in what sense? In the sense that he
   took them on his feeling, had his heart burdened by the sense of them,
   bore the disgusts of their loathsome decays, felt their pains over
   again, in the tenderness of his more than human sensibility. Thus
   manifestly it was that he bare our sicknesses--his very love to us put
   him, so far, in a vicarious relation to them, and made him, so far, a
   partaker in them. [2]

   Here then we have the true law of interpretation, when the vicarious
   relation of Christ to our sins comes into view. It does not mean that
   he takes them literally upon him, as some of the old theologians and a
   very few moderns appear to believe; it does not mean that he took their
   ill desert upon him by some mysterious act of imputation, or had their
   punishment transferred How Christ takes our sins upon him. to his
   person. A sickness might possibly be transferred, but a sin can not by
   any rational possibility. It does not mean that he literally came into
   the hell of our retributive evils under sin, and satisfied, by his own
   suffering, the violated justice of God; for that kind of penal
   suffering would satisfy nothing but the very worst injustice. No, but
   the bearing of our sins does mean, that Christ bore them on his
   feeling, became inserted into their bad lot by his sympathy as a
   friend, yielded up himself and his life, even, to an effort of
   restoring mercy; in a word that he bore our sins in just the same sense
   that he bore our sicknesses. Understand that love itself is an
   essentially vicarious principle, and the solution is no longer
   difficult.

   See how it is with love in the case of a mother. She loves her child,
   and it comes out in that fact, or from it, Motherhood friendship.
   Patriotism vicarious. that she watches for the child, bears all its
   pains and sicknesses on her own feeling, and when it is wronged, is
   stung herself, by the wrong put upon it, more bitterly far than the
   child. She takes every chance of sacrifice for it, as her own
   opportunity. She creates, in fact, imaginary ills for it, because she
   has not opportunities enough of sacrifice. In the same manner a friend
   that is real and true takes all the sufferings, losses, wrongs,
   indignities, of a friend on his own feeling, and will sometimes suffer
   even more for him than he does for himself. So also with the patriot or
   citizen who truly loves his country, even though that love is mixed
   with many false fires that are only fires of ambition or revenge--how
   does it wrench his feeling, what a burden does it lay upon his concern,
   by day and by night, when that country, so dear to him, is being torn
   by faction, and the fate of its laws and liberties is thrown upon the
   chances of an armed rebellion. Then you will see how many thousands of
   citizens, who never knew before what sacrifices it was in the power of
   their love to make for their country's welfare, rushing to the field
   and throwing their bodies and dear lives on the battle's edge to save
   it!

   Thus it is that every sort of love is found twining its feeling always
   into the feeling, and loss, and want, and woe, of whatever people, or
   person, or even enemy, it loves; thus that God himself takes our
   sinning enmity upon his heart, painfully burdened by our broken state,
   and travailing, in all the deepest feeling of his nature, to recover us
   to himself. And this it is which the cross and vicarious sacrifice of
   Jesus signify to us, or outwardly express. Such a God in love, must be
   such a Saviour in suffering--he could not well be other or less. There
   is a Gethsemane hid in all love, and when the fit occasion comes, no
   matter how great and high the subject may be, its heavy groaning will
   be heard--even as it was in Christ. He was in an agony, exceeding
   sorrowful even unto death. By that sign it was that God's love broke
   into the world, and Christianity was born!

   Here, then, as I conceive, is the true seed principle of the Christian
   salvation. What we call the vicarious sacrifice of Christ is nothing
   strange as regards the Nothing superlative in the principle of the
   cross. principle of it, no superlative, unexampled, and therefore
   unintelligible grace. It only does and suffers, and comes into
   substitution for, just what any and all love will, according to its
   degree. And, in this view, it is not something higher in principle than
   our human virtue knows, and which we ourselves are never to copy or
   receive, but it is to be understood by what we know already, and is to
   be more fully understood by what we are to know hereafter, when we are
   complete in Christ. Nothing is wanting to resolve the vicarious
   sacrifice of Jesus, but the commonly known, always familiar principle
   of love, accepted as the fundamental law of duty, even by mankind.
   Given the universality of love, the universality of vicarious sacrifice
   is given also. Here is the center and deepest spot of good, or
   goodness, conceivable. At this point we look into heaven's eye itself,
   and read the meaning of all heavenly grace.

   How much to be regretted then is it, that Christianity has been made so
   great an offense, to so many ingenuous and genuinely thoughtful souls,
   at just this point of vicarious The great offense of the cross a
   contribution of theology. sacrifice, where it is noblest to thought,
   and grandest, and most impressive to feeling. There ought never to be a
   question over its reality and truth to nature, more than over a
   mother's watch and waiting for her child. And yet there has been kept
   up, for centuries, what a strain of logical, or theological
   endeavor--shall I call it high, or shall I call it weak and low--to
   make out some formal, legal, literal account of substitution and
   vicarious sacrifice, in which all God's quickening motivity and power
   are taken away from the feeling, and nothing left but a sapless wood,
   or dry stubble of reason, for a mortal sinner's faith to cling to.
   Nothing is so simple, and beautiful, and true, and close to feeling, as
   this same blessed truth--Jesus the Lord in vicarious sacrifice; and yet
   there is made of it, I know not what, or how many riddles, which to
   solve, were it possible, were only to miss of its power; much more
   which to miss of solving, is only to be lost in mazes and desert
   windings where even faith itself is only turned to jangling. How often
   has the innate sense of justice in men been mocked by the speculated
   satisfactions of justice, or schemes of satisfaction, made up for God;
   how often has the human feeling that would have been attracted and
   melted, by the gracious love of Jesus, coming to assume our nature and
   bear our sin, been chilled, or revolted, by some account of his death,
   that turns it to a theologic fiction, by contriving how he literally
   had our sin upon him, and was therefore held to die retributively on
   account of it.

   At the same time, there have been thrown off into antagonism, a great
   many times, whole sects of disciples, who could see no way to escape No
   vitality in a Gospel without vicarious sacrifice. the revolting
   theories of vicarious sacrifice, but to formally deny the fact; and
   then what evidence have they given of the fact, as a distinctive
   integral element of Christianity, by their utter inability, in the way
   of denial, to maintain the vitality and propagating power of Christian
   society with. out it. If God's love has no vicarious element, theirs of
   course will have as little; if he simply stands by law and retribution,
   if he never enters himself into human evils and sins, so as to be
   burdened by them, never identifies himself with souls under evil, to
   bear them--enemies and outcasts though they be--then it will be seen
   that they, as believers, are never in affliction for the sin of others,
   never burdened as intercessors for them; for there was in fact no such
   mind in Christ Jesus himself. On the contrary, as God stands off,
   waiting only by the laws of duty and abstract justice, moved
   vicariously to no intervention, so will they lose out the soul-bond of
   unity and religious fellowship with their kind, dropping asunder into
   atoms of righteous individuality, and counting it even a kind of
   undignified officiousness to be overmuch concerned for others.
   Christian society is by that time gone. The sense of God, translating
   himself into the evils and fallen fortunes of souls, in the vicarious
   love and passion of his Son, was the root of it; and that being gone,
   the divine life takes no headship in them, they no membership of unity
   with each other. They are only incommunicable monads--the Christian
   koinonia is lost or abolished. "I will take care of myself, answer for
   myself, and let every other do the same"--that is the Christianity
   left--it is duty, self-care, right living atomically held before moral
   standards. As to the church, or the church life, it no longer exists;
   Christ is the head of nothing, because he has never come into the
   cause, or feeling, or life of any, by coming into their lot. So
   necessary is the faith of a vicarious sacrifice to the maintenance of
   any genuine Christian life and society. Without and apart from it
   individualties are never bridged, never made coalescent, or common to
   each other. The chill that follows must in due time be fatal. No such
   mode of necessary unfellowship can live.

   By this experimental proof, it can be clearly seen how necessary to the
   living Gospel and church of Christ is the faith, in some true sense, of
   a vicarious sacrifice. And what that sense may be it is not difficult,
   I think, to find. We have already found that love itself contains the
   fact and is the sufficient and easy solution.

   But there is an objection to be encountered even here, before the
   solution will be satisfactory to some; it is that if love, love in God,
   and love in all Objection that God must be unhappy in love. beings
   created and uncreated, is an essentially vicarious element or
   principle; if it moves to the certain identification of the loving
   party with evil minds and their pains, and the assuming of them, to be
   a burden on its feeling, or even a possible agony in it; then, as long
   as there is any such thing as evil and death, love must be a cause of
   unhappiness, a lot of suffering and sorrow. In one view it must, in
   another it will be joy itself, the fullest, and profoundest, and
   sublimest joy conceivable. There was never a being on earth so deep in
   his peace and so essentially blessed as Jesus Christ. Even his agony
   itself is scarcely an exception. There is no joy so grand as that which
   has a form of tragedy, and there is besides, in a soul given up to loss
   and pain for love's sake, such a consciousness of good--it is so far
   ennobled by its own great feeling--that it rises in the sense of
   magnitude, and majesty, and Godlikeness, and has thoughts breaking out
   in it as the sound of many waters, joys that are full as the sea. And
   this, too, corresponds exactly with our human experience. We are never
   so happy, so essentially blessed as when we suffer well, wearing out
   our life in sympathies spent on the evil and undeserving, burdened
   heavily in our prayers, struggling on through secret Gethsemanes and
   groaning before God in groanings audible to God alone, for those who
   have no mercy on themselves. What man of the race ever finds that in
   such love as this he has been made unhappy? As Christ himself
   bequeathed his joy to such, so has he found it to be a most real and
   dear bequest, and that when he has been able, after Christ's example,
   to bear most and be deepest in sacrifice for others--even painful
   sacrifice--then has he been raised to the highest pitch of beatitude.
   The compensations of such a life transcend, how sublimely, the losses.
   As they did with Christ, so they do with us, so they will in all beings
   and worlds. Therefore when we say that love is a principle of vicarious
   sacrifice, how far off are we from casting any shade of gloom on the
   possibilities and fortunes of this love. We only magnify its joy and
   brighten its prospect.

   Thus we take our beginning for this great subject, the grace of the
   cross, and the Christian salvation. As yet we have scarcely passed the
   gate, but the gate is open. This one thing is clear, that love is a
   vicarious principle, bound by its own nature itself to take upon its
   feeling, and care, and sympathy, those who are down under evil and its
   penalties. Thus it is that Jesus takes our nature upon him, to be made
   a curse for us and to bear our sin. Holding such a view of vicarious
   sacrifice, we must find it belonging to the essential nature of all
   holy virtue. We are also required, All good beings in the principle of
   vicarious sacrifice. of course, to go forward and show how it pertains
   to all other good beings, as truly as to Christ himself in the
   flesh--how the eternal Father before Christ, and the Holy Spirit coming
   after, and the good angels both before and after, all alike have borne
   the burdens, struggled in the pains of their vi. carious feeling for
   men; and then, at last, how Christianity comes to its issue, in
   begetting in us the same vicarious love that reigns in all the
   glorified and good minds of the heavenly kingdom; gathering us in after
   Christ our Master, as they that have learned to bear his cross, and be
   with him in his passion. Then having seen how Christ, as a power on
   character and life, renews us in this love, we shall be able to
   consider the very greatly inferior question, how far and in what manner
   he becomes our substitute, before the law violated by our
   transgression.

   I should scarcely be justified in concluding this chapter, if I did not
   first suggest, for the benefit of some, who may recoil from this
   profoundly earnest truth of sacrifice, as one that rather shocks, than
   approves itself to, their feeling, that it is a kind of truth not
   likely to be realized, without experience. It will seem to be a
   Experience wanted to know this truth of sacrifice. truth overdrawn,
   unless it is drawn out of the soul's own consciousness, at least in
   some elementary degree. Some theologians, I fear, will not be taken by
   it, because it has never sufficiently taken hold of them. Mere
   understanding is an element too sterile and dry to know this kind of
   truth--it seems to be no truth at all, but a pietistic straining rather
   after something better than anybody can solidly know.

   Let me stop then here, upon the margin of the subject, and without any
   thought of preaching to my reader who parts company with me thus early,
   put him on a practical experiment that will let him a great way farther
   into this first chapter of divine knowledge, than, as yet, he thinks it
   possible to go. The problem I would give you is this; viz., that you
   find how to practically bear an enemy, or a person whom you dislike, so
   as to be exactly satisfied and happy in your relationship. If you can
   stand off in disgust, or set yourself squarely against him in hatred,
   or revenge, then do it and bless yourself in it. If that is impossible,
   try indifference, turn your back and say, "let him go and fare as his
   deserts will help him." If there is no sweetness in this, as there
   certainly is none, then begin to pray for him, that he may have a
   better mind and that you may be duly patient with him. This will be
   softer, and you may begin to feel that you are a good deal Christian or
   Christian-like, towards him. And yet there will be a certain dryness in
   your feeling, as if you had only come into the formality of good. Then
   go just one step farther--take the man upon your love, bear him and his
   wrong as a mind's burden, undertake for him, study by what means and by
   what help obtained from God, you can get him out of his evils, and make
   a friend of him--God's friend and yours--do this and see if it does not
   open to you a very great and wonderful discovery--the sublime reality
   and solidly grand significance of vicarious sacrifice. Christ will be
   no more any stone of stumbling in it, the truth itself no more an
   offense, or extravagance; for you now have in your heart, what is no
   stone at all, but a living and self-evidencing grace by which to solve
   it. The offense of the cross--how surely is it ended, when once you
   have learned the way in which God bears an enemy! The quarrels of the
   head will be smoothed away how soon, by the simple methods of a wise
   and loving heart. The recoil you were in is over. In the problem how to
   bear an enemy you have found your Gethsemane and sounded for yourself
   the tragic depths of good--depths of joyful as of sorrow-burdened
   feeling--and so you understand how easily, believe in what glorious
   evidence, the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus for the sins of the world.

CHAPTER II.

  THE ETERNAL FATHER IN VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.

   IT has been a fatal source of. difficulty and mental confusion, as
   regards the vicarious sacrifice and saving work of Christ, that it has
   been taken to be a superlative kind of goodness; a matter of sacrifice
   outside of all the common terms and principles of duty or holy
   obligation; an act, or enterprise of self-sacrifice, not provided for
   in the universal statutes and standards of moral perfection. The
   assumption has been that Christ went out of obligation, out of law and
   beyond, to do the sacrifice, and was just so much better than perfect
   in good, because he would have been perfect in good, if he had declined
   the undertaking. Thus it has been a formally asserted point of
   theology, that his undertaking was "optional;" that which he might, or
   might not assume, and which, if he had chosen to decline, would have
   raised no sense of defect before his own standards of excellence. This
   too has been taken for a point fundamental, as regards the satisfaction
   for sins accomplished in his death, that he raised a superlative merit
   in it to be set to our account, only by doing optionally what he was
   under no obligation, on his own account, to do. What he ought to do for
   himself, or in his own obligation, could not avail for us, but only for
   himself. What he did, or suffered beyond this, was a merit in excess,
   that could be and was accepted for our justification, or the
   substitution of our just punishment.

   Every such attempt to scheme the work of Christ, and put him in the
   terms of the understanding, begins, we ought easily to see, by removing
   The fiction of a superlative merit. him beyond all terms of
   understanding. Hence the painful confusion of ideas, the artificial
   mock speculations, the conclusions that are shocking to all natural
   sentiments of right and justice--the imputations that are figments, of
   merits that are inconceivable, accomplishing satisfactions with God
   that are as far as possible from satisfying men--all which have
   infested, for so many centuries, the history of this great subject.
   Plainly enough we can mean nothing, by a merit that is outside of all
   our standards of merit. If Christ was consenting, optionally, to what
   he might as well have declined; if he was just so much better than he
   ought to be on his own account; then the surplus over is any thing, or
   nothing; we may call it merit, but we do not know what it is; we may
   balance it against the sins of the world, but we can not be sure of a
   grain's weight in it. What can we think, or know, of a goodness over
   and above all standards of good? We might as well talk of extensions
   beyond space, or truths beyond the true. Goodness, holy virtue, is the
   same in all worlds and beings, measured by the same universal and
   eternal standards; else it is nothing to us. Defect is sin; overplus is
   impossible. God himself is not any better than he ought to be, and the
   very essence and glory of his perfection is, that he is just as good as
   he ought to be. Nay it is the glory of our standards of goodness
   themselves, that they are able to fashion, or construct, all that is
   included in the complete beauty of God.

   Here then is our first point, when we attempt the cross and sacrifice
   of Christ; we must bring every thing back under the common standards of
   eternal virtue, and we must find Christ doing and suffering just what
   he ought, or felt that he ought, neither more nor less. That which is
   to be intelligible must be found within the bounds of intelligence. If
   we can not find a Saviour under just our laws of good, we shall find
   him nowhere. Looking for him here, we shall not fail to find him.

   Do we then assume that Christ, in his vicarious sacrifice, was under
   obligation to do and suffer just what he did? Christ fulfilling
   standard obligations. Exactly this. Not that he was under obligations
   to another, but to himself. He was God, fulfilling the obligations of
   God; just those obligations in the eternal fulfillment of which God's
   perfections and beatitudes are eternally fashioned. We transgressors
   had no claims upon him, more than our enemies have upon us; there was
   none above him to enforce such obligations. All that he endures in
   feeling under them, he endures freely, and this it is that constitutes
   both his greatness and joy. There is an eternal cross in his virtue
   itself, and the cross that he endures in Christ only reveals what is in
   those common standards of good, which are also eternally his.

   I shall discuss this matter more fully, at a more advanced stage in the
   argument. For the present I prefer to handle the subject in a manner
   less speculative showing that, as Christ is here discovered All good
   beings in this law of sacrifice. in vicarious sacrifice, so all good
   beings, God in the Old Testament before Christ, the Holy Spirit in the
   times after Christ, and the good created minds both before and after,
   are and are to be, in one accord with Christ, enduring the same kind of
   sacrifice. It will seem, it may be, that I am going a long way round in
   such a canvassing, but the result will be that a platform is gained,
   where the sacrifice of Christ is at once less peculiar and far more
   intelligible. Indeed when it is made plain, as a fact of holy Scripture
   slumbering hitherto in its bosom and hidden from adequate discovery,
   that vicarious sacrifice is the common property of holy virtue in all
   minds, uncreated or created, the problem of such sacrifice will be
   effectually changed, and most of the questions in issue will be
   superseded, or already settled. This present and the two succeeding
   chapters will accordingly be occupied with a Scripture review, as in
   reference to the point stated.

   If it be true that love is a principle of vicarious sacrifice, then it
   will be so, not in Christ only, but as truly in God the Supreme, or the
   God of revelation The Supreme Father in vicarious sacrifice. previous
   to Christ's coming. I say "as truly" it will be observed, not of course
   that he will have done, or endured, the same things. Not even Christ
   did the same things in his first year as in his last, and yet he was
   just as truly burdened with our evils and suffering in our lot; for the
   main suffering of Jesus was not, as many coarsely imagine, in the pangs
   of his body and cross, but in the burdens that came on his mind. In
   these burdens God, as the Eternal Father, suffered before him. He had
   his times and eras appointed, his conditions of preparation, his modes
   of progress, and the incarnate work was to be done only in the
   incarnate era; but the design was nevertheless one and the same
   throughout, and was carried on in the same deep feeling and suffering
   sympathy, from the first. In the ante-Christian era, it may even have
   been one of the heaviest points of sacrifice, that there must be so
   long a detention, and that so great love must be unexpressed, till the
   fullness of time was come. So that, when Christ came it was even a kind
   of release, that the letting forth of so great love into healing, and
   sympathy, and cross, and passion, was now at last permitted.

   A great many persons have forced themselves into a false antagonism, by
   the contrast they have undertaken to raise between the Old Testament
   and God the same in the Old and New Testaments. the New. And yet even
   such will agree, returning so far to the just opinion, that God is God
   every where, one and the same in all ages and proceedings, instigated
   by the same impulses, clothed in the same sympathies, maintaining the
   same patience, under the same burdens of love; acting, of course, in
   the Old Testament history, for the same ends of goodness that are
   sought in the New. They will formally disclaim, too, the opinion that
   trinity supposes a distinction of characters in God, maintaining his
   strict homogeneity as pertaining to his strict unity. They go farther,
   they assert, as regards the infinite character, that God is love, that
   Christ came into the world, because God loved the world. Still further,
   when it is objected to their schemes of atonement, that they seem to
   imply an opinion that God is made gentler and more gracious by the
   sacrifice of Christ, they disclaim any such thought as that God is ever
   mitigated in his dispotions--the change, they say, is wrought in us, or
   in the conditions of public justice, by which God's pardons were
   restricted.

   And yet the false antagonism just referred to remains. After all such
   disclaimers, it has power to feed and keep in vogue a whole set of
   false impressions, or prejudices, by which the God of the Old Testament
   becomes another and virtually different being from the Saviour of the
   New; a kind of Nemesis that needs to be propitiated by suffering, and
   is far as possible, in himself, from being in any relation of vicarious
   and burdened feeling for mankind. After the point of difficulty has
   been turned in their schemes of atonement, by the protestations
   referred to, they go their way, as if said protestations had no meaning
   at all, giving in to a kind of partisanship for one Testament against
   the other, and for one God against the other God. As some disciples
   took to Paul, and some to Apollos, so they take to Christ, and are much
   less drawn to the God of the law. There is no comfort in such a
   prejudice; they are consciously troubled by it. They have a certain
   sense of something unworthy and false in the preference. It offends
   their reverence, it raises the suspicion of some latent superstition in
   their modes of thought and belief. And so it damages, not their peace
   only, but their piety itself. They never can think worthily of God, or
   serve him evenly and with satisfaction, as long as they regard his
   personal manifestations, with predilections that set him in virtual
   disagreement with himself.

   All such predilections it will easily be seen are without foundation.
   On first principles they are and must No progress in God. be
   fictitious; for there is and can be no such thing as internal progress
   in God, that is in his character; he was never inferior to what he now
   is, and will never be superior--never worthier, greater, more happy, or
   more to be admired and loved. And yet there is certainly a considerable
   contrast in the ways of God, as presented in the Old Testament and in
   the Gospel of Christ. There he maintains a government more nearly
   political and earthly; here more spiritual and heavenly. There he calls
   himself a man of war; here he shows himself a prince of peace. There he
   is more legal, appealing to interest in the terms of this life; here he
   moves on the affections and covers the ground of eternity. There he
   maintains a drill of observances; here he substitutes the inspirations
   of liberty and the law written on the heart. There he operates oftener
   by force and by mighty judgments; here by the suffering patience of a
   cross.

   Laying hold of this contrast, and quite willing to sharpen it by
   exaggerations, a great many, taking on the airs of philosophy, turn it,
   without any scruple of reverence, to the disadvantage, or discredit of
   revelation. Affecting great admiration of Christianity, they declare
   that the God of the Old Testament is a lower being and not the same; a
   barbarian's God, a figment evidently of barbarism itself. And of those
   who class as believers, it results, in a different way already
   described, that many are afflicted in the feeling, that the God of the
   law is a God in justice and retributive will--doubtless good in some
   sense, but less amiable--and that Christ presents a better side of
   deity, to which they must instinctively cling, in a preference not to
   be restrained. They will even profess sometimes to find shelter in one,
   against the stormy judgments of the other.

   What now shall we say to this? If God is one, a strict unity, always in
   the same perfect character and feeling, what account shall we make of
   this contrast? And by what method shall we make it appear that he is
   still the same, bearing the same relation of feeling to men's evils and
   sins, working in the same great principle of love and sacrifice?

   The solution is not difficult, if only we make due account of the fact
   that, while there is no progress, or improvement, in God, there is and
   should But the government of God makes progress. be a progress in his
   government of the world. Taken as a plan of redemption and spiritual
   restoration, it must be historical and must be unfolded in and by a
   progressive revelation. Beginning at a point where men's ideas are low
   and their spiritual apprehensions coarse, it must take hold of them, at
   the first, in such a way as they are capable of being taken hold of.
   What is political and legal, what appeals to interest and operates by
   stormy judgments. impressing God's reality by authority, and force, and
   fear, working chiefly on the outward state--breaking into the soul by
   breaking into the senses--will be most appropriate; nothing else in
   fact will get fit apprehension. There will not even be a language, at
   first, for the higher ideas of God and religion; such a language must
   be formed historically, under a growth of uses, generating gradually a
   growth of ideas. Thus if we conceive that holy virtue is constituted by
   a free obedience to law, the law will have to be set in first, by a
   drill of observances, and then, when it has been long enough enforced
   by a restrictive method, ideas may rise, inspirations come, and the
   soul may pass on to seize in liberty, what it has bowed to in fear.
   This holds true of every man, and, in a certain broader sense,
   historically, of a people or a world. The day of ideas, thoughts,
   sentiments, words quickened to a spiritual meaning, must of necessity
   come after, and be prepared by a long and weary drill in rites,
   institutions, legalities and heavy laden centuries of public
   discipline. But God will be the same in this day as in that, in that as
   in this, cherishing the same purpose, moving on the senses, out of the
   same feeling, in the schoolmastering era of law, as in the grace of the
   cross itself. Becoming, at the first, in a certain sense, a barbarian
   people's God, he only submits to conditions of necessity by which he is
   confronted, in preparing to be known, as the God of love and sacrifice,
   and Saviour of the world. Neither is it any discredit to him that the
   subjects of his goodness must be manipulated outwardly and roughly, and
   brought on thus historically, till some higher capabilities of feeling
   and perception are developed.

   To simplify the general subject as far as possible, take, for example,
   the single point in which the hasty and shallow thinkers of the
   unbelieving world Partisanship of the old religion. have been most
   commonly scandalized; viz., the exclusiveness of the old religion. God,
   they insist, is the Creator, Lord, and Father of all men--not of any
   one people; but this old religion holds him forth in promise as the God
   of a chosen people, taking them as clients in specialty, apart from,
   and, in some sense,. against the whole world beside. How very unlike to
   the God of Christianity, erecting a kingdom of universal love and
   suffering sacrifice. And yet plainly there was no other way to get hold
   of the low sentiment of the world and raise it, but to begin thus with
   a partisan, chosen people's mercy, and get himself revealed by light
   and shade, as between his people and others; creating a religion that
   is next thing to a prejudice. He could not be revealed, as any one may
   see, in his own measures, but only in such measures as he found
   prepared. To bolt himself into men's thoughts, when they had no
   thoughts, was impossible. He could only come into such thoughts and
   sentiments as there were. The little, darkened, partisan soul must know
   him as it can, and not as he is. The nations, too, of that day boasted
   each a god of their own, whom they took and praised, for what he could
   do for them, and against the gods of the other nations. A god was no
   god who could not perch on their banners, and fight out their wars,
   trampling all other gods by his power. Hence the necessity that Jehovah
   should choose him a people. And so it was that by overtopping all other
   deities, in his glorious protectorship, he finally made himself known
   as God over all--the true Supreme and Saviour of all.

   If he had announced himself, at the very first, as the God alike and
   Saviour of all men, if he had been forthwith incarnate and had shown
   himself in Moses' day, by the suffering life and death of his Son, the
   history would have been a barren riddle only. They were not equal to
   the conceiving of any such disinterested sacrifice; and the fact that
   it proposed. a salvation for all men would have been enough, by itself,
   to quite turn away their faith. I verily believe that Jesus, coming,
   thus and then, would not even have been remembered in history. And yet
   there was a promise, long before, of which nobody took the meaning,
   that, in this one people, somehow, all nations should be eventually
   blessed; and the prophets, too, as the religious sense grew more
   enlarged, finally began to break out in bold and strong visions of a
   universal kingdom and glory; in which it may be seen that God was
   preparing, even from the first, to be finally known as the Lord and
   Saviour of the whole world.

   Does he then, by condescending to the lowness of barbarous mind, and
   consenting to begin with a religion of prejudice, when there was no
   higher sentiment to begin with, or be revealed in--does God's love
   suffers by detention. he by choosing out one people, in this manner,
   show that his character is equal to nothing higher? Ah, what struggles
   of suffering patience had he rather to endure, in these long ages of
   training, under such narrow and meager possibilities! Nowhere else, it
   seems to me, not even in the cross of Jesus itself, does he reveal more
   wonderfully the greatness and self-sacrificing patience of his feeling.
   And the fact breaks out, all along down the course of the
   history--appearing and reappearing, by how many affecting
   declarations--that he is waiting for a better possibility, waiting to
   open his whole heart's love, and be known by what he can bear and do
   for the world of mankind. Nor was there any moment of relief to him so
   blessed probably, as when he came to Mary with his "all hail," and
   broke into the world as God with us; God now come at last, to disburden
   his heart by sacrifice. The retention before was a greater burden on
   his feeling, we may well believe, than his glorious outbirth into loss
   and suffering now.

   Taking now this very crowded, God in sacrifice by Scripture testimony.
   insufficiently stated solution of his relation to the times of the Old
   Testament, you will find it borne out, in every point, by a careful
   review of the whole Scripture; and that Christ, in his vicarious
   sacrifice, only represents the feeling of God in all the preceding
   ages.

   The principle of love, as we have already seen, is itself a principle
   of vicarious sacrifice, causing every one that is in it to be entered
   into the want, woe, loss, and even ill-desert of every other; bearing
   even adversaries and enemies, just as Christ bore his. But God is love
   and is so declared in every part of the Scripture; and what have we in
   this, but the discovery that he is a being, in just such a relation of
   sympathy and burdened feeling for men, as Christ was. He did not show
   it by the same outward signs, and therefore could not so powerfully and
   transformingly impress the fact; and yet he was in the same precise
   love, waiting, as we just now said, to find relief in a more adequate
   expression. Yet how often, how affectingly, did he express, in words,
   the painful sympathy and deep burden of his feeling. As when the
   prophet says--"In their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of
   his presence saved them; in his love and pity, he redeemed them, and
   bare and carried them, all the days of old." How tenderly does he watch
   the turning of the ages--"grieved forty years" for his people in the
   wilderness--"rising betimes" to send his messengers--protesting that he
   is "weary"--that he is "broken with their whorish heart"--"that he is
   filled with repentings"--calling also to his people to, see how "the
   Lord their God bare them as a man doth bear his son"--apostrophizing
   them, as it were, in a feeling quite broken, "Oh, that there were such
   a heart in them, that they would hear me and keep my
   commandments"--"How shall I give thee up, Ephraim, how shall I deliver
   thee, Israel?"--and again, "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
   love, and with loving kindness have I drawn thee." It is as if there
   were a cross unseen, standing on its undiscovered hill, far back in the
   ages, out of which were sounding always, just the same deep voice of
   suffering love and patience, that was heard by mortal ears from the
   sacred hill of Calvary.

   And then, when Christ himself arrives, what does he say but that, "God
   so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son?"--not that he
   came to obtain God's love, but that God's love sent him and was here to
   be magnified, in the sacrifice of life he would make. And who is Christ
   but God manifest in the flesh, reconciling the world unto himself; the
   express image and word of God; that is God expressed as he is, so that
   he that hath seen him hath seen the Father; working always for, and to
   declare, the God that sent him. Neither does he conceive, that he is
   introducing a new kingdom and order, that is worthier of God, and in
   better feeling. He declares that he came not to destroy the old system,
   or law, but only to fulfill it and carry it on to the glorious
   realization of its ends, opening things that have been kept secret, but
   have all the time been working, from the foundation of the world; nay,
   that his kingdom is a kingdom prepared from the foundation of the
   world; prepared that is in God's love, fixed in his purpose, working in
   his counsels. What then was Christ in his vicarious feeling and
   sacrifice, what in his Gethsemane, but a revelation in time, of just
   that love that had been struggling always in God's bosom; watching
   wearily for the world and with inward groanings unheard by mortal ears.

   But there is, after all, some one will say, a something in Christ that
   is more gentle and better to feeling--less Christ not better, but more
   adequately expressed. severity, kinder, softer terms of good. There
   certainly is a fuller, more adequate, expression of God's love; and so
   a greater power of attraction, thus of salvation. And yet there are
   denunciations of future evil in his teachings, that, taken as they
   stand, are as much more fearful than any which are found in the Old
   Testament, as they relate to what is more future and of longer
   duration. I will not here discuss them, I only say that, take what view
   of them is possible, it does not appear that Christ, in bearing the
   world's evil, does at all consent to the possible immunity of
   transgression. If he might consent to that, then he might well enough
   consent to the continuance of transgression also, and so be excused
   from the sacrifice of the cross altogether.

   God then is such a being from eternity as must, by the supposition, be
   entered, even as Christ was, into all God then is just what Christ
   shows him to be. that belongs to love; entered into patience, long
   suffering, and sacrifice; burdened in heart for the good of enemies;
   taking on his feeling the wants and woes of enemies. This is no new
   thought, no optional, superlative goodness taken up by Christ in the
   year One, of the Christian era; but the whole deity is in it, in it
   from eternity. And the short account of all is--"For God so loved the
   world."

   Holding now this view of God--the same which the Psalmist boasts when
   he sings, "For God is my king of old, working salvation in the midst of
   the Current misconceptions. earth"--we encounter a large body of
   current misconceptions, mostly under Gospel terms of expression, which
   require to be modified if we are to hold the truth understandingly.

   Thus we speak of Christ as a mediator, and as doing a work of
   mediation; which is Scriptural, but we often conceive that he is
   literally a third being, Mediation. coming in between us and God to
   compose our difficulty with him, by gaining him as it were to softer
   terms. But he is no such mediator at all, nor any mediator, such as
   does not leave him to be God manifest in all God's proper feeling. No,
   he is a mediator only in the sense that, as being in humanity, he is a
   medium of God to us; such a medium that, when we cling to him in faith,
   we take hold of God's own life and feeling as the Infinite Unseen, and
   are taken hold of by Him, reconciled, and knit everlastingly to him, by
   what we receive.

   We call Christ our intercessor, too, and conceive that we are saved by
   his intercession. Does he then intercede for us in the sense that he
   goes before God Intercession. in a plea to gain him over to us, showing
   God his wounds, and the print of his nails, to soften him towards us.
   Far from that as possible; nothing could be more unworthy. Intercession
   means literally intervention, that is a coming between; and it is not
   God that wants to be softened, or made better; for Christ himself is
   only the incarnate love and sacrificing patience of God; but the stress
   of the intercession is with us and in our hearts' feeling--all which we
   simply figure, objectively, when we conceive him as the priest that
   liveth ever to make intercession for us. We set him before God's altar,
   in a figure of eternal sponsorship, urging the suit of peace; though
   the peace he obtains by the suit of his sacrifice, comes, in fact, from
   our mitigation, not from the mitigation of God.

   Other modes of speaking, supposed to be understood in their Scriptural
   meaning, will not be accommodated by the conception that unites the God
   of Pacification. the old time and the Christ of the new, in the same
   vicarious feeling, but will require to have their colors softened by
   similar explanations. And it will not be difficult, I rejoice to
   believe, for any genuinely thoughtful, right-feeling soul, to lay hold
   of the possibility thus offered, of a conception of God that does not
   mock his attributes, or set them at war with each other. How
   distracting and painful, how dreadfully appalling is the faith that we
   have a God, back of the worlds, whose indignations overtop his mercies,
   and who will not be satisfied, save as he is appeased by some other,
   who is in a better and milder feeling. We might easily fear him, but
   how shall we love him; and where, meantime shall we find that glorious,
   all-centering unity in the good, which our sufficiently distracted soul
   longs for in the God of its worship? What can we do as sinners, torn
   already by our own evils, with two Gods, a less good, and a
   better--this latter, suffering and even dying to compose and sweeten
   the other? Where shall our heart rest when our thought itself is bent
   hither and thither, and torn by a God in no unity with Himself?

   Here then I think we may rest in the full and carefully tested
   discovery, that whatever we may say, or hold, or believe, concerning
   the vicarious A cross in God's perfections from eternity. sacrifice of
   Christ, we are to affirm in the same manner of God. The whole deity is
   in it, in it from eternity and will to eternity be. We are not to
   conceive that our blessed Saviour is some other and better side of
   deity, a God composing and satisfying God; but that all there is in him
   expresses God, even as he is, and has been of old--such a being in his
   love that he must needs take our evils on his feeling, and bear the
   burden of our sin. Nay, there is a cross in God before the wood is seen
   upon Calvary; hid in God's own virtue itself, struggling on heavily in
   burdened feeling through all the previous ages, and struggling as
   heavily now even in the throne of the worlds. This, too, exactly, is
   the cross that our Christ crucified reveals and sets before us. Let us
   come then not to the wood alone, not to the nails, not to the vinegar
   and the gall, not to the writhing body of Jesus, but to the very
   feeling of our God and there take shelter. Seeing how God bears an
   enemy--has borne or carried enemies all the days of old--we say "Herein
   is Love," and in this grand koinonia--this fellowship of the Father and
   his Son, Jesus Christ--our very unworthy and very distracting
   preferences are forever merged and lost.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] Matth. vii, 17.

   [2] This most natural and certainly great and worthy meaning for the
   passage from Matthew is so far off from the dogmatic and prosy
   literalism of many, that they are able to see scarcely any thing in it.
   Bishop Pearce, just because the passage does not meet his notion of
   Isaiah's famous Christological chapter, and does not signify any thing
   true enough in itself, imagines that it must be an interpolation! Dr.
   Magee (Vol. I., pp. 313-355) expends more than forty pages of learning
   on it, contriving how he may get the Prophet and Evangelist together,
   in some meaning that will make room for a more literal and penal
   bearing of sins than there can be of sicknesses. By a heavy practice on
   the Hebrew verb in the first clause, and the Hebrew noun in the second,
   he gets the "took" converted into "took away" and the sicknesses into
   "sorrows;" reading thus--"Himself took away our infirmities and bare
   our sorrows." But it happens most unfortunately that the Greek word of
   the evangelist [elabe] will not bear any such meaning as "took away,"
   but insists on signifying only that kind of taking which appropriates,
   or receives, or even seizes by robbery; and the Greek word [nosos]
   never means any thing but "sickness;" save when it is used as an
   epithet in speaking figuratively of the "diseases of the mind." The
   fact is that the evangelist translates the prophet well, and the
   English version translates the evangelist well, and the vicariousness
   resulting is a grand, living idea, such as meets the highest
   intelligence, and yields an impression that accords with the best
   revelations of consciousness, in the state of love. Every true
   Christian knows what it is to bear the sins of wrongdoers and enemies
   in this manner, and loves to imagine that, in doing it, he learns from
   the cross of his Master--being almost raised into the plane of divinity
   himself, by a participation so exalted. There was never a case of
   construction more simple and plain than this, and it has the merit, if
   we receive it, of carrying us completely clear, at once, of all the
   fearful stumbling blocks which a crude, over-literal interpretation has
   been piling about the cross for so many centuries. There is no stranger
   freak of dullness in all the literary history of the world, and nothing
   that is going to make a more curious chapter for the ages to come, than
   the constructions raised on these vicarious forms of Scripture, and the
   immense torment of learning and theologic debate that has occupied a
   whole millenium in consequence. The long period, preceding, when Christ
   was regarded as a ransom paid to the devil, will be more easily
   qualified by allowances that save it in respect.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER III

  THE HOLY SPIRIT IN VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.

   HAVING showed, in my last chapter, that the Creator and God of the
   former dispensation, sometimes called the Father in that relation, was
   inserted into our human conditions, in just the same vicarious feeling
   as Christ was in his incarnate suffering, and bore our sins as truly,
   and wrestled for us in the same tender burdens of love, I now undertake
   to show the same in respect to the Holy Spirit after Christ; that he
   works in love as Christ did, and suffers all the incidents of
   love--compassion, wounded feeling, sorrow, concern, burdened sympathy,
   violated patience--taking men upon him, to bear them and their sins,
   precisely as Christ himself did in his sacrifice. He is, in fact, a
   Christ continued, in all that distinguishes the offering and priesthood
   of Christ, and is fitly represented in the same way, under a priestly
   figure, as our intercessor.

   I am well aware how very distant all such conceptions are from the
   commonly received impressions of the The Holy Spirit in personal
   feeling and character. Holy Spirit. For it is a remarkable fact, apart
   from all conceptions of a properly vicarious sacrifice in his ministry,
   that even where his personality is much insisted on, almost nothing is
   left him commonly in the matter of feeling and character, that belongs
   to personality. Probably enough the reason may be that when we pray, as
   we familiarly do, that God will send, or give, the Holy Spirit; or shed
   down, or shed abroad, or pour out, or breathe the Holy Spirit; we allow
   such figures to carry their meaning too literally, and so fall into the
   way of regarding him, unwittingly, as a mere influence; some invisible
   missive, or fluid, or magnetic force, traversing unseen, the hidden
   depths of souls, to work God's purpose in them. However this may be, it
   certainly comes to pass, somehow, that we practically lose out the
   conception of a genuinely personal character and life, as pertaining to
   the Holy Spirit. And, in this view, it becomes a matter of great
   spiritual consequence, apart from the particular subject I have in
   hand, to restore a juster and more vital conception of the Spirit, such
   as I am undertaking now to assert. I begin then by a distinct
   recognition--

   1. Of the personality of the Spirit, insisting that, if it be asserted
   at all, as it certainly should be, it must be asserted with a meaning
   and not without. Personality that makes no true person. It is very true
   that the word Spirit [pneuma,] is a neuter noun, drawing after it the
   neuter pronoun it. But this is only because the natural symbol resorted
   to, viz., breath, happened to be a neuter word. Still there are other
   terms applied to the Spirit, which bear the very highest character of
   personality. Thus he is promised as being even Christ himself--"I will
   come to you;" and is called, with Christ, Paraclete, Advocate,
   Comforter, another Comforter--and the personal pronoun he is applied to
   him, just as it is to the Father and the Son. I raise no question here
   upon the nature of this personality. I only say that he is a person, in
   just the same personal proper. ties of feeling, love, sacrifice, as the
   Father and the Son, and that, being perfect in character, he must have
   exactly the same character. Besides, according to all right conceptions
   of trinity, God is still a strict unity, or undivided substance, not
   three substances; and so, on the score of unity, as before on the score
   of personality, the Holy Spirit must be more than a divine somewhat,
   emptied of all divine graces and perfections--the full and perfect God,
   even as that same fullness dwelt in Jesus bodily. The Holy Spirit works
   thus in a ministry of love precisely as Jesus did, end the love is just
   the same kind of love, burdened for men, burdened for enemies, heaving
   in silent agonies of passion to recover and save; fulfilling in every
   particular the Christly terms of sacrifice. Again--

   2. It requires, every one may easily perceive, quite as much suffering
   patience, and affliction of feeling, or The work of the Spirit is in
   sacrifice. even of what is called passion, to carry on the work of the
   Spirit, as it did to fulfill the ministry and bear the cross of Jesus.
   In the first place, the work of the Spirit covers the whole ground of
   human life, broad as the world is, and continues through all the untold
   generations of time. And in this world-wide operation he is enduring,
   not Pilate, and the soldiers, and a few Jewish priests, but the
   contradiction of all sinners that live. He is betrayed by more then
   Judas, denied by more than Peter; struggling on, from age to age, with
   all the falsities, and treasons, and corruptions, all the unspeakable
   disgusts, of all bosom perversity; acting, and suffering, not before
   them indeed as Christ did, but as it were in perpetual contact with
   them.

   Neither let us imagine, as too many do, in their superficial haste,
   that the principal suffering and sacrifice of Christ consisted in the
   pains he bore in his body. The pains of his moral sensibility, the
   burdens that oppressed his vicarious feeling, cost him more than his
   cross, as any one may see who takes the meaning of his Gethsemane.
   Indeed this one look down into the depth of his divine feeling seems to
   have been permitted us, that our mind might be taken away from the
   foolish opinion that his principal sacrifice lay in the pangs of a few
   hours' bodily suffering. Indeed these bodily pains of Christ on the
   cross appear to be a kind of condescension rather to our coarseness,
   that he might raise an outward flag of distress for our dull sensuous
   nature to look upon; while to him, the principal woe is that which, as
   incarnate love, he bore all through his ministry, in his griefs,
   disgusts, and wounded sensibilities; that which once or twice he barely
   speaks of, as when he says "now is my soul troubled;" that which made
   him, to his friends, "a man of sorrows;" that which, in the garden,
   took hold of him, even as an agony, the most appalling scene of tragedy
   ever beheld in our world. In a quiet, silent hour, when his person is
   threatened by no appearance of danger, the wail of his burdened heart
   breaks out in a way of intensity that is even terrible; while in his
   trial and mockery, and the bodily torture of his death, his serenity is
   more remarkable even than his distress. Perceiving thus how the real
   pain of Jesus, that which constituted the principal cost of his
   sacrifice, was the burden that lay upon his feeling, baffled and
   wronged as that feeling ever was, we are let into the precise
   conception of that equally heavy burden that is borne by the Spirit
   always. And this long, weary draft upon his patience, his disgusts, and
   wounded sensibilities--this it is that makes his intercession. We pass
   now--

   3. To that which is to be more decisive than our own thoughts or
   constructive endeavors, viz., to the direct Scripture representations.
   exhibitions of the Scripture itself. And here, since I must abridge the
   review as much as possible, I will pass all the more casual
   notifications of the Spirit which speak of doing him "despite," of his
   being "grieved," and "vexed," and "lied unto," and "resisted;" that
   show the eminently Christly "gifts of healing" ministered by him,
   allowing it also to be said of him as of Christ--"Himself took our
   infirmities and bare our sicknesses;" that call him "Christ," and "the
   Spirit of Christ," and "Christ dwelling in us," and "Christ living in
   us"--in all which it is made clear that he has all the sentiment, and
   sensibility, and even wounded sensibility, of Christ himself--Christ's
   equivalent in short, abiding in the heart.

   Having merely alluded to these very significant tokens, I go on to
   notice three principal conceptions under which the intercessory
   character and feeling of the Spirit are specially displayed.

   Thus, first of all, he goes into the ministry of Christ with him and
   upon him, as the qualifying impulse, in some sense, of his work;
   resting upon With Christ in his ministry. him as a dove in his baptism;
   leading him into and through the great soul-struggle of the temptation;
   bestowed upon him "without measure" in his doctrine; travailing with
   him, last of all, in his Gethsemane and his cross; so that we may say,
   when all is done, "who through the eternal Spirit offered himself
   without spot to God." Instigator thus, and upholder of Jesus, in all
   his ministry and sacrifice, how strange is the inversion we make, when
   we allow ourselves to think of him as being only a bare impersonal
   force or influence!

   A second and partly reverse, though really agreeing conception of the
   Spirit is met, in his appointed vicarship, or substituted ministry,
   acting in Takes Christ's place and continues his work. the place of
   Christ himself. Thus Christ declaring to his disciples, "it is
   expedient for you that I go away," promises the Spirit as "another
   Comforter" in his place. And the reason of the substitution is not
   difficult. Having brought on his outwardly historic work to a close,
   Christ perceives that his permanent, or protracted stay in the flesh
   and before the senses, would be rather a hindrance than a help to
   farther progress. If it were possible for him, as a visible Saviour and
   resident, to win disciples all over the world and in all ages, they
   would yet be disciples not of faith, but of the eyes; aching still to
   see him, more than to be like him; thronging on to his seat as pilgrims
   over continents and seas; yet not one in a hundred of them ever getting
   near enough to speak with him; wanting all, of course, a visible
   kingdom since they have a visible king. Therefore he declares a change
   of administration--that the Christ of the eye is to be withdrawn, and
   the Spirit, an invisible, diffusive, pervasive, every where present,
   always abiding, Christ substituted--a Christ whom no distance can
   remove, whom the sick man can have in his chamber, the prisoner in his
   dungeon, the exile in his place of banishment, the martyr in his fires;
   present to the heart, more present than looks, or words; present where
   the eye is blind and can not see him, and the ear is deaf and can not
   hear him speak. And yet he is to be the consciously felt Christ. "The
   world seeth me not but ye see me." "At that day ye shall know that I am
   in my Father and ye in me and I in you." In him, as their living
   interpreter, present to consciousness in all the sentiment, love,
   sacrifice, of the Father and the Son, the disciples are always to know
   the ascended Lord of their hearts, and be kept in the sense of his
   society and even of his burdened sympathy itself.

   This brings us to a third Scripture conception of the Spirit, where the
   vicarious working is even more formally Has his Gethsemane. displayed
   [3] --"Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know
   not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh
   intercession for us with groanings that can not be uttered. And he that
   searcheth the hearts, knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because
   he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God."

   Our translators appear to have looked upon it as a thing quite
   unsupposable, that any priestly and vicarious working pertains to the
   ministry of the Spirit, and have cast the words of their version
   accordingly, so as to make it a great deal less distinctly vicarious
   than the original. Besides it would be nearly impossible to so
   translate the passage as to give it, in English, the full vicarious
   typology and substitutive import of the original Greek version. Thus
   our English word helpeth--["helpeth our infirmities"]--represents a
   long Greek word compounded of two prepositions and a verb; the
   preposition with indicating a conjunction of sympathy, the preposition
   instead of, indicating substitution, and the verb taking hold of as in
   participation; [4] precisely the same verb in precisely the same phrase
   which is translated, "took our infirmities,"Matth. viii, 17 in the
   remarkable passage that declares the vicarious assumption of our bodily
   infirmities and evils by Christ; only there the verb is not intensified
   by the prepositions here compounded with it. Are we then to judge that
   a much stronger word of vicarious assumption is here to be emptied of
   every such import, and translated simply "helpeth" because it refers to
   the Holy Spirit?

   Again it is to be specially noted that the Holy Spirit is twice
   represented in this passage under the priestly figure of making
   intercession; the same which is applied to Christ in but a single
   instance, and becomes, The priestly conception of his work. in the
   estimation of many teachers, the crowning doctrine of his mediatorship.
   Precisely how much, or what is to be understood by this intercession,
   as affirmed of Christ, it may be difficult to settle. The word means
   literally to intervene for, as when a friend intervenes between a
   superior and an inferior, to obtain some act of forgiveness, or help
   from the former. There is somewhat of a mediatorial character in the
   intervention, somewhat also of a vicarious character, inasmuch as the
   intervening or interceding party is supposed to have the case of the
   humbler and more dejected one upon his own feeling, and to be a
   volunteer bearer of his burden for him. In the case of the Spirit the
   vicarious, substitutive character of the intervention or intercession
   is grammatically intensified, when compared with the intercession
   ascribed to Christ, by the doubling of the preposition for, compounding
   it, first with the verb, and then placing it again before the noun or
   subject. [5] The intercession ascribed to Christ--"able to save them to
   the uttermost them that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to
   make intercession for them"--plainly enough represents the reconciling
   work he is able to do in souls, under the objective and priestly figure
   of a perpetual offering to God, for the propitiation of God to them.
   The intercession of the Spirit on the other hand is subjectively
   conceived and not otherwise, for his ministry is only subjective in
   men's hearts; it is the wrestling within of his own divine sympathy and
   suffering love, to raise them into accord with God's mind and the
   secret motions of his goodness; thus to give insight and power to their
   prayers, and draw them into all the secret helpings of God in a state
   of reconciliation.

   All which he is said to do "with groanings which can not be
   uttered"--better "with groanings unuttered;" that is, with strivings of
   concern or burdened feeling, that are the silent Gethsemane of his
   ministry. The groanings of Christ are audible and so might the
   groanings of the Spirit be, if he had the vocal organs of a body
   connected with his feeling. Enough that one, as truly as the other, and
   both in exact conformity, fulfill the natural pathology of love and
   sacrifice; Christ when he throws himself upon the ground, groaning
   aloud for the mere burden he has upon his feeling, and without any
   other kind of distress; and the Spirit when he enters into the
   struggles of our disorder and weakness with so great concern, groaning
   inaudibly in us and heaving out our soul in sighs and prayers.

   It is no small confirmation of the view thus given, that when it is
   carried forward into the latter of the: two verses, all that
   awkwardness which the commentators appear to have felt, in assigning to
   it any precise meaning, is completely removed. Omitting the words "will
   of," which are not in the original, we read--"And he that [sought unto
   by prayer] searcheth the hearts, knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit
   [the mind which the Spirit is working in us] because he [the Spirit]
   maketh intercession for the saints [preparing a mind in them] according
   to God"--working that is from and toward just that counsel of vicarious
   love which has dwelt in the Godhead from eternity. God he infers--this
   is the strain of his argument--must certainly be in the secret of what
   proceeds from himself, and when fallen souls are wrought into that same
   mind by the Spirit, their prayers must be accepted and their footing of
   reconciliation established. In this manner do the Scriptures represent
   the Holy Spirit, in his vicarious work and office of
   intercession--bathing us inwardly in all Christly sympathy, bearing our
   burdens of weakness, and sin, and groaning, as it were, his own
   longings for us into our prayers. At the same time it is to be admitted
   that there is a good deal of language applied to Christ and his work in
   the Scriptures which is not applied to the Holy Spirit; which also it
   is no part of my present subject to explain. I only say that it
   contemplates a difference in the offices of Christ and the Spirit, and
   their modes and kinds of operation. My present concern is simply to
   show that the Holy Spirit works in the same feeling as Christ did,
   bears the same burdens on his love, suffers the same wounded
   sensibility, encounters loss and sacrifice under the same vicarious
   impulse. I do not undertake to identify Christ and the Spirit in such a
   sense as to make them do the same things, or work by the same method.
   One operates outwardly, the other inwardly; one before the
   understanding, the other in it; one making impressions by what is acted
   before the senses and addressed to thought, the other by groanings and
   throbs of divine feeling back of thought. This much, however, I will
   say, that if the sacrifices of the much enduring, agonizing spirit,
   were acted before the senses, in the manner of the incarnate life of
   Jesus, he would seem to make the world itself a kind of Calvary from
   age to age, and would just as impressively sanctify the law, by the
   perennial obedience of his sacrifices, as Christ did by the casual
   sacrifice of his cross. And this brings me to add--

   4. That the reason why the Holy Spirit is regarded so much less
   tenderly by us than Christ, or even as having no particular title to
   our love, is Only does not meet us in the senses. that we are creatures
   in the senses, carnalized also and blinded, as regards all spiritual
   perceptions, by the sensuous habit of our sin, and that Christ meeting
   us in the senses, speaking to us with a man's voice, enduring toil and
   contempt for us, joining himself to us in all our external adversities,
   looking on us with a face gloomed by sorrow, or bathed in the sweat of
   agony, or stained by the blood of his thorny crown and cross--meeting
   us in this way, having a human person for his organ, Christ lays hold
   of our feeling, by his address to the senses, and we begin to imagine
   some special tenderness and fellow sensibility in him, awakened by his
   human relationship itself, and dating after that relationship begun.
   Whereas he has only come into humanity because the feeling was in him
   before, and has taken up the human nature, that he might have an organ
   of what before was hid, unexpressed, in his divine feeling. And so the
   Holy Spirit, coming after, comes in that same feeling, tempered to just
   the same pitch of vicarious sacrifice for men. Jesus is not better than
   the Father, nor better than the Spirit, his substitute. We think so, if
   at all, only because we see him with our eyes; and he is put before our
   eyes, in the flesh, for the very purpose of expressing to us adequately
   what is in the Everlasting Godhead, unvoiced to feeling in us hitherto,
   unexpressed by look, or form, or act, or agony. Could we make the still
   small voice of the Spirit audible, could we bring into sound the
   groanings unuttered, could we invest the Spirit in our hearts with a
   look that is the fit expression of his sensibility, and feel the tears
   of his divine pity dropping on the face of our sin, how evident would
   it be made to us, that we have, in him, the true Christ-passion, living
   always in the secret center of our life; the very same that we had
   visibly before us, in the tender ministries and suffering graces of the
   Son of Mary.

   Perhaps it may be necessary to add, that the Holy Spirit in such a
   ministry of sacrifice and burdened feeling, Works in authority also.
   holds the magisterial key of divinity still, and makes it none the less
   a piercing and strong ministry. He is just like Christ in this respect.
   The tenderness and self-sacrificing love of Christ never subsided into
   softness, or a look of weakness. Authority goes with him. He lays
   himself upon the proud, the plunderers of the poor, the pretenders and
   hypocrites in religion, in words of fearful severity. He is kingly even
   in his passion. And in just the same manner the Spirit has thunders for
   guilty consciences, none the less terrible, that, like his groanings,
   they are inaudible; scourges of rods to lay upon the backs of all
   defiant sins; fiery-pointed arrows of conviction to hurl among the
   drowsy fears, and awake them out of their sleep. He sharpens the soul's
   hunger, stirs it up to self-disgust, kindles aspiration, strikes the
   bell of time and makes it ring the note of flying years. A faithful and
   strong Spirit, he can also be a piercing and severe Spirit. The
   vicarious love makes him none the less a king, and the kingdom of God
   he establishes within none the less truly a kingdom. In a word, he
   bears the whole divine character into his ministry; and brings it in
   upon our hearts' presence as a revelation there of God's full majesty.
   Adding this for safeguard, our conclusion is that the ministry of the
   Holy Spirit is as truly a ministry of suffering and vicarious sacrifice
   as that of Christ himself.

   I can not drop the subject in hand without adverting to a great and
   very hurtful misconception of the Gospel plan itself, that connects
   with this same misconception of the Holy Spirit which I am here trying
   to correct. Thus how very commonly is it given as a true summation of
   the Gospel, that Christ, by his death and A mechanical Gospel which is
   not the true. sacrifice, prepares a ground of forgiveness or
   justification, and then that the Holy Spirit is sent by a kind of
   immediate, or efficient agency, to renew the soul in a forgivable
   state. Christ works before the law, and the Holy Spirit works in the
   soul; one to open a gate of mercy, the other to lead into that gate. As
   if Christ, in his agony, and cross, and all the feeling of his most
   feeling and beautiful ministry, were not engaged to be a reconciling
   power in souls, at all, but only to set himself before God's justice,
   and his just retributions, buying their silence by his pains; whereupon
   the Holy Spirit, a very good being doubt. less, though doing nothing
   specially here by goodness, is sent forth, in adequate force, to be the
   great Regenerator. The regeneration accordingly is not a point won by
   any Gospel siege of love and sacrifice, but carried by mighty
   impressment rather, much as if by some unseen hydrostatic pressure, or
   some silent gun-shot stroke of omnipotence. These sapless timbers!
   these fleshless, nerveless bones! how sad a figure do they make of the
   Gospel, where the true Christ and Spirit come together, in love and
   sacrifice, to beget us in holiness, by the longings felt of their joint
   passion in our hearts.

   It results, of course, under such a conception of the Gospel plan, that
   we are drawn to no very close personal union either with Christ, or the
   Spirit, and just that is missed which, in God's view, is the principal
   aim of all; viz., the power to be exerted in us by the feeling
   expressed to us. For if Christ, in what is called his vicarious
   sacrifice, is wholly withdrawn from us, and is only doing a work before
   justice and the law, in some court of reckoning we know not where, he
   is plainly doing nothing to win a place in our consciousness, or to
   produce a Christly consciousness in us. He does not move upon us, but
   upon the books, thinking only of the credit to be gained for us there
   by the contribution of his pains. How then is he going to be formed in
   us? And by what conceivable method are we to have him inwardly
   revealed, and to say, as the conscious witness of our hearts, Christ
   liveth in us? However good and great the work he is doing among the
   retributive economies for us, he is not here for the doing specially of
   any thing in us.

   Meantime the Spirit is reduced to an attitude where we are unlikely as
   may be, to conceive any such thing as the greatness and blessedness of
   a conscious, The Spirit our invisible friend. everlastingly established
   friendship with him. He is not here, to reach us, in any sense, by the
   divine feeling. He is not Christ taken out of form and locality, to be
   present everywhere and be revealed, unseen, as a Christ living in all
   hearts. But he is thought of more as an efficient divine operator in
   souls; doing a work of repair in them, or, at most, a work of moral
   suasion before their choices; neither of which is very much related to
   our personal sentiments and the engagement of our love to his
   character. We think of him as of some impersonal force, some hidden
   fire, some holy gale, not as a friend present in sympathy, or wounded
   feeling, to every throb of our hearts; disgusted by sensuality and
   passion, pained by vanity, offended by pride, grieved by neglect, hurt
   by unbelief and all worldly inclinings; our eternal counselor, guide,
   helper, stay; such a Spirit as, living in us, keeps the sensibilities
   even of Gethsemane and the passion in immediate contact with our inmost
   life. How great value and power there might be in such a conception is
   obvious. What mindfulness. what delicate reverences and exact loyalty
   of living would it require, and how dear the confidence it would
   support. Whether it be a relation more fearful or tender, more humble
   or lofty, more careful or inspiring, I hardly know; it is every thing
   great, beautiful, tender, holy, powerful. Losing the sense of such a
   Spirit and of such a personal friendship with him, we seem to lose
   every thing. He is our other Comforter, our second Christ; and when we
   lose our faith in him, or hold him but dimly, we are just so far
   reduced to an experience that is orphanage--even as Christ himself
   conceived when he said, "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to
   you."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [3] Rom. viii, 26-7.

   [4] sunantilambanetai.

   [5] huperentunchanei huper hemon
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER IV.

  THE GOOD ANGELS IN VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.

   IT has been a great hindrance, we have seen, to all right conceptions
   of what is called the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that the
   attempt has been kept up, so persistently, to solve it as a matter one
   side of all the common principles of duty--a superlative goodness, too
   good to be obligatory on Christ, or any one else; an optional
   sacrifice, when undertaken by him, that overtops all requirement and
   makes a virtue better than even perfect law can frame a notion of. And
   so, by a kind of prodigious goodness above his obligation, Christ
   raises a fund of surplus merit, to even the account of all the world's
   wrong doing under obligation. There ought to be some difficulty in
   getting well through any such kind of solution; for after all the
   principles of duty, or virtue, have been thrown into confusion, no rule
   is left to work by, in the settlement of any thing.

   In this view, or on this account, I have undertaken to show the
   universality of just what we discover most distinctly in the work and
   sacrifice of Christ; that every good being, just according to his
   degree in good, will bear evil beings and suffer in feeling for them
   and take, as it were, their bad lot on himself; that, as Christ did it,
   so did the Father before Christ in the dispensation of the Old
   Testament; also that the Holy Spirit, after Christ, is continually
   doing it, in his continued work of intercession. Vicarious action,
   feeling, suffering, therefore, is not peculiar to the Son, but is even
   from eternity in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and in one as truly as in
   the others.

   What I now propose is to carry the same conclusion a degree farther, or
   to bring it a step nearer down to All good intelligences in vicarious
   sacrifice. us; viz., to show that all holy beings created are in
   exactly the same vicarious spirit and suffering way of love as Christ
   was, only not doing and suffering exactly the same things. This may
   seem, in one view, to signify little as regards the extension of my
   subject; for if the uncreated three are in the very same love as Christ
   from eternity, bearing for love's sake all the burdens of all enemies,
   and suffering a Gethsemane in feeling on their account, it of course
   adds nothing as regards authority, to show, that all created subjects,
   the glorified men, the angels and seraphim of the heavenly worlds, are
   also in the same. But we are looking, it must be observed, not after
   authority, but after commonness, or a common platform of principles in
   vicarious sacrifice; and therefore it signifies even the more to find
   all the holy intelligences of God's empire in it, with Him, and with
   Christ; for it brings the Christly sacrifice down just so much closer
   to our human ranges of life and character, and our common obligations
   of duty and sacrifice. It shows, in fact, that Christ's vicarious
   action is no prodigious matter, no monstrosity of goodness, but that
   all created holy beings have their perfection and blessedness in the
   same.

   On this point we have several distinct modes of evidence.

   1. A negative evidence, created by the impossibility of assuming the
   contrary. Nothing would more certainly shock our conceptions of
   glorified Shocking to think otherwise. minds, or of what is proper to
   their holy character, than to hear it affirmed that they are ignorant
   of sacrifice, never afflicted for the want, or woe, or fall of others;
   that, in fact, they would never think of being burdened with concern
   for an enemy, or of bearing any loss or sacrifice for his sake. Is that
   the kind of virtue, or character, that distinguishes the glorified
   state? Is it by such minds, in such a spirit, that Christ is to be
   appreciated, and is it such that are to have their joy in society with
   him?

   2. It is agreed that angels and all glorified minds are in the
   principle and life of love; and love in angels works according to its
   own nature, as Their love puts them in a way of sacrifice. truly as it
   does in God or in Christ; for it is a power universally that takes hold
   of its objects and of all their woes, wants, wrongs and even enmities,
   to bear them as a weight on its afflicted sympathies. As certainly,
   therefore, as the angels and good minds of the upper world are fixed in
   the sway of love, they will run out their sympathies to others and will
   burden their hearts with concern for the un. worthy and the wicked;
   ministering unseen, where they may, in warnings and secret guidances.
   If they are in Christ's love, they will have a Gethsemane and a cross
   in that love, and will be fulfilling their unseen mini3try in the same
   key with his.

   3. It signifies much that they are drawn to Christ with such evident
   sympathy, and are with him so Their sympathy with Christ shows them to
   be. constantly, at every stage, and in every principal crisis of his
   work. The interest they have in him is visibly toned and tempered, by
   their common interest with him in his objects. Ages before his coming,
   they are moved with mighty expectation, "desiring to look into these
   things." "Highly favored! blessed among women!" is the eager and
   strongly reverent salutation they bring to Mary's mortal womanhood.
   When the child is born, they break into the sky, filling it full of
   heavenly hymn--"Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace." In his
   temptation, they crowd about him to support him by their ministry. In
   his agony, one comes to strengthen him. In his trial, he is sure that
   he can have twelve legions to help him. They watch by the tomb where he
   sleeps; they roll away the stone when he wakes; and sitting there, one
   at the head and another at the feet, in forms more glorious than
   sculptured stones, they mark the now vacant place of his rest. With a
   delicate reverence, they tenderly fold the bloody napkin up and the
   bloody linen clothes, and lay them apart by themselves; and they say to
   Mary, with what tenderness, and, as it were tearful homage, "Come see
   the place where the Lord lay." Almost, of course, they are with him in
   his ascension, when his work of sacrifice is done, and he goes up in
   the train of their innumerable company.

   All these, now, as I readily admit, are rather indications than
   positive proofs. And yet there is such a zeal in their sympathy as
   indicates no partial accord, but a thoroughly complete oneness with
   him. Appearing most punctually when he sinks lowest in sacrifice,
   flocking to him in his agony and always when his soul is troubled, what
   can we imagine but that they suffer with him; pained for his enemies
   even as he is, and bearing the same burdens for them? Otherwise their
   sympathy itself could be scarcely better than an offense to his
   feeling. But there is a more direct kind of evidence--

   4. In the ministry they maintain themselves; for they have a ministry,
   side by side with that of Jesus, in which we may see distinctly what
   Their ministry is in Christ's way of sacrifice. and how much of
   sacrifice they are able to bear, and do in fact bear, for mankind. I am
   well aware of the general unbelief or practical Sadduceeism, as regards
   "angel and spirit," that is likely to impose a look of myth or hollow
   fantasy, on any thing which can be said of the angelic ministries of
   the Scripture. Any appeal made to them in a matter of argument is
   likely to bear a specially unsolid, or even flighty and visionary
   character, in the estimation of such as mean to believe in them, and
   would even be offended by the intimation that they really do not. I can
   not stop to argue the question of such ministries. I will only suggest
   that I am discussing a purely Scriptural matter, on grounds of
   Scripture evidence, and that such ministries are not heartily believed,
   probably because the supposed visitants are taken to be only phantasms,
   or apparitions, and not real beings. For if there be any thing in our
   doctrine of immortality, there ought to be a world of real
   intelligences and glorified minds outside of this; beings that have a
   character, as truly as we ourselves expect to have, and that, having a
   character, will have sympathies and a disposition to be occupied in
   good works; beings, many of them, who have gone out from our own human
   society, and are bound to it by the dearest affinities of love and
   customary friendship, and will want to be engaged, if possible, in
   ministries of good to others left behind. Let it also be noted, that
   they are represented as ministering only to the heirs of salvation;
   that is to such as are fenced away from their invisible access by no
   contrary affinities; for it may be that all good minds have immediate
   access to such as are good, and that no conditions of sense, or walls
   of distance, ever shut apart, or in the nature of things can, such as,
   in God's love, are made inherently common to each other. Besides, how
   completely will it take away the fantastic look of these celestial
   brethren and their visitations, just to conceive them as coming into
   the world, because they are pressed by the same love as Christ was, and
   drawn, by the sublime necessity of their own perfect character, to bear
   our lot of shame and loss, in a similar extension of their suffering
   sympathy.

   This now we shall find is the exact conception held of them at all
   points in the representations of Scripture. Some of them we are
   expressly taught, The Scripture shows them as in sacrifice. and we know
   not how many, are men, or the spirits of men, once living on earth;
   just as soundly real as they ever were, or as we ourselves are to day.
   And what is more they are only acting in character, precisely the same
   kind of character which they lived in as members of our race. They were
   men who bore great burdens of toil and suffering for the people of
   their times, and only learned to bear them in that manner for the
   people of all times. They found a cross in their virtue itself, even as
   Christ did, and all that we discover, in their ministries among us now,
   is that they have not forgotten their cross, or grown tired of it.

   Thus we are expressly informed that the angels of the transfiguration
   are Moses and Elias; and they spake with him, most naturally, of his
   decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. By which we are to
   understand, not that they informed him of his crucifixion, for that he
   knew already, but they joined their feeling to his, and comforted him
   by their suffering sympathy, and the assured sympathy of the heavenly
   worlds. For which, too, they had been effectually trained by their own
   former trials and burdens of love on earth; Moses when he cried,
   sinking under such burdens, "I can not bear this people," and Elias
   when he groaned underground in his cave, "I have been very jealous for
   the Lord of Hosts." And who was that angel in John's vision who said,
   "I am of thy brethren the prophets?" Was it Daniel who fasted in such
   broken plaints of sorrow for his people and country? or was it Jeremiah
   who cried, "O that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of
   tears?" All these, and other such holy men of old, had borne the cross
   of love in their time, and have not forgotten it, now that they are
   classed as angels. The ministries they fulfill are only their old
   ministries enlarged and made perfect. They lived in vicarious sacrifice
   before they went up, and the tragic joy they had in it draws them to it
   now.

   Meantime we shall find that, in all which is told us of these angelic
   ministries, they are set in close analogy with the ministry of Christ
   himself. They are with Hagar by the fountain of the wilderness, as
   Christ with the woman at Jacob's well. They are with Elijah the
   starving prophet in his sleep under the juniper tree, offering him
   their cake which they have baked upon the coals, even as Christ
   prepared his fire of coals, and the fish and the bread, that his hungry
   friends, on landing from their boats, might receive the token of his
   divine hospitality. They had such a feeling of tender sympathy for
   innocent children, coming forth into a rough world of sin and sorrow,
   that they took hold, every one, of some one child, or more than one, to
   become their unseen guardians--"Verily I say unto you their angels do
   always behold the face of my father"--even as the incarnate Lord
   himself clave to the children everywhere, and laid his hands and his
   dear blessing on them, saying--"of such is the kingdom of Heaven."

   How deeply their feeling is entered into the great tragedy of sin, and
   all the lost conditions of the fallen state under sin, we may see, on a
   large Concerned for sin as God is. scale, when they are shown, before
   the great salvation promised has arrived; "desiring to look into these
   things," and breaking out afterwards when it is complete--ten thousand
   times ten thousand and thousands of thousands--in the song of their own
   deep, always suffering love, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." Also
   in what Christ says himself, testifying--"Verily I say unto you there
   is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that
   repenteth." Which joy he still further explains by showing how it
   springs up with his own, growing on the same root of care, concern and
   suffering sympathy; how they rejoice with him, because, with him, they
   are looking always after lost men, even as a shepherd after his one
   lost sheep, or a housekeeper looking after her one lost piece of money;
   and therefore, he and they together, when they have found their lost
   one, have their burden of sorrow, as he represents, fall off, in a
   blessed and rebounding joy.

   It is worthy, too, of special remark that Christ conceives them coming
   to men, in a ministry Concerned for the sick and poor as Christ was. to
   the body strikingly correspondent with his own--restrained by no
   fastidious disgusts, averted by no disrespect of the humble and
   dejected lot of the poor. They do not spurn, they can not even neglect,
   the dying beggar at the rich man's gate. No matter whether it be a
   story of fact, or only a parable, the figure they make will be in
   character, in one as truly as in the other, and the picture he gives
   will, in either case, reveal them in a manner worthy of our study. The
   beggar is in a most sorry plight. He wants a nurse, a physician, and
   friends, and withal, a place in which to die. But of all his kinsmen,
   if he has any, there is none that will be charged with a care so
   unwelcome and loathsome. He goes a begging thus at the street corners
   and elsewhere, till finally having reached the shelter of a rich man's
   gateway, or the arched corridor of stone leading into the court of his
   house, his round is ended, and he lies down there, till the round of
   life also may be finished. He asks the pity of a few crumbs for his
   famishing body. Perhaps he gets them, and perhaps he does not. This at
   least he does not get; viz., that tender human sympathy which every
   humblest creature wants in his last hours.

   Thus he fared with men; but there were two classes of beings, in a
   different key, who came to his help in their wonted acts of
   ministry--the dogs, I mean, and the angels--the dogs from below,
   esteeming him to be another and superior kind of creature; the angels
   from above, rating his significance and dignity as much higher, as
   their mind was capable of higher thoughts. Behold them here at hand,
   the dogs and the angels together, in a strange companionship of
   ministry, round the flinty bed of the poor abject and son of sorrow;
   they dispensing their low natural surgery on his ulcerated body, and
   these, beholding in him an heir of glory and a future peer with them in
   their heavenly dignities; watching by him as volunteer nurses,
   strengthening him inwardly by the touch of their own brave hearts, and
   waiting, as the pulse beats low and the breath slackens to a full stop,
   to hail him as a brother made free, and convoy him home. Wonderful
   picture in the light and shade of it, signifying much, not only as
   regards the tender fidelity of their ministry to the bodily condition
   of men, but a great deal more as a revelation of the fact, that they
   are able to encounter so much necessary revulsion of feeling and really
   painful sympathy, in doing their works of mercy. No one looking on the
   picture can fail to be struck by the very close analogy between their
   way and that of Christ himself. Neither they nor he can perform such
   works of sympathy on the loathsome subjects of bodily disease, without
   a great expenditure of suffering. The very pity that draws them to such
   works is itself a heavy load to bear, and is just as much heavier as
   their love is stronger, their sympathy closer, and their feeling more
   delicate.

   See how it was with Christ, in that most tender, but strangely
   compounded and really fearful scene, the raising of Lazarus. Death, who
   took him on his way foul days ago, is to be called back and required to
   let him forth alive. Jesus struggles, we can see, with great emotions,
   partly tender, partly painful. He weeps, he groans in spirit, and is
   troubled. It is as if his feeling were in contact all through with
   death's foul work, as well as with the griefs of the friends--glad, for
   the disciples' sakes, to the intent they may believe, and yet scarcely
   able to meet the ghastly appearing of the dead brother whom he will
   evoke by his call. Indeed, if we carefully study the pathology of this
   scene we shall see the feeling of Jesus struggling in it, with surges
   of painful commotion, scarcely less proper to be called suffering, than
   the agony itself.

   So when the angels of God come to help the poor forlorn beggar off, in
   his release to life. That fastidious feeling which might torture us, in
   coming to a fellow mortal in such loathsome plight, they make nothing
   of; it will not trouble them, for they suffer no false disgusts. But
   that purity which has put them so far aloof from sin, and from all its
   foul incidents, their finer tastes, their more delicate, celestial
   sensibilities--all these are yet present to him, body and soul, not
   without pain, and lifting, as it were in sympathy with him, to bear him
   out of his foul cave and start him on his flight. So the beggar dies
   and is carried up, escorted home to Abraham's bosom, as the Saviour
   represents, by their angelic company. Christ bore him in his passion,
   and they, too, have borne him in their passion, now no longer a burden
   either on his feeling or on theirs. I will only add--

   5. That the Scriptures speak of these angelic ministries, in terms that
   indicate an impression of sacrifice Conceived in the priestly
   character. in them, and a vicarious engagement of their suffering love.
   The very word minister--"ministering spirits sent forth to
   minister"--has a Christly meaning, as if they were on a mission of
   service, and sacrifice, and holy pains-taking, like that of Christ the
   Lamb; enduring contradiction, wounded feeling, heaviness of heart, and
   struggling on, through rains of love, to accomplish their charge of
   guardianship. They are also spoken of in terms that bear a priestly
   character as being intercessors for men. Such terms are figures, of
   course, and objective representations, even as they are when applied to
   Christ himself. Thus we find that, as Christ is called our Advocate
   with the Father, a priest that liveth ever to make intercession, so
   Christ testifies concerning these angels standing in their
   ministries--"they do always behold the face of my Father which is in
   heaven." To behold the face of God, in this manner, is to have a
   priestly access, and be able to maintain a priestly intercession, even
   as the high priest enters the holy of holies, to make answer and suit
   for the people. So when Christ declares--"there is joy in the presence
   of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth," he means by "the
   presence of the angels of God," the presence of God made glorious by
   the priestly retinue of his angels, and these electrified with joy,
   that the labor of their heart is crowned, and their suit of
   reconciliation is triumphant.

   We have it then as a point established by Scripture evidence, that the
   glorified spirits, or angels of God, being in the love of God, are also
   in that The vicarious principle to be universal. kind of sacrifice, or
   vicarious engagement, which love, in its own nature, supposes. And so
   the gulf between sacrifice in uncreated and created minds is
   effectually bridged. Make as much as we will, or possibly can, of the
   vicarious sacrifice of Christ, and, as being the incarnate presence and
   ministry of God himself, too much can not be made of it, still there is
   no superlative, over-good, kind of goodness in it. Calling it good by
   the only standard of goodness, perceiving distinctly that love, in any
   and every moral being, will burden itself for all sin and suffering,
   and hasten, by its own everlasting impulse, to take the woes of others
   on its feeling, we at once have Christ made intelligible and yet as
   sublimely preëminent, as the stature of his person, and the
   transcendent power of his divine ministry and suffering require him to
   be. What we call his merit will not be diminished, but it will be no
   such merit as exceeds the standards of character. It will not be a
   something which theology has found, to fill out a theologic and
   contrived exigency, but it will be a divine; patience and sorrow,
   revealing God's love to our hearts; a grace, because it is the grace of
   a character; a salvation, because it is a power of salvation.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER V.

  ALL SOULS REDEEMED, TO BE IN VICARIOUS SACRIFICE.

   IN what is called his vicarious sacrifice, Christ, as we have seen,
   simply fulfills what belongs universally to love; doing neither more
   nor less than what the common standard of holiness and right requires.
   And then since there can be no other standard, and no perfect world, or
   society can be constituted under a different, or lower kind of
   excellence, it follows incontestably that the restoration of mankind,
   as a fallen race, must restore them to a love that works vicariously,
   and conforms, in all respects, to the work and passion of Christ
   himself. Vicarious sacrifice then will not be a point where he is
   distinguished from his followers, but the very life to which he
   restores them, in restoring them to God. What we call his redemption of
   mankind must bring them to the common standard. Executed by vicarious
   sacrifice in himself, it must also be issued in vicarious sacrifice in
   them.

   The common impression, I am sorry to believe, is different. It belongs,
   indeed, to the staple matter of our theologic teaching on this subject,
   that, Vicarious sacrifice belongs to men. while we are to follow
   Christ, and copy him, and aspire to be like him, we are never to
   presume, and can not without great irreverence imagine, that we are to
   have any part with him in his vicarious sacrifice. We can not atone, it
   is said, or offer any satisfaction for the sin of the world; we are too
   little, and low, and deep in sin ourselves, and nothing but a being
   infinitely great and perfect, by an optional suffering that exceeds all
   terms of obligation on himself, can avail to smooth God's indignations,
   and so far even our debt, as to make forgiveness possible. Therefore we
   are to understand, as a first principle of the Christian salvation,
   that Christ, in the matter of his vicarious sacrifice, is a being by
   himself and is not to be followed, in any sense, by us, though followed
   carefully in every thing else. In this very great mistake are included
   three or four subordinate mistakes, that required to be specially
   noted, and corrected by the necessary explanations.

   1. That Christ, in all that pertains to his work as vicarious, acts
   officially, or fulfills an atoning office Christ atones not by office,
   but by character. wholly one side of his character as a perfect
   character. He does not execute what belongs to the simple perfection of
   his love as a character fulfilling standard obligation, but performs a
   volunteer office in our behalf, over and above all that is obligatory
   on his own account. And so, the vicarious sacrifice, being a matter
   pertaining wholly to his office, and not to his character, we of course
   can have no part in it, because we have no part in his office, and can
   have as little in the official merit by which God's account is
   satisfied. Now the obvious fact, that which we have seen developed in
   the careful illustrations of the previous chapters, is that vicarious
   sacrifice belongs to no office, or undertaking outside of holy
   character, but to holy character itself. Such is love that it must
   insert itself into the conditions, burden itself with the wants, and
   woes, and losses, and even wrongs of others. It waits for no atoning
   office, or any other kind of office. It undertakes because it is love,
   not because a project is raised, or an office appointed. It goes into
   suffering and labor, and painful sympathy, because its own everlasting
   instinct runs that way. There can be no greater mistake, in this view,
   than to imagine that Christ has the matter of vicarious sacrifice
   wholly to himself, because he suffers officially, or as having
   undertaken it for his office to supply so much suffering. He suffered
   simply what was incidental to his love, and the works to which love
   prompted, just as any missionary suffers what belongs to the work of
   love he is in. It was vicarious suffering in no way peculiar to him,
   save in degree.

   No further qualification is needed, unless it be to say, that effects
   will follow his vicarious sacrifice, that can not follow such kind of
   sacrifice in men. Sacrifice in us carries humbler effects. And the
   difference will be so great, that he will have accomplished all that
   can be fitly included in the redemption of the world, while the same
   kind of sacrifice, morally speaking, in men, will accomplish only some
   very inferior and partial benefits. A proportion stated between the
   incarnate Son of God and his infinitely perfect beauty on the one hand,
   and the very limited and sadly mixed virtue of a human person on the
   other, will represent as accurately as may be the comparative results
   of the same kind of sacrifice in both.

   2. It is another of the mistakes referred to that, when vicarious
   sacrifice is restricted wholly to Christ, and considered The fellowship
   of his sufferings. wholly beyond the pale of human virtue, the
   restriction supposes a kind of vicarious intervention for sin that is
   artificial, and has no root in moral obligation. Either exceeding the
   law of love, or else falling short of it, he fulfills a kind of
   substitution that we can not share, because it is not in the range of
   our possible sentiment, or even intelligence. There is no koinonia for
   us, no "fellowship in his sufferings," because he suffers outside of
   all known terms of moral obligation. Whereas we may and must have
   fellowship, and be conformable even unto his death, because he is
   himself conformed in it to the one, universal, common, standard of
   love. The true and simple account of his suffering is, that he had such
   a heart as would not suffer him to be turned away from us, and that he
   suffered for us even as love must willingly suffer for its enemy. The
   beauty and power of his sacrifice is, that he suffers morally and
   because of his simple excellence, and not to fill a contrived place in
   a scheme of legal justification. He scarcely minds how much he suffers,
   or how, if only he can do love's work. He does not propose to be
   over-good, and to suffer optionally a certain modicum beyond what
   perfect excellence requires, that it may go to men's account. He
   undertakes to furnish no superlative merit above all standard
   obligation, which, for just that reason, can have no perceived quality
   of merit. He is only just as good as he ought to be, and suffers what
   he ought to suffer, and has no thought of doing an artificial somewhat,
   in a scheme of artificial compensations, where he can be actuated by no
   assignable motive within the possible range of moral ideas. How far off
   do we place him, how poorly conceive him, when we put him thus away,
   and compel him to die for ends contrived, apart from all behests of
   character. All that is most central in his mission--the love of God in
   tears and deep groanings--is dried away and lost to feeling, in the
   sterile and dry figment we require it to be, as a mere quantitative
   sufficiency of pain, contributed under no assignable principle, and
   having no moral quality whatever.

   3. Another mistake that follows, when vicarious sacrifice is restricted
   to Christ alone, is yet more lamentable because it corrupts the idea of
   sacrifice The idea of Christian sacrifice how corrupted. itself, when
   imposed as a condition of human discipleship. We insist, abundantly, on
   the necessary law of self-denial and self-sacrifice. We quote the
   Master's words requiring us to follow him and bear the cross with him,
   or after him. There must be sacrifice we say, every Christian comes
   into a life of sacrifice--only not into vicarious sacrifice; that
   belongs to Christ alone, suffering no participation of mortals. A
   qualification, or salvo, that very nearly unchristianizes Christianity
   itself. What is the sacrifice that must not be vicarious sacrifice, but
   a virtue that has even lost connection with Christian ideas? It is mere
   self-abnegation, a loss made for the simple sake of losing, and no such
   practical loss as love encounters, in gaining or serving an enemy. It
   has the same relation to vicarious sacrifice that penance has to
   repentance. It is itself a kind of penance, or torment, submitted to by
   the will. It does not appear to be even suspected that such kind of
   sacrifice is a mode of asceticism, substituted for the sacrifice of the
   Gospel, and yet it can be nothing else, for the simple reason that it
   is required not to be vicarious. Sacrifice out of love, or because a
   full heart naturally and freely takes on itself the burdens and woes of
   others, has a positive character, and is itself the most intensely
   positive exercise that can be conceived. The other kind of sacrifice,
   that which must not work vicariously, is naked self-suppression, a
   merely dry and negative operation, in which the soul willfully chokes
   itself and gets no return, but a sense of being famished for its pains.
   And how much of what is so persistently taught concerning self-denial,
   sacrifice, taking up the cross, is, in just this manner, a departure
   from all Christian ideas; a wearisome, unblessed, and forced virtue,
   that belongs to the false gospel of asceticism. Happily the evil is
   mitigated by the fact that, when we go into sacrifice and suffering for
   others, we break away from such asceticism, without knowing it, and
   come into the genuine, positive kind of sacrifice with Christ himself.

   4. Still another and different kind of misconception is included in the
   denial of vicarious sacrifice to men, in the fact that it forbids us.
   to think of reciprocating, in any sense, the sacrifice of Christ for
   us, and takes away, in that manner, one of the dearest, most softening
   and soul-renewing exercises. What should the true love in us do so
   naturally, and with an To be afflicted with Christ reciprocally.
   instinct so free, as to take all Christ's feeling on its feeling; to
   suffer with him in his suffering of all kinds; to burden itself in all
   his burdens; to be afflicted in all the losses, apostasies, and
   dishonors that shame his saving work; because they wound so deeply his
   divine sensibility. As Christ became a suffering Saviour for our sake,
   so the love he begets in us will take every wrong done him as done to
   itself, and will gladly suffer also for his sake. Whether in fact we
   take it or not as a thing permitted us, to be entered into his burden
   as he into ours, we shall as certainly do it as we love him. Only it
   makes a very great difference whether we do it against some speculated
   doctrine of substitution that gives only him the right to act
   vicariously, or do it as the natural privilege and inborn right of our
   love. In one case, we do it feebly, or even cringingly, lest we venture
   too far and do some presumptuous thing; in the other we say "Let me do
   it, I must have it for my privilege. If Christ is afflicted for me, or
   in me, shall I not be afflicted for his affliction? If he is wounded by
   his friends, or his enemies, shall I not be wounded for his wounds? If
   he says, my yoke,' shall I not take that yoke upon me for his sake?
   Grant me this, O Saviour and Lord, to bear thy load with thee, as thou
   hast borne the load of my sins; to feel thy feeling, suffer in thy
   suffering; and, to crown all, as thou didst bear witness to the truth
   in thy death, let me not shrink from even dying to bear witness for
   thee." Just this feeling it is that has animated and armed the host of
   Christian martyrs in all the past ages. Called to die, as they
   believed, for Christ's sake, that has been enough. And how blessed and
   divine a thing is it always for the otherwise weak, distracted heart of
   a sinner, to come to the great world-containing heart of its Redeemer
   and have its opportunity in suffering with him! Nor is it any thing to
   object, that there is a genuine reality in his vicarious suffering,
   because, in taking our evils, he takes them off from us, while we, in
   taking his, remove no burden from him. Is he not as truly a sacrifice
   then for those who will die in their sins, as for those who take the
   saving benefit he brings? Besides, how does it appear that our bearing
   of his burdens with him takes off nothing from the weight of his
   burdens? When is any great benefactor more strengthened and comforted
   in his pains of sacrifice, than when some most dejected, weakest child
   of sorrow comes to bless him and asks to suffer with him? What again do
   we see, but that Christ himself, as in the scene of his agony, turns
   wistfully to his disciples, craving just this kind of sympathy and
   chiding them in wounded feeling that he has it not--"Tarry ye here and
   watch with me--could ye not watch with me one hour?" And as then he
   turned imploringly to his friends and besought them to watch with him,
   will it not be a cordial now to his often wounded compassions, when the
   little ones of the earth are for love's sake wounded with him?

   In these specifications, or specified corrections, we have seen exactly
   what and how much is implied in the position, that we, as a race, in
   being restored to God, are to be perfected in the common, universal
   standard of goodness, and so to be established with Christ in the same
   way of sacrifice. We are thus prepared to open the Scriptures, and take
   their declarations in their true meaning. To them, accordingly, I now
   appeal; for it is a question resting on their simple authority, and no
   other.

   I begin with the explicit declarations of Jesus himself. Thus,
   considering his own life as a ransom for sin, in the sacrifice to be
   made of it, he lays it Christ calls his followers to follow him. on his
   disciples to follow him and be, if they may, the ransom purchase of
   others, saying--"even as the Son of Man came, not to be ministered
   unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."

   Again, citing his own cross, when, as yet, nobody understands what it
   means, least of all that God's own love supports a cross of patience
   even from eternity, he says--"And he that taketh not up his cross and
   followeth after me is not worthy of me." He does not mean by this that
   he is under a cross of abnegation, but only that he is going to be
   crucified for love's sake. For love's sake and work, therefore, they
   are to suffer with him, and bear a cross after him.

   He calls us in the same way to bear his "yoke" and "learn of him" in
   doing it; for there is a way, as he will teach, to bear love's burdens
   joyfully. They shall not be dry penances or heavy laden drudgeries, he
   testifies, but only such sacrifices of joy as love itself will assume
   for its objects--"the yoke, therefore, is easy and the burden light."

   His death is to be the crowning fact of his sacrifice, as all agree,
   and yet, he does not claim any exclusive right to die in this manner,
   but even lays it down as the universal test of love and
   discipleship--"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and
   mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his
   own life also, he can not be my disciple." Obedience unto death is to
   be a law for them as truly as for him.

   He contrives furthermore a scene, at the close of his ministry, where
   the great main truth is to be acted and so made visible--I refer to the
   scene of washing the disciples' feet--where his language, most
   carefully measured, and his action, most deliberately formal, quite
   exceed the supposition of many, that he is only teaching, in this way,
   tile single grace of humility. Neither, at this solemn, almost parting
   hour, can it be imagined, that he is laboring any such limited and
   subordinate matter. Rather is he condensing all the matter of his
   humiliated suffering life of sacrifice, into a single scene, or
   picture, or parabolic action, that he may impress it in a total
   application on his disciples. And so he says at the end--"Know ye what
   I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so
   I am. If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also
   ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that
   ye should do as I have done to you." In one word, for that is what he
   means, "as I have stood back from no sacrifice, or shame, for you, at
   the low point of your sin, so are you to seek and serve, all pride
   apart, the perishing brothers of your race."

   Again, if we imagine something official in his mission of sacrifice, we
   find him consecrating his disciples, in his last prayer, to the same
   mission and in fact the same office--"As thou hast sent me into the
   world, even so have I sent them into the world. And for their sakes I
   sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through [literally in
   or upon] the truth." However true the doctrine for which this is
   commonly cited as a proof text, nothing could be farther from any
   thought of his on the present occasion, than to be discoursing on the
   truth as a means of sanctification. He obviously means to say--"And for
   their sakes I consecrate myself as an offering, that they also may be
   consecrated and offered, in like manner, in the service, or upon the
   dying testimony, of the truth. So he says, "for their sakes," as if he
   had come into his sacrifice, in part, that he may put them in the
   same--so to send them into the world, even as he was sent into the
   world.

   Now the impressive matter, in all these citations, which might be
   indefinitely extended, is that Christ expects his followers to be with
   him at the very point of his sacrifice; just where it is even commonly
   assumed that we can, of course, have no part with him, and where it
   would even be a kind of insufferable presumption for a mortal to think
   of it.

   We pass now to a different and more interiorly related class of
   citations; in which it will be seen, that the whole economy itself of
   Christian virtue is based in the principle, and flavored by the spirit
   of vicarious. sacrifice.

   Thus it will be noted in the very first discourse of Jesus, his sermon
   on the mount, that he can not even Sacrifice the economic law of
   discipleship. get through the beatitudes, and scarcely into them,
   without opening to view, and turning round for inspection, this grand
   first principle of devotement and unselfish love. Blessed are the poor
   in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, the merciful--these to him are
   the candidates for beatitude; and we see, from his subdued and tender
   manner, that he is thinking of his own sacrifice and beatitude. And
   thus it is that he goes directly on, to tell his friends how they will
   be reviled and persecuted by those whom they serve, and for his sake,
   adding--"Blessed are ye. Resist not evil. Smitten upon the right cheek
   turn the left. Robbed of your coat give up your cloak. Love your
   enemies, bless them which curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
   pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you; that (this
   is the argument, and how high does it reach) ye may be the children of
   your Father in heaven. Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in
   heaven is perfect." There has been much debate over this language. It
   means simply this; that we are to have one standard even with God, and
   that, a law of sacrifice and suffering patience--the same which Christ
   himself fulfills.

   What the feeling of Christ is respecting the participation of his
   sacrifice by his followers, comes out even more strikingly, on a
   certain occasion, from the fact that he is drawn away to it, by his
   associations, without apparently any previous intention. He is led to
   speak of his death, and of the general principle that the good must
   die, in order to be fruitful--"Except a corn of wheat fall into the
   ground and die it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much
   fruit." And then, as if drawn along to think by degrees of others, and
   finally of none but others, he adds--"He that loveth his life shall
   lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto
   life eternal. If any man serve me let him follow me." How close the
   relation between him and his disciples, when he calls them, in this
   manner, into his very death itself, and commands them to be with him,
   in all the sublime economy of sacrifice by which he is reconciling the
   world.

   His apostles, accordingly, follow after, teaching, all, the same great
   law of sacrifice, and presenting a gospel packed with symbols of
   sacrifice in The apostles follow their Master. every part. This word
   sacrifice they apply to men as freely as to Christ himself; Paul
   exhorting, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
   that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice." "Let no man seek his
   own." "Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ."
   "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in
   the form of God, took upon him the form of a servant, and became
   obedient unto death, even the death of the cross;" Peter, when he
   writes, "For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults,
   ye take it patiently, but if, when ye do well, ye take it patiently,
   this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called; because
   Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should
   follow his steps." "But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are made partakers of
   Christ's sufferings." "If any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be
   ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf;" John, also, when he
   writes, "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his
   life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."
   "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."

   In these and other like passages which might be cited, from Christ and
   his three apostles, it is very commonly not discovered, I admit, that
   any such thing as a vicarious element is included in the Christian
   virtue. Every such conception is excluded by the reverently meant, but
   most injuriously false and really irreverent assumption, that nothing
   vicarious, whether in spirit or mode of life, is possible to a merely
   human being. Christ takes this whole field, it is believed, to himself,
   let no sinning mortal intrude! And yet, when Mock sentiment. this
   vicarious meaning, or element is excluded from the passages referred
   to, they become passages of mock sentiment only; words that have a
   sound, but no deep, earnest meaning. Their real and truly magnificent
   import is, that it lies in the very scheme and economy of the gospel,
   to regenerate a Christly virtue in men, a character that bears the type
   of Gethsemane and the cross.

   Again we discover a closer, in some respects even more convincing kind
   of evidence, in the testimony given by one of Christ's disciples out of
   his own human consciousness; I speak of the apostle The Pauline
   consciousness. Paul. The same is discoverable in others, only in a
   manner less striking. In later times, for example in George Fox, the
   Christly consciousness is revealed in a manner almost equally sublime.
   Now Paul is but a man, and yet he is a man so Christed, or possessed by
   Christ, that the very sacrifice of Christ is consciously and even
   visibly in him. As regards mental suffering, it is not to be supposed,
   of course, that Paul had any sensibility capable of as intense feeling;
   or any love to mankind capable of being as heavily burdened, as Christ
   is seen to be in what is called his agony; but in respect of mere
   physical suffering, I see no reason to judge that Christ made a heavier
   sacrifice, in his three years' ministry and death, than his servant
   did, in his long, laborious, always imperiled, persecuted life and
   martyrdom. So deep was he in the spirit of his Master, so heartily
   entered with him into the burdens of love. He can not even hide it from
   himself that he is in his Master's sacrifice--"Always bearing about,"
   he says, "in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also
   of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we, which live, are
   alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus
   might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." He dares even to conceive
   that his suffering life is somehow complementary to that of his
   Master-- "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that
   which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his
   body's sake, which is the church. Under the heading--"as workers
   together with him,"2 Cor. vi. he goes on to catalogue, in almost a
   whole chapter, these Christly losses, works, and pains, that he is
   bearing with Christ and for his sake. Nor is it mere bodily hardship
   and peril that he undergoes; we find him, at times and according to his
   measure, in a kind of mental Gethsemane, for the burden of love, and
   care, and grief for others, which has come upon him; as when he
   writes--"I have great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart; for I
   could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my
   kinsmen, according to the flesh." There has been much debate over these
   words; but a soul that is really under Christ's yoke, and bearing his
   burdens, will be deep enough in the struggle of vicarious sacrifice, to
   know what they mean. Furthermore, it is remarkable, that Paul has
   reached no such point of theologic scruple, that he can not freely
   apply to his own life just the same sacrificial terms that he applies
   to Christ himself" I am now ready to be offered." "Yea, and if I be
   offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice
   with you all." He goes still farther, exhorting all Christians to be
   offered willingly in sacrifice like their Master--"And walk in love, as
   Christ, also hath loved us, and given himself for an offering and a
   sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savor."

   This now is the true Christian consciousness, in all of the best and
   noblest human examples. The gospel of life takes hold of a man all
   selfish, a fiery and proud persecutor, and it so changes all his inward
   aims and feelings, that he lives no more for himself, but for others;
   encountering perils, pains, privations, indignities for his whole life
   long on their account; so burdened for them in feeling, at times, that
   he could even find relief in the imprecation that he might be accursed
   from Christ for their sake. So clearly is the Christian believer
   entered himself, as a matter of fact, into the vicarious sacrifice of
   Jesus. This is the new character it undertakes to beget in him, and the
   exact amount he has of Christian evidence is graduated by the amount of
   this new character found in his life.

   I have given this large review of the Scripture citations on this
   subject, that it may be seen how freely, variously, constantly, they
   consent in the testimony, that Christianity begets, and, is to beget,
   in human character, the same kind of sacrifice that is found, or
   revealed in Christ. I have selected only a few of the passages that
   persist most undivertibly in this kind of testimony. It is not then by
   any speculation, or undue pressure on. words, that I gain this
   conclusion. Nothing but a theologic pressure, kept up for ages, has
   availed to empty the Scripture of a truth that is so plainly taught,
   under so great a multitude of forms, and is set even in the foreground
   of the Christian plan.

   Arresting my argument here, I still can not close the chapter, without
   calling my reader's attention to the immense loss Christianity has
   suffered, and is now suffering, in losing out the faith that Christ is
   to be really followed by his followers. There is little importance in
   The immense damage suffered here. these discussions, if they do not
   help the gospel to assert its true idea, and exert that practical power
   it has undertaken to exert on the world. And whatever hinders, or
   weakens that power, even though it take the name of Christian doctrine
   and is fairly meant as such, is about the greatest wrong that can be
   committed against both Christ and mankind. What then shall we think of
   any theologic doctrine or dictum, that makes a blank space at the very
   heart of the gospel, or which raises fences of obstruction, to keep men
   off from just that common standard of the heavenly virtue, in which all
   perfect minds are to meet; which breaks down the fact of community
   between Christ and his disciples; which says, this kind is for Christ,
   another for mankind; which gives him love in its genuine power, and
   gives them love in a sense so qualified, that all his most living and
   life-giving sacrifices would be stifled under it. The supreme art of
   the devil never invented a greater mischief to be done, or a theft more
   nearly amounting to the stealing of the cross itself, than the filching
   away thus, from the followers of Christ, the conviction that they are
   thoroughly to partake the sacrifice of their master. Such words I know
   sound harshly, but they are not harshly meant. I raise no accusation in
   them; for I do not, for a moment, imagine that perversity, or art, or
   any malign purpose has ever been concerned in the mischief referred to.
   I only use strong language to express my own strong convictions; taking
   this very deplorable matter simply as an example of the immense, and
   fearfully desolating wrong that may be done to God's truth and the
   world, by t e well meant, but misguided, speculations and schemings of
   men, whose theories unwittingly reduce the gospel to their own
   measures. Having found a necessity that God's justice should be
   satisfied by some given quantum of suffering, and that Christ, in his
   death, made the contribution for us of that suffering, and that in this
   fact is contained all that belongs to his vicarious sacrifice, what
   should they infer but that we, in following Christ, are excluded, of
   course, from any such kind of sacrifice? All which is done with the
   better feeling of reverence, that it puts the Saviour in a figure of
   merit so superlative!

   The effect that follows is such as only can. It is as if the gift of
   the incarnation had been half taken back again. A wide hiatus still
   yawns Effects of the hiatus between us and Christ. between even the
   ideal of our virtue, and that of our Christ. Nor is it any thing to
   say, that whatever he does vicariously belongs to his office, and that
   we have no such office. It belongs, we have already seen, not to his
   office, but to his character; that is to his love, which is the spring
   of his character; the same, which is the root of all goodness in all
   good beings, drawing them as good to such as are evil, and putting them
   in a way of tender self-identification, that virtually assumes and
   bears the bad and shameful lot it compassionates. Without this
   vicarious property, love is not love. Pity there may be, philanthropic
   benevolence, esteem, approbation, admiration, but the vital distinction
   of love is wanting. It is very true that we are not to set ourselves up
   as Redeemers of the world. Our petty measures of quantity and character
   forbid such a thought; just as any feeble and low man would be only
   absurd, in attempting what is given to some most qualified and
   strongest man of his own species. Still any such feeble and low man is
   to be, and may truly be, in the same kind of love with one who is most
   qualified and strongest. Nay, if this latter has been suffering and
   painfully watching for him, it will even be a chief point of his
   benefit and the raising of his life, that he so loves the person of his
   benefactor as to suffer his suffering. And just so it is that Christ,
   in his suffering love--always a fact, and only a fact revealed in his
   agony and passion--gets never the just degree of power in our feeling,
   till we are able to love his love and suffer with him in his suffering.
   Here only it is that he touches us at the quick, and becomes the soul
   renewing power of God. Vicarious love in him answered by vicarious love
   in us, tiny and weak though it be, as an insect life fluttering
   responsively to the sun--this is the only footing of grace, in which
   Christ is truly received, and according to his glorious power. Hence,
   in no small degree, the amazing dullness of the gospel to men's
   feeling, and even in men's feeling after they seem to have believed--we
   wonder often how it is ourselves. It is because there is no common
   footing between them and their Lord; because, in his superlative merit
   and suffering, he takes a different plane, from which they are
   excluded. They are shut away, thus, from exactly what is most vital and
   most quickening in his passion. The cord of sympathy is cut, at just
   the point where it was to have the closest tension, and be most
   stringently effective.

   Doubtless it will be said, in reply, that such kind of criticism is
   unjust. While it is very true that we exclude ourselves from any part
   with Christ in what is vicarious, do we not always insist that men are
   to follow Christ, to bear the cross, to deny themselves, to suffer
   wrong, to love and bless even their enemies? Undoubtedly, but how
   blurred, how sadly miscolored are all such teachings, when the huge
   exception we speak of is added. They are now to follow Christ in just
   that limited kind of sacrifice which he knew nothing of. They are to
   bear the cross for the discipline, and not for what love sees to be won
   by a cross. They are to deny themselves because it is good to put
   themselves under negation, or self-suppression--even as the monasteries
   kill out selfishness by the wearisome and dry torment of ascetic
   practices--not to deny themselves in love's own suffering, but joyful
   and free ministry. They are to suffer wrong even as Christ did, only
   they are to do it in no such feeling as he did, when he bore the lot of
   transgression. They are to love and bless enemies, because it will
   school them in patience and humility, not as Christ bore enemies out of
   pure devotement to them; or they are to exercise themselves in acts of
   benevolence towards enemies, towards the impenitent, towards the
   heathen, in the name of love, when confessedly they are excluded from
   any such tender identification with their bad lot as Christ, for love's
   sake, took upon him when he bore their sins.

   And so it results that our discipleship, so called, is a discipleship
   fallen half way out of Christianity, even as our theology of the cross
   becomes a dry, stunted, half conception of it; reducing Christ to a
   mere book-account factor of compensation by suffering, and making
   nothing of him as the revelation of vicarious sacrifice in God; that
   which is the supreme fact and glory of his incarnate mission. Did we
   see this glory upon him, did we look upon him as sent into the world to
   beget us in the same character, and enter us into the same kind of
   life, how different our conceptions of his doctrine, how different the
   whole manner and power of our discipleship. The scheme, and scale, and
   meaning, of the gospel, as a grace related to our feeling and life, is
   no more the same. And the world, having such a grace installed in it,
   would begin, how soon, to glow, and burn, and tingle with new life in
   every part.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    PART II.

THE LIFE AND SACRIFICE OF CHRIST IS WHAT HE DOES TO BECOME A RENOVATING AND
SAVING POWER.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER I.

  USES AND RELATIONS OF THE HEALING MINISTRY.

   ALL the perplexed questions growing out of substitutions, imputations,
   legal satisfactions, and penal equivalents, have thus far been avoided.
   There has been no delving in our exposition, but we have been moving
   easily rather, along open ranges of thought, where nothing too
   abstruse, or difficult to serve a merely practical interest, has come
   in our way. In this manner, we have gone over a considerable tract of
   our field, meeting scarcely a point of debate, in the subject as
   commonly handled. We have discovered a meaning, not difficult, for the
   vicarious sacrifice, and for all the Scripture phraseology relating to
   the same. We have seen it to be grounded in principles of universal
   obligation, acknowledged, or to be acknowledged, by all good minds,
   uncreated and created, in all worlds and ages of time.

   Having reached this point, we now pass to another general department of
   the subject; where, continuing still in this rather untrodden, some
   will think, too easy level of movement, we undertake to settle a Second
   stage of the argument. true conception of what Christ is doing in his
   sacrifice; viz., the end he will accomplish, the power by which he will
   accomplish it, and the course of life and benefaction by which he will
   obtain that power.

   When this also is done, as I think it may be with the same facility and
   avoidance of perplexed questions, we may well enough comfort ourselves
   in the conclusion, that, if by and by, or from that point onward,' we
   are obliged to go to sea in questions more perplexed and laborious, we
   have a considerable continent already gained behind us, where we shall
   have large enough room, and ranges wide enough in the truth, to afford
   a worthy, or even sufficient gospel by itself.

   According to a current conception, Christ came into the world for the
   very purpose of the sacrifice, and not Christ not here to die, but dies
   because he is here. for ends beyond, in which the stress of his mission
   lay. The problem being to contribute so much of pain, or judicial
   suffering, as may be needed to square the account of sin, the
   conclusion naturally follows, when that view is taken, that he is here
   for the very purpose of the bleeding; that is to be substituted in our
   place, and take, or somehow compensate for, the release of our
   punishment. This, and not any thing different, is the coarsely
   conceived, legally quantitative vicariousness ascribed to him. We, on
   the other hand, regard the vicariousness in which he comes, only as the
   mode, or instinct of his love, when doing a work in the recovery and
   reconciliation of men. He was in vicarious sacrifice before he came
   into the world, having the world upon his feeling as truly as now, and
   only made the fact-form sacrifice, because he had the burden of it on
   him already. The sacrifice, taken as a fact in time, was not set before
   him as the end, or object of his ministry--that would make it a mere
   pageant of suffering, without rational dignity, or character--but, when
   it came, it was simply the bad fortune such a work, prosecuted with
   such devotion, must encounter on its way. The missionary, going out to
   spend his days among a heathen people, does not go to make so much of
   sacrifice, including even that perhaps of life itself--that being his
   purpose he might better stay at home-but he makes the sacrifice when
   the fit hour comes, because he is in a work, and because the work
   requires it of him. Christ, then, we must believe, is here to do
   something--some great and mighty work--not to make up a necessary
   quantum of pain, for the compensation of God's justice. The sacrifice
   he makes, in becoming a man of sorrows, and dying a malefactor's death,
   will be suffered under his work, and only for his work's sake. He was
   not ignorant, of course, that he would suffer. He expected that, dying
   for his work would give eloquence and power to his mission; just
   because, not coming here to die, he would have it put upon him as the
   cost of his fidelity. Even as Anselm carefully and rightly
   distinguishes, when he says--"he suffered death of his own accord, not
   as an act of obedience, but on account of his obedience in maintaining
   right; for he held out so persistently, that he met death on account of
   it." [6]

   What then is the end or object he is here to accomplish? By the
   supposition he is not here to square up the account of our sin, or to
   satisfy the divine justice for us. Neither is it any principal thing
   that he is here to What he undertakes to accomplish. prepare a
   possibility of forgiveness for sin. That is, if any thing, a secondary
   and subordinate matter, as will be discovered hereafter, in the Third
   Part of my argument. The true end, or object, of the sacrifice we shall
   find is very simple, though presented in the New Testament under
   manifold varieties of statement; for, widely different as the varieties
   are, they are all in radical agreement with each other. Taking our clue
   from one of the simplest and tenderest in beauty of them all--"The Son
   of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost;" or from one
   that is widest in range and contains the highest summation of all--"To
   wit that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself;" or from
   one most formally put, and, in a certain intellectual sense, the
   deepest of all--"To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into
   the world, that I might bear witness to the truth"--taking hold of
   these and all such varieties of Scripture, we conceive a transaction
   moving on character in souls; a regenerative, saving, truth-subjecting,
   all-restoring, inward change of the life--in one word the establishing
   of the kingdom of God, or of heaven, among men, and the gathering
   finally of a newborn world into it.

   But the farther unfolding of this central idea we shall find requires
   us, for convenience sake, to make a fourfold distribution of the field
   or subject matter. First, we shall naturally give attention directly to
   Christ's Healing Ministry, and the large indication there made of what
   he is doing and to do, in his sacrifice elsewhere. Then we shall
   endeavor to show more exactly in another chapter, what work he
   undertakes or proposes to do in souls, by his sacrifice. In another and
   third chapter it will be shown that, for that work's sake, he
   undertakes to be, and in the New Testament writings is conceived as
   being, the Great Moral Power of God, for its accomplishment. And then,
   fourthly, a chapter will be added to show how he becomes that power.

   It is by no accident that Christ, not trained as a physician, and, as
   far as we can discover, never before exercised in matters of concern
   for the No accident that Christ is occupied with healings. sick, opens
   out the grand public ministry of his Messiahship directly into an
   office of healing, turning the main stress of it, we may almost say,
   down upon the healing of bodies, from that time onward. Hence it is the
   more remarkable, that, when so much is made, in the formulas, of his
   threefold function under the titles of Prophet, Priest, and King, he
   still makes no figure in them at all as a Physician or Healer. This
   latter he is in the literal fact of history, and a great part of his
   outward life is in this particular kind of engagement. The others he
   is, or is only to be, in some tropical, accommodated sense, where
   language helps its poverty by a figure more or less determinate. We
   discover, meantime, that while he does not disown, or repel these
   figures, permitting himself to be called a prophet, accepted as a
   priest, and exalted as a king, or Messiah, in his Kingdom, he does not
   conceive that he is specially distinguished in his lifetime, at least,
   in these characters; but assumes that he is to be known as the expected
   man of prophecy, even from the first, by the works of his Healing
   Ministry. Thus when John sends messengers to inquire--"Art thou he that
   should come or look we for another?" he sends back word in the
   affirmative, saying--"Yes I am the expected Healer." "Go tell John what
   things ye have seen and heard, how that the blind see, the lame walk,
   the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the
   poor the gospel is preached." The plain inference is that however much,
   or little, may be meant by the three particular figures above named, he
   is, at any rate, in literal and solid fact of history, a healer--the
   Great expected Healer of mankind.

   I do not call him the Physician, but the Healer, it may be observed;
   not because we need scruple to apply that name, but simply to call
   attention to the fact that the older designation, Healer, is the one
   always applied Disease goes with sin, Healing with salvation. to him in
   the New Testament, and has, in strict construction, a quite different
   meaning. There appears to be a deep seated, original conviction among
   men, that diseases are from God, or the gods--tokens of displeasure on
   account of sin. The bad consciousness of sin volunteers this appalling
   construction of them, and the sufferer hopes to recover, only by some
   mitigation of the powers he has offended. Hence the need of a Healer;
   one who shall have skill, or faith, or some kind of access to the
   retributive causes punishing the body, with power to abate their
   action, and accomplish the release of their victim. Thus also we find
   that, in almost all the savage races of the world, even now, the Healer
   is their Holy man, or Prophet, though in fact their conjurer only, or
   magician. The Physician, on the other hand, is one who deals in physic,
   one who cures the disorder of nature, by natural ingredients, working
   by their natural power. He and his work, and his means, are all in the
   plane of nature, (Phusis) and hence, from the days of Hippocrates
   downward, and perhaps in Egypt before that time, he is called a
   Physician. In that sense Christ was never a proper physician, for his
   cures were not wrought by prescription, but by the immediate extension,
   somehow, to the patient, of a divine, or supernatural power. He
   fulfilled, in this view, as probably it was never done before, the true
   idea of the Healer. The healing processes before resorted' to had been
   of a mixed nature, more or less corrupted by superstition; operated,
   here and there by prescriptions obtained through oracles, or by
   application to prophets; sometimes seconded by appeal to God, in
   prayers and sacrifices offered by the priest. In the case of poison
   from the bite of serpents, incantations were specially resorted to.
   Diviners and magicians were often called in. If there was a pool,
   supposed to be stirred up, at certain hours, by an angel, the waters
   would be thought to have a special virtue. Now, at last, the Healer has
   come who can heal, and the true religious idea of the office is
   fulfilled in his person.

   Why now this very remarkable devotion to the healing of bodies? Coming
   into the world, as we all agree, His object in the healing of bodies.
   for ends so intensely spiritual--to be a deliverer of souls, and to
   become the Head of a universal kingdom gathered in his own glorious
   likeness and beatitude--why does he strike directly into this low level
   of labor, and concern himself in this large degree, with the diseases
   and disabilities of men's bodies?

   It is a very common answer made to this question, that he does it from
   a wise consideration of the advantage he will gain by it, in men's
   prejudices, or the power he will thus obtain over them, in the separate
   matter of their spiritual choices and affections. On the same
   principle, we, it will be urged, are to go directly down into the
   economic struggles and physical pains of men, ministering to their
   needs and the terrible woes of their vices, taking them, in that
   manner, at a wise advantage, and not shoving them away from us, by
   endeavoring to bolt in spiritual lessons upon them, without any care
   for their bodily wants and ailments.

   There can be no doubt of this as far as we are concerned, in our own
   human charities. Neither is there any room to doubt, that Christ's
   whole ministry and life change look, because of his healings, and the
   very systematic and tender care he has of men's bodies. Omitting these,
   or conceiving these very practical mercies never to have been shown,
   his teachings would be only lectures, and the whole work of his
   ministry, comparatively speaking, flashy and thin. Every thing now is
   in a robust and rounded figure, just because these practical works in
   bodies keep away the look of theory and Targum, giving us a Saviour to
   worship and not a Rabbi to hear.

   But that Christ really put himself to his works of healing for this
   purpose, we shall not be satisfied, after all, to believe. He has too
   much heart in His incarnation connects him with the fortunes of bodies.
   these works, to permit a thought that he is in them prudentially, or to
   gain some ulterior and remote advantage. No, there is a deeper reason.
   He is here as the incarnate Lord of the worlds, and he could not even
   be thought in that character, if, being flesh, he did not turn himself
   to all he meets in the flesh. And so much is there in this, that any
   one having deep enough insight to read such a matter beforehand, would
   say that if the Word is to be incarnate, then he will assuredly appear
   to bodies, minister to bodies, claim the kindship of bodies, by a
   tender sympathy for their pains and a healing touch upon their
   diseases. Being, in this manner, Son of Man, he is brought close to
   man, upon his human level. He has come to be with him in that
   level--touched with the feeling, not of his mental, or more respectable
   infirmities, but of those which are lowest and most loathsome. What
   could a fastidious Saviour do here? one who is too delicate and
   spiritual, to concern himself with the disagreeable and often revolting
   conditions of bodies?

   Besides, he is here in God's own love, and what shall that love grapple
   with, when it comes, but precisely that which is deepest in the
   consciousness of suffering?

   No matter if he has come to be a Redeemer of souls. Souls and bodies
   are not so far apart as many try to Souls and bodies not far apart in
   their fall. believe. Where are the pains of bodies felt but in their
   souls? and where go the disorder and breakage of souls but directly
   into their bodies? How sovereign is the action of souls! how inevitable
   the reaction of bodies! And how nearly common are the fortunes of both!
   The fall of sin carries down body and soul together, and the quickening
   of the Spirit quickens, not the soul only, but the mortal body with it.
   We sometimes think the body is in health, when the soul is not; and the
   soul in health, when the body is not; but a great many diseases work
   latently, a long time, before they break out, and the returning of
   health is often working latently, a long time, before we discover it.
   After all, how nearly divine a thing is health, be it in the soul, or
   in the body; and as the fibres of both are intertwined, with such
   marvelous cunning, all through, how shall either fall out of God's
   order alone, or come back into it alone?

   The whole man quivers in the shock of sin. The crystalline order of
   soul and body is shivered by the same blow. Diseases consequent are
   nothing, after that, but the fact, that the harmonic condition of
   health is broken--nothing fitly joined together, nothing compacted by
   what every joint supplieth, nothing vitalized by the effectual and
   measurely working of all parts for each other. Why then should the
   Great Healer think to pass by bodies, when he comes for the healing of
   souls? And as all men know it, when their bodies are sick, and are
   ready enough to be healed--ignorant meantime altogether of the disorder
   in their souls, and wanting no help there--why should not the Healing
   Mercy apply itself, at once, where it is wanted, and not throw itself
   away on souls, in the attempting of a benefaction sure, at first, to be
   repelled?

   Furthermore, if we are to understand this matter, we must carefully
   observe what opinion Christ himself had of men's diseases and the bad
   implications whence they come. How large a part of his cures Discovers
   in diseases the virus of sin. are wrought on persons whom foul
   spirits--just now unwontedly "tormented" and stirred up to a special
   activity--have taken possession of. How often does he say, "go in
   peace, thy sins are forgiven thee;" though perhaps nothing has been
   said of their sins before, and possibly nothing more is meant than that
   they are cured of their malady. To the simply inoffensive broken
   invalid, whom he found at the pool of Siloam and healed, he says--"Sin
   no more lest a worse thing befall thee." Over a poor disabled woman
   doubled by disease, he says, in softest pity, "whom Satan has bound
   these eighteen years." In this manner he associates disease, even
   habitually, with malign causes, and very nearly identifies the burden
   of it with the curse and burden of sin itself. Over the young man,
   blind from his birth, he does indeed say that "neither he nor his
   parents have sinned, that he was born blind," but he only means in this
   to repel the odious and half-superstitious impeachment, that was
   charging the very special suffering of the case, to some special
   criminality in the house. Had the impeachment been, that all the
   disabilities, and diseases, and the generally disordered health of
   men's bodies are due to the great public fact of sin, and the
   retributive causes loosened by it, his profoundly accordant conviction
   is proved by his mission itself. Accordingly all his healings in
   bodies, were but so many types of the healing virtue he was dispensing,
   in the higher nature itself. Indeed the whole purpose of his life,
   comprehensively taken, was, in his own view, to work a healing general
   of the subject, a restoration thus to complete health and the crystal
   unity of heaven's vital order. Sometimes he appears to have operated
   for the soul, through the body; and sometimes for the body through the
   soul, contriving in what manner to elicit faith before the cure and
   assuming, evidently, the fact of a reciprocal action and reaction,
   operating naturally between them--the healing of the body helped by the
   faith of the soul and the faith of the soul by the healing of the body.
   In the large view, his operation is but one, and life, complete life,
   is or is to be the result.

   If now any one should ask what is the particular import, or importance,
   of this healing work of Christ in His healings incompatible with penal
   substitution. bodies, that it should even occupy a chapter in the
   doctrine of his sacrifice, the very simple and sufficient answer is,
   that it is a matter quite decisive, in respect to the nature of that
   substitutive office, which Christ undertook to fulfill. If we want to
   know in what sense, or manner, he suffered for the sins of mankind, his
   immense expenditure of toil, and feeling, and disgustful sympathy, and
   the murderous jealousy to be encountered in healing the diseases of
   mankind, will furnish the exact explanation required. Indeed, if he
   came simply to be the manifested love of God, and to be lifted up as
   the brazen serpent in the wilderness, for the healing of guilty souls,
   nothing could be more natural, in that love, having that sublime
   healing purpose in view, than that he should go directly into the
   healing of bodies, in the manner described by the evangelists. But if
   he came to satisfy God's justice, or pacify God's wrath against sin, so
   to prepare a ground of forgiveness for sin, there is a very palpable
   two-fold incongruity between his healings and such a work. First,
   between offering mere pain, or suffering to God, and a general
   operation of body-cure on mankind, there is no more real agreement, or
   consent of meaning, than between doing the same and building a college,
   or endowing a school of surgery. And secondly, since all diseases are
   but issues of penal consequence, under the retributive laws God has
   incorporated in our human nature for the redress of our sin, what is
   Christ doing, in his mighty works of healing, but simply blocking, or
   defeating the ordinances of justice, whose wrath he has come to
   satisfy, and whose rule to propitiate? The disagreement is radical and
   total, between being man's substitute under God's penalties maintained,
   and being man's Healer under the same discontinued, or pushed by. The
   question how shall two walk together unless they be agreed? was never
   more apposite. The inference indeed is absolute, one way or the other,
   either that Christ engaged in no such work of healing, or that he came
   to fulfill no such office of suffering.

   Meantime, the agreement between his healing ministry and the kind of
   vicarious action I have ascribed to Gloriously compatible with the
   healing of souls. him is complete. Nay, he could not come into the
   world, in that office, without undertaking one kind of ministry as
   naturally as the other; or, in fact, without feeling both to be one.

   In this connection, therefore, that very important text which we have
   already cited comes back upon us, to magnify still farther its almost
   imperial authority--"That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by
   Esaias the prophet, saying,' Himself took our infirmities and bare our
   sicknesses.'" Here is a passage quoted directly from that stock-fund
   chapter of vicarious language, the liii of Isaiah. The New Testament
   expression, "took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses," represents
   "hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows," in that chapter; where
   immediately follow words like these--"Yet we did esteem him stricken,
   smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
   transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of
   our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed."

   Now it will be seen that, in this passage, we have the stiffest looking
   terms of penal substitution any where to be found, and yet that we have
   also a clause at the beginning, and a clause at the end, determining
   the usus loquendi of all these terms, and showing, beyond a question,
   that their meaning is exhausted by the labors, and suffering
   sympathies, and wrongs of bitter violence Christ endured, as the bodily
   and spiritual Healer of mankind, For when it is said, "he hath borne
   our griefs and carried our sorrows," it is no more possible to
   understand that he is literally substituted in our griefs and sorrows;
   for the language has been applied to Christ's healings, and is even
   declared to be fulfilled in the fact, that he there, "took our
   infirmities and bare our sicknesses." For he took them not literally
   upon him, but only assumed them to bear in a way of pains-taking labor,
   and exhaustive sympathy, and disgustful attention, coupled with much
   abuse and little gratitude. And then again, when he is said, in so many
   strong terms, to have been wounded and bruised for us, put in
   chastisement and stripes, how suddenly and even totally does the
   substitution change look, when the terminal aim, or end, or idea
   appears. The wounding and bruising, the chastisement and stripes, do
   not bring us out as we should expect, on the satisfaction of God's
   justice, but we read, instead--"with his stripes we are healed;" or, as
   in Peter's version--"by whose stripes ye were healed." And so, taking
   all Christ's ministry, from his beginning to the hour of his death, it
   turns out that he is in a grand work of healing for body and soul,
   charging on his burdened feeling all our sicknesses and pains, all the
   disorder of our transgressions and sins, weary, disgustful, deep in
   sorrow, circumvented, hated, persecuted and smitten, as it were, of
   God, yet persisting even unto death; and all this for our peace, or,
   what is nowise different, for our healing, or complete health. What a
   profound reality, and depth, and rationality, is there in such a
   vicariousness! Nobody is offended by it, and where is the heart it will
   not soften? Health, too, this divine health! typified by the cooling of
   so many fevers, the seeing of so many blind eyes, the leaping of so
   many crippled limbs, the leprous skin blushing into color, the weakness
   bounding into pulse, the tingling of new life where life was ebbing
   low, and, above all, the sense harmonically tuned to wind, and sky, and
   weather--take all this for sign, without, of that sublimer healing in
   the soul's disorders within, following it upward into the state of
   complete life, and purity, and harmony with God, how great a matter is
   it, and how fit to occupy the burdened heart, the crucified fidelity,
   and all the suffering years of the Son of God! Is there any
   substitution worthier to be borne by him, or more to be admired, and
   glorified by us?

   In this general view, it is hardly possible to overmagnify the
   importance of Christ's healings, taken in Practical value of these
   analogies. their spiritual uses, and their connections with the
   preaching of his gospel afterwards. In them are provided the finest and
   most quickening analogies; so that every story of healing is, in fact,
   a sermon, yielding its own particular lesson of prayer and importunity,
   of holy conviction, of divine sympathy and strength-giving, of trust,
   of coöperative action, of public confession and devoted following. When
   rightly handled, there is a wonderful felicity in such lessons. No
   logical processes, or refinements are wanted to set them forth. They
   make their address directly to the sentiments, and get themselves
   interpreted by the practical wants and troubles of experience. Sin,
   too, is so very like to disease and so closely yoked with it, that it
   takes to itself, with quick facility, whatever is said, or done, for
   disease. Talking of blindness the sinner scarcely counts it a figure to
   say that his soul is blind. The being held by demons gets, how often, a
   ready interpretation from the terrible storms of the mind, and the
   unsubduable fires of hate and demonized passion! How easily, too, will
   the soul that is shamed and utterly broken, by guilty and remorseful
   convictions, take every thing said and done for a poor leper, as being
   wonderfully true for it! The healings, in this view, belong to the very
   staple matter of the gospel. Without them, it would be a soul without a
   body; for a gospel wants a body, as truly as a man, or a seed; and, as
   every seed hath its own body, so the outward facts of Christ's healings
   are the very particular and proper body, of the mightier and diviner
   healings he has undertaken to work in character and the inner man of
   the spirit.

   Besides, it is another very important office of these works on the
   body, that they emphasize the whole manner and working of Christ. We
   want, as sinners, a supernatural salvation if any, one that has power
   to turn back all the currents and causalities of retributive disorder
   in our sin. We are under sin, and a power is wanted that can draw us
   out and bring us clear Types and proofs of a supernatural salvation. of
   it. How much then does it signify that our Saviour was a Healer. Going
   along with him in his ministry, and seeing how he works; always
   competent to the thing he undertakes, unsealing eyes born blind,
   banishing foul spirits, commanding the white skin of lepers to redden
   into health, hearing every forlorn sufferer's prayer, unable to be even
   touched in the hem of his garment without sending out some healing
   virtue; we have the feeling produced that we, too, can be healed, that
   the grip of retribution fastened upon us by our sin, all the bad
   causalities of our inward disorder, can be loosened. In the salvation
   offered us, there is a look of capacity; we feel that God is in our
   case, able to undertake, and carry, and complete, the work of our
   deliverance--able to save unto the uttermost. In this profoundly
   necessary impression, the other miracles also concur; but if these
   mighty works had not been wrought, nothing else that Christ could have
   done, in the sphere of truth and the spirit, would have had the
   necessary energy of a gospel. Not even his cross would have signified
   much beyond the proof of his weakness. It is only when the Great Healer
   dies, that we look to find his cross a deed of power.

   After what was said, in the next previous chapter, of the recovery of
   men to a participation with Christ in his sacrifice, it may occur to
   some one to ask, whether it can be imagined, that his healings are to
   be thus participated? To which I answer that, in some very important
   degree, they probably are. And Partaking in the sacrifice, shall we
   also in the healings? here I will say nothing of the "gift of healing,"
   so-called, which many are quite positive is discontinued--showing still
   no Scripture for the fact; for if it were in still undisputed exercise,
   it would pertain only to such as are put in the gift, and not to the
   general condition of discipleship. We are looking here for that only in
   which the followers of their Master are to follow; that which belongs
   to their unity of spirit and object with him. Here we find them called
   to look on the things of others, even as he did, and to have the same
   mind with him in his condescension to the broken lot of mankind. And
   this includes, of course, a large, and full, and free sympathy with all
   suffering; a capacity of being burdened for the sick, and sometimes a
   necessary, knowing consent to exposure from contagious maladies, that
   involves the greatest peril to life. The ministry of love--no Christian
   can withhold himself from this, whether it relate to mind, or body, or
   sin, or sickness. Hence the expectation, apart from any gift of
   healing, that all disciples, in all grades and positions, will have
   their prayers burdened heavily, often, for the sick, and will sometimes
   prevail before God in suit for their recovery--this apart from any
   thought of miracle, and by virtue of the merely Christian efficacy of
   prayer, as affirmed by the doctrine of prayer itself.

   Hence that remarkable passage in the close of the epistle of James,
   affirming the efficacy of prayer for the sick, and by the interjection
   of some vicarious image, or term, in almost every verse, giving it the
   very cast of the Christly sacrifice. It opens by permitting every sick
   person to send for the elders of the church, and laying it on them, as
   a charge belonging to their office, to pray over the sick, and help
   their own faith in doing it, by the ancient solemnity of a ritual
   anointing. Then it passes on to what is more general, belonging, not to
   church officers, but to the common efficacy of prayer itself; where the
   declaration is, that "the prayer of faith shall save the sick;" that
   the Lord--not the disciple--will raise him up, and that his sins shall
   be forgiven him, as they were forgiven by Christ in his healings. It
   will not be understood, of course, that the prayer of faith is pledged
   to restore all sick, but only that it will restore as many sick as can
   have the prayer of faith given, or allowed; for God will not help any
   one to pray in faith for such as he will not restore. In the next
   verse, the subject is enlarged, and all Christian friends are put in a
   kind of vicarious relation to each other, in respect to their faults
   and maladies of soul. "Confess your faults one to another"--ask
   sympathy, that is, in a free statement of your inward troubles--"and
   pray for one another that ye may be healed;" as if the matter wanted
   were a cure of inbred disorder. Then follows an appeal to the example,
   or instance of Elijah's prayers; and the matter is put in a form to cut
   off forever the idea that such kind of prayer is, or ever can be,
   antiquated; for Elijah's prayers we are told were not specially a
   prophet's, or an angel's, but only a man's, and that "man subject to
   like passions as we are"--just as weak, and cloudy, and hard of faith
   as a proper human creature will be. Finally he goes on to speak of the
   care every brother will have for every brother, when he falls; how he
   will fly to the rescue, and turn him back, and be a Saviour to him,
   like his Master, only in a lower, less complete sense, proper to his
   own human weakness. Have it as a fact always in your feeling, he says,
   that "he which converteth a sinner [that is, a fallen brother] from the
   error of his way shall save a soul from death and hide a multitude of
   sins." It is all along we shall perceive, in this passage, as if the
   Master were calling the disciple to have a close, dear part with him,
   in his healing and saving work. And, what is most of all impressive, he
   gives in that word "hide," a part with him, so to speak, in his very
   work of reconciliation. The Old Testament word translated atonement,
   reconciliation, literally means to hide, or cover--"Thou hast covered
   all their sin"--"Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and
   whose sins are covered." As the Master has this power, and stands in
   this high honor, so the follower shall follow, and shall even hope,
   when he pities the fall of his brother, and prays him back, with many
   tears and tender watchings thereunto, that he also may be the minister
   of healing and a justifying peace, and may hide a multitude of sins.

   Speaking thus of prayer and of works by prayer accomplished, not to put
   down, in connection, the remarkable promise of Christ, so often
   debated, and so difficult, as many think, to be rationally qualified,
   might even be a criminal omission--"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He
   that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also, and greater
   works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father. And
   whatsoever ye shall ask, in my name, that will I do, that the Father
   may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name I
   will do it." This huge over-promise of the Saviour--what shall we make
   of it? how, and how far, shall we qualify it?
     __________________________________________________________________

   [6] Cur Deus Homo--Lib. i Cap. ix.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER II.

  CHRIST'S OBJECT IS THE HEALING OF SOULS.

   THE healings of Christ in bodies, we have just seen, are in fact an
   outward type of the more radical and sublime cure he undertakes, by his
   sacrifice, to work in fallen character. In this cure, we have the
   principal aim and object of his mission. We may sum up thus all that he
   taught, and did, and suffered, in the industry of his life and the
   pangs of his cross, and say that the one, comprehensive, all-inclusive
   aim, that draws him on, is the change he will operate in the spiritual
   habit and future well-being of souls. In this fact it is, and only in
   this, that he becomes a Redeemer. He is here in vicarious sacrifice,
   not for something else, but for this.

   In the unfolding of this general conception, my present chapter will be
   occupied. It is very commonly assumed that Christ is here for another
   and different main object; viz., to suffer before God's justice, and
   prepare, in the satisfying of that, a way of possible forgiveness for
   men. From this I must dissent, though without proposing here any
   controversy, farther than may be implied in the maintenance and due
   illustration of my proposition above stated. What was necessary to be
   done for the preparation of forgiveness will be considered, at a more
   advanced stage of the discussion, I only say, for the present, that
   this is no principal matter in his work, the principal matter being to
   inaugurate a grand, restorative, new-creating movement on
   character--the reconciliation, that is, of men to God. The other, the
   preparation of forgiveness, take what view of it we may, unless we make
   forgiveness the same thing as reconciliation, can be only a secondary
   and subordinate matter, the principal work and wonder of all being what
   Christ undertakes and is able to do, in the bad mind's healing and
   recovery to God.

   That some very great and wonderful change, or recasting of soul is, in
   some way, necessary--as well as to Christ is our Regenerator. provide
   the forgiveness of sins--is generally admitted and asserted with
   abundant emphasis; but it is not as generally perceived that Christ has
   any particular agency in it. It is not denied that his teachings have
   great value, or that what is called his expiatory suffering for sin is
   effective in a degree, on men's feeling, as well as efficacious in the
   satisfaction of justice; and it is continually put to his credit, in
   this same suffering and satisfaction, that he has purchased the Holy.
   Spirit, and sends him forth to work the needed change in souls. In this
   way, some compensation is made for the loss that accrues by a failure
   to conceive the immediate and really immense agency of Christ in such
   changes; still there is a loss. No conception of Christ really meets
   the true significance of his mission, that does not find him working
   centrally in the great Soul-Healing himself; related presently to it,
   in all the matter of his suffering and sacrifice. It is not his simply
   to forgive, or obtain the forgiveness of sin, in the lowest and most
   nearly negative sense of remission; his great and vastly more
   significant endeavor is, to make the sin itself let go of the sinner,
   and so deliver him inwardly that he shall be clear of it. And to
   accomplish this requires an almost recomposition of the man; the
   removal of all his breakage, and disorder, and derangement, and the
   crystalization over again, if I may so speak, of all his shattered
   affinities, in God's own harmony and law. And, in order to this result,
   whatever agencies beside concur in it, three things, included in the
   sacrifice and suffering of Jesus, appear to be specially needed.

   1. There is a want of something done, or shown, to preengage the
   feeling, or raise a favoring prejudice in it; so that, when advance is
   made, on God's Pre-engages the feeling. part, in a call to repentance,
   the subject may not be repelled, but drawn rather. Otherwise it is like
   to be as it was in the garden, when the culprit hearing God calling
   after him, fled and hid himself. No bad soul likes to meet the Holy
   one, but recoils painfully, shivers with dread, and turns away. But the
   foremost thing we see in Christ is not the infinite holiness, or
   sovereign purity; he takes us, first, on the side of our natural
   feeling; showing his compassions there, passing before us visaged in
   sorrow, groaning in distressful concern for us, dying even the
   bitterest conceivable death, because the love he bears to us can not
   let go of us. In a word we see him entered so deeply into our lot, that
   we are softened and drawn by him, and even begin to want him entered
   more deeply, that we may feel him more constrainingly. In this way a
   great point is turned in our recovery. Our heart is engaged before it
   is broken. We like the Friend before we love the Saviour.

   2. It is another point of consequence, in the matter of our recovery,
   that we have some better, more tender, and so more piercing, conviction
   of sin, than we get from our natural remorse, or even from the rugged
   Awakens the conscience. and blunt sentence of law. It is well, indeed,
   to be shot through with fiery bolts from Sinai, but these hard, dry
   wounds, these lacerations of truth, want searching and wounding over
   again, by the gentle surgery of love, before we are in a way to be
   healed. In this more subduing, and more nearly irresistible convincing,
   we have, in part, the peculiar efficacy of the cross. We look on him
   whom we have pierced, and are pierced ourselves. Through the mighty
   bosom struggle of the agony and death, we look down, softened, into the
   bosom wars and woes Christ pities and dies for in us. And when we hear
   him say--"Of sin because ye believe not on me"--we are not chilled, or
   repelled, as by the icy baptism of fear and remorse, but we welcome the
   pain. As Simeon himself declared, "he is set for the fall," as well as
   "for the rising again;" and we even bless the fall that so tenderly
   prepares the rising.

   In this manner it was, that the conversion of Paul began at the point
   of that piercing word--"I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest."
   Penetrated and felled by that arrow of the divine love, his
   "exceedingly mad" feeling dies, and his resistance, from that moment,
   is gone.

   3. There greatly needs to be, and therefore, in Christ, is given, a
   type of the new feeling and life to be restored. Abstract descriptions
   given of holiness or holy virtue, do not signify much to those who
   Stands for the exemplar. never knew them inwardly by their effects. To
   conceive a really divine character by specification, or receive it by
   inventory is, in fact, impossible. No language can give the
   specification, and no mind could take the meaning of it accurately, if
   it were given. Hence the necessity that we have some exposition that is
   practical and personal. We want no theologic definition of God's
   perfections; but we want a friend, whom we can feel as a man, and whom
   it will be sufficiently accurate for us to accept and love. Let him
   come so nigh, if possible, let him be so deeply inserted into our lot
   and our feeling, that we can bury ourselves in him and the fortunes of
   his burdened life, and then it will be wonderful, if having God's own
   type in his life, we do not catch the true impress from it in
   ourselves.

   In these three points, we perceive, that the suffering life and death
   of Jesus are the appropriate and even necessary equipment of his doing
   force, in what he undertakes for character. Observe now what this doing
   includes, and in how many ways and forms it is set forth. Thus he
   quickens--"and The Scriptures make him a renewing power. you hath he
   quickened." He gives life--"that he should give eternal life." He
   liberates the bondage of souls--"If the Son shall make you free." He
   new-creates--"new-created in Christ Jesus." He begets--"hath begotten
   us again to a lively hope." He raises from the state of spiritual
   death--"and hath raised us up together." He converts--"turning away
   every one of you from his iniquities." He is the captain, or bringer
   on, of salvation--"bringing many sons unto glory." He reconciles, or
   changes to conformity of life with God--"to wit that God was in Christ
   reconciling the world unto himself." He redeems--"made unto us
   redemption." In the same way he is called "the light of the world,"
   "the day-star," "the truth," "the water of life," "the bread of life,"
   the mirror of God's glory, before which "we are changed from glory to
   glory." In short there is no end to the images that spring up, at every
   turn of the New Testament writings, to express the operative purpose
   and manner of Christ's soul-renewing work-presenting it continually as
   the something he is doing upon us, or to revolutionize and restore our
   character. This would be more impressively shown, if we could pause on
   all these various expressions, such as I have briefly cited by catch
   words, and unfold them by a deliberate exposition of their meaning.

   But instead of this, I will recall, in this manner, a single
   expression, or figure, as directly referred to him as any of the
   others, and commonly overlooked as having any such reference at
   all--the figure I mean of birth, or regeneration. It is even commonly
   taught that Christ is not immediately concerned in the change called
   regeneration, but only in the preparation of forgiveness for it, when
   the change is wrought by the Holy Spirit, in the office that belongs to
   him. What then signify such examples as these? "But as many as received
   him [Christ] to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to
   them that believe in his name; which were born, not of blood, nor of
   the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" [i. e. of
   God as in Christ.] Again--"Every one that doeth righteousness is born
   of him," [Christ.] And again--"Being born again, not of corruptible
   seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, [the Logos] that liveth
   and abideth forever."

   This matter of regeneration is referred also to the Holy Spirit, it is
   true; but not in any such exclusive sense that it is not referred with
   equal None the less a Regenerator that the Spirit is also. truth to
   Christ; for it is even declared to be the office of the Spirit to
   glorify Christ in the soul. Christ is a power to the soul before its
   thought, and by that which is given to thought in his person. The
   Spirit is a power back of thought, opening thought as a receptivity
   towards him, and, in that manner, setting the subject under the
   impression of Christ's life, and death, and character. "He shall
   glorify me," says the Saviour, "for he shall receive of mine, and shall
   show it unto you." In Paul's view conversion is to be described
   accordingly as the inward discovery of Christ. "When it pleased God,"
   he says, "to reveal his Son in me," giving that as the account of his
   conversion. Christ then is, or is to be, an operative power on men, in
   the sense that they are to be regenerated in holiness by him. In a
   remoter and equally true sense, they are regenerated by the Spirit; in
   a closer and more proximate sense by Christ, as the moral image and
   love of God, set forth to engage their love and renew them in
   character. The work required is no such work as can be summarily struck
   out, by the mere efficiency, or force-principle of God. It requires all
   there is of God, in the incarnate life of Jesus, in his feeling, in his
   Gethsemane, in his death; a brooding of the whole deific mercy, and
   truth, and patience, and holiness, over the inthrallment and death-like
   chill of the soul. Even as Paul testifies again--"But ye are washed,
   but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord
   Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

   Such is the kind of efficacy which the Scriptures attribute to Christ,
   and for this kind of efficacy in human character they conceive him to
   be sent into the world. And, by this kind of efficacy, too, we shall
   see that he The Christed consciousness in all disciples. is revealed in
   the consciousness of his disciples. It is not the account of their
   Christian experience, and of the gospel as related thereto, that Christ
   has done something before God's throne, and wholly apart from all
   effect in them, to make their acceptance possible; and then that the
   Holy Spirit, by a divine efficiency in them, changes their hearts. No
   such theologic gospel of dry wood and hay is the gospel of the
   apostles. They find every thing, in their human nature, penetrated by
   the sense, and savor, and beauty, and glory of Christ. Their whole
   consciousness is a Christ-consciousness--every thing good and strong in
   them is Christ within. Worsted in all their struggles of will-work and
   self-regeneration, they still chant their liberty in Christ and
   say--"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me
   free." Their joy is to be consciously Christed, fully possessed by
   Christ; to have him dwell in them, and spread himself over and through
   all the senses and sentiments, and willings, and works of their life.

   This is Paul, for example, a man transformed, all through, by Christ
   living in him; consciously weak and little and low in himself, and
   possible to be lifted only in the hope that, as Christ hath risen from
   the dead, he may also rise with him, to walk in newness of life. Not
   that he was captivated simply by his life. He was even more profoundly
   captivated by his death, and found, in fact, his deepest inspirations
   there; desiring ever to be with him in the fellowship of his
   sufferings, and to be made conformable to his mighty sacrifice in them.
   In that sacrifice it was that he most felt his working. That broke his
   heart, and there he took the saintly fire that burned so brightly in
   him. It is as if the Paul-soul were all wrapped in by the Christ-soul,
   and he only speaks aloud what he feels within, when he says--"Yet not
   I, but Christ liveth in me."

   It is also a singular confirmation of this kind of evidence, that all
   living disciples of our own time give the same kind of testimony from
   their experience, This same view is virtually accepted by those who
   deny it. when, by their doctrine, they have no right to it. They have
   no such view, it may be, of Christ, as that he is sent to be a
   regenerative power on character; the lean kine of judicial satisfaction
   have devoured the good kine of God's regenerative bounty, and yet they
   cling to Christ for a wonderful and blessed something still, which he
   puts in their feeling, and call him lovingly their life. Sometimes they
   look after a reason why they are so much bound up in him, and imagine
   that it is their sense of gratitude to Christ for the squaring of their
   account with God, by his sufferings; as if they could have him in so
   great endearment for what he has suffered before God, apart from all
   that he is and pleads before us. No, this working grace of Jesus goes
   before all gratitude, to beget us in a spirit of gratitude, when we
   have none; it is not the satisfaction of our debt, but it is the noble
   sympathy in which he draws himself to us, the agony of his concern for
   us, the lifting up of his cross, in which he proves his faithfulness
   even unto death--by these it is that he installs himself in so tender a
   devotion, in all believers' hearts. Thus it is that he gets into their
   prayers, into their sense of liberty, into their good conscience,
   bathing them all over in the glorious confidence and bliss of his
   consciously participated life. They sigh after him with Thomas a
   Kempis, rest in him with Brainard, sing him as the mighty power with
   Wesley, even though they know him in their doctrine, only as a
   sacrifice before God's justice.

   Indeed it will be observed that all effective preachers of Christ under
   the penal satisfaction doctrine, quit their base in it instinctively,
   when they undertake the capture of the heart--falling, at once, into
   modes of appeal that make him God's Regenerative Argument. They show
   how he loves the world, and testify "the love of Christ constraineth
   us." They magnify the tenderness of his healing ministry. They picture
   the cross to human sensibility, as if they really believed that Christ
   was lifted up to draw men to himself. They can not sufficiently praise
   the beauty of his wonderful character. If they think of God's wrath
   that could be assuaged only by his blood, no present feeling of
   consistency forbids their seeing God's patience in him, and the
   sacrifice he will make for his enemies. So they preach him directly to
   men's hearts, in all the most winning, and subduing, and tenderest
   things they can say of him; as if he were really incarnated in the
   world for that kind of use. Meantime they call it preaching Christ,
   only when they preach the satisfaction, and complain, it may be with
   real sadness, that now-a-days, there is so little preaching of Christ;
   understanding in particular, that kind of preaching. When alas! the
   poorest, most repelling thing done is precisely that; and so little of
   that is done, just because the poverty and repulsiveness of it are
   silently and irresistibly felt. In general harmony with these appeals
   to fact and living evidence, it becomes a considerable and sad part
   Reclamations of lost Scripture. of my duty, in this chapter, to reclaim
   the lost proof texts, which have been carried over to the side of the
   satisfaction theory, and away from their very obvious natural meaning.
   I do not charge it as a fraud, that so much of Scripture has been
   stolen away from its rightful use and import--every mistaken theory or
   doctrine of religion, which obtains long use, gradually and
   unconsciously, or by fixed necessity, converts the Scripture symbols to
   itself and makes them its proselytes. Take for example the texts that
   follow.

   "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." [7] It
   is not said that he taketh away the punishments of the world, but "the
   sins"--just that which was signified by the sacrifices of the altar and
   the scapegoat sent away into the wilderness. The lamb was not punished,
   neither was the goat. The very thing signified was the removal, or
   deportation of the sin. "In this was manifested the love of God toward
   us, because that God sent his only begotten son into the world, that we
   might live through him." [8] "That we might live" gets to mean that we
   might have our penal liability released and nothing more. A previous
   verse in the epistle--"For the Life was manifested, and we have seen
   it, and bear witness and show unto you that Eternal Life which was with
   the Father and was manifested unto us"--raises no barrier against a
   construction so frigid, even though it tells us expressly that Christ
   was incarnated to be the manifested Life, the same that was with the
   Father and is to beget, or be, eternal life in us.

   "Who his own self bare our sins, in his own body on the tree, that we,
   being dead to sin, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye
   were healed." [9] This passage is used very much as if the "bearing of
   the sins," and the "stripes" spoken of, were the whole matter;
   whereupon the judicial substitution theory has nothing to do but to
   assign its own construction and take the text into its own particular
   service. Meantime the very bearing of sins has its end, or aim, plainly
   declared and is itself to be qualified by its aim--it is that we may
   "live unto righteousness;" being, as we see, an appeal of suffering for
   us, to work a change inwardly in our life, and beget us anew in
   righteousness. And so of the "stripes;" they are not penal stripes,
   inflicted for God's satisfaction, but such kind of suffering as works a
   divine healing in us--"By whose stripes ye were healed."

   "For Christ also hath suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that
   he might bring us unto God." [10] As if this suffering, the just for
   the unjust, must, of course, mean a suffering of penalty for the
   unjust, when it is even declared, as the object of the suffering
   ministry and mission--"that he might bring us unto God."

   "Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this
   present evil world." [11] It is not from God's justice, not from any
   future wrath, that Christ will deliver, when he gives himself for our
   sins--no compensation to God's law is even thought of--but he gives
   himself to deliver us from a state of evil now present; from corrupt
   custom, the law of this world, the spirit that now worketh in the
   children of disobedience.

   "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
   for us. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through
   Jesus Christ." [12] Probably the expression "being made a curse for
   us," does imply that he somehow comes under the retributive
   consequences of our sin--in what manner will hereafter be
   explained--but that will not justify the conclusion that Christ's chief
   errand is to satisfy God's justice, and so to prepare the forgiveness
   of sin. Is not the object plainly declared, viz., "that the blessing of
   Abraham might come on the Gentiles?" Is it then the blessing of
   Abraham, that God is satisfied in him, and forgiveness of sins obtained
   by him? or is it rather that the Gentiles might come as near to God as
   Abraham was, and be so wrought in as to be also friends of God with
   him?'

   Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things
   are passed away, behold all things are become new. And all things are
   of God who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. [13] How much
   do we hear of the reconciliation of God by Christ! and yet the very
   word is a word of transformation wholly inapplicable to God; and what
   is more, it is here even formally applied to us--"hath reconciled us."
   Besides the "all things" which are said to come of God, in this
   reconciliation, are precisely the new things before comprehended in the
   becoming "a new creature." It would seem to be even impossible to get
   these words into the use they have so commonly been made to serve. And
   then how much more, when it follows immediately as a whole description
   or summation of the gospel itself--"to wit, that God was in Christ
   reconciling the world unto himself." It is one thing to reconcile the
   world, and a very different to reconcile God.

   "That he might be a merciful and faithful high priest, in things
   pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.
   For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to
   succor them that are tempted." [14] Here we have the priestly figure,
   and the "reconciliation" is a different word, derived from the
   atonement service of the altar; and it is a reconciliation not of man,
   but "for sins;" all which appears to favor, in a certain degree, the
   satisfaction theory which it is continually cited to support. And yet
   the object specified in the words that follow turns back, how plainly,
   all such constructions, showing, at the same time, how easy it is to
   miss the genuine import of this kind of figure, by taking it too
   closely and with too little range of liberty. For, in that he himself
   hath suffered, in his great trial and sacrifice, says our apostle, he
   has brought us succor in our trial, so that he, by that succor, is
   truly our priest, as he undertook to be, and becomes the soul-help in
   his sacrifice that takes away our sin. Every thing turns after all, in
   these high figures of the altar, and is meant to turn, on the nearness
   into which he is brought, and the dear sympathy proved by his
   sacrifice.

   I will not go on to cite other texts that have shared the same hard
   fortune, but will only say, in general, that a numerous and very
   important class, which represent the lustral figures of the Old
   Testament, and speak of Christ in one way or another as having
   "washed," or "purged," or "cleansed," or "sprinkled," the soul, are
   systematically converted from that natural and easy signification, to
   denote a clearance before the law, now satisfied; when there is, in
   fact, no cleansing wrought in the defilement that was created by
   disobedience to it. Whereas it is the very purpose of these lustral
   transactions, or rites--that for which they were specially prepared of
   old--first, by a kind of implicit force, or power of religious
   association, to push the mind of a crude age forward into a cleanness
   it could not think; and then, afterwards, to be a symbol under Christ
   of that spiritual cleansing otherwise difficult to be expressed. Thus
   when the argument is, "For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the
   ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, 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, purge
   your conscience from dead works to serve the living God" [15] --what
   can be more plain than that the cleansing here spoken of is no mere
   change in the soul's legal possibilities, but a lustration of "the
   conscience" itself, and a turning of the soul inwardly, away from sin,
   to the service and obedience of God? So of all the like figures--they
   have no reference whatever to the matter of a judicial satisfaction,
   but simply to sanctification of character.

   If now all these reclamations of Scripture were made, there would be
   very little left to give a complexion of authority to any other
   conclusion, than that Christ is here for what he can do in the
   restoration of character. To prove a negative so wide is difficult, and
   therefore only do I withhold from saying that nothing will be left.
   Still, if I am able to show, in the next chapter, that he is
   represented as having come, first of all, and above all things beside,
   to be a power on character, which power he became in the vicarious
   suffering of his life and death, it will amount, as nearly as possible
   to the same thing.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [7] John i. 29.

   [8] 1 John iv. 9.

   [9] 1 Peter ii. 24.

   [10] 1 Peter iii. 18.

   [11] Gal. i. 4.

   [12] Gal. iii. 13-14.

   [13] 2 Cor. v. 17-18.

   [14] Heb. 17-18.

   [15] Heb. ix, 13, 14.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER III.

  HE IS TO BE GOD'S POWER IN WORKING SUCH RECOVERY.

   IN ordinary cases where a work is undertaken, it signifies nothing more
   to say that the doer undertakes to be a power to that effect; for
   whatever is to be done, by action, supposes, of course, a power acting.
   But where there is something to be done, not by action, but by quality
   of being, or by the worth, and beauty, and divine greatness of a
   character, the action is nothing and the power to be effective thus, in
   simply being what it is, every thing. Therefore, when we say, and show
   that Christ is here to new-create, or regenerate, fallen character, it
   is not insignificant to add that he is here to be, or become, so great
   a power. For the new creation we speak of is not a work to be carried
   by any kind of doing, or efficient activity, or even by the fiat-force
   of omnipotence itself, but only by such higher kind of potency, as can
   do so great a thing, through our consent, and without infringing our
   liberty; do it, that is, Two kinds of power. by the felt quality of
   being, or holy impulsion of worth and beauty it embodies. How far it
   may be the way of the Holy Spirit to operate in the regeneration of
   character by action, or the doing method, we do not know; doubtless God
   will do for us by the force-principle all that may be done by it; but
   the force-principle is not related plainly to the doing of all which
   requires to be done in the matter of so great a change, unless it be in
   ways circuitous, and one remove distant from the will; for to operate
   this change, by any method that overrides, or even omits our concurrent
   choice, is not to change our character, but to demolish our
   personality. A great power then is wanted, which can pierce, and press,
   and draw, and sway, and, as it were, new crystalize the soul, which
   still is not any kind of force. And considering what the change is
   which the Scripture itself proposes, we even look to see some
   different, higher kind of power brought into the field, and magnified
   as the hope of our salvation. In Christ, accordingly, we find this
   higher power so magnified--a power that we may call the Moral Power of
   God. And the representation is that Christ, by his incarnate Christ in
   his sacrifice becomes the moral power of God. life and passion, becomes
   that higher kind of power--executing, in that manner, or by virtue of
   that kind of power, the internal new creation, for which, as was shown
   in the last chapter, he came into the world.

   My present chapter, accordingly, will be occupied with the fact that
   Christ's saving mission turns upon his having become such a power. And
   then my next will show how he becomes such a power in the facts of his
   personal history.

   In pursuing the subject assigned, a first matter will be to distinguish
   accurately what we are to understand, by the supposed moral power.

   Is it then that Christ is to be such a kind of power as we mean when we
   speak of example? Certainly not, His moral power is not the power of
   example. if we take the word example, in its most proper and common
   signification. An example, we conceive, is a model that we copy, and
   set ourselves, by our own will, to reproduce in ourselves. Many
   teachers have been rising up, in all the past ages, and propounding it
   as the true theory of the gospel, that Christ came forth to be a
   Redeemer, in the way of being an example. But no theory of the kind has
   ever been able, under the very meager and restricted word example, to
   get any show of general acceptance. For the truth is that we
   consciously want something better than a model to be copied; some
   vehicle of God to the soul, that is able to copy God into it. Something
   is wanted that shall go before and beget, in us, the disposition to
   copy an example.

   Sometimes the example theory has been stated broadly enough to include
   the demonstration of the divine love in Christ's life. Sometimes, Not
   by the revelation merely of God's love. also, this demonstration of the
   divine love, apart from any thing said of example, has been put forward
   as the object of his mission; love being regarded as the sufficient
   reconciling power of God on human character. But no such view has ever
   gained a wide acceptance; not for the reason, I must think, that God's
   love is not a great power on the feeling of mankind, or that, when it
   is revealed in Christ, it does not go far to make up the requisite
   power; but that consciously we need other and sturdier elements to
   produce impressions, equal to the change proposed in our spiritual
   transformation. Mere love, as we commonly conceive the word, suffers
   disrespect. We need somehow to feel that the love is a principled love,
   grounded in immovable convictions of right. There is no so very intense
   power in love, when descending even to the greatest possible sacrifice,
   if we are allowed to think of it as being only a mood of natural
   softness, or merely instinctive sympathy. Many animals will rush after
   one of their kind in distress, and pitch themselves into the toils of
   their captors, by mere sympathy of kind. To magnify love therefore,
   even the love of the cross, as being itself the new-creating power of
   God, would be a very great mistake, if the righteous rule of God is not
   somehow included. When Jesus in his sacrifice takes our lot upon his
   feeling, and goes even to the cross for us, we need also to conceive
   that he does this for the right, and because the everlasting word of
   righteousness commands him. Not all that belongs to this matter can be
   said as effectively here as it may be, when we come, in the Third Part,
   to consider the relations of the sacrifice to law. So much is added
   here only to fasten, or sufficiently affirm, the conviction, that no
   purely favoring, sympathetic kind of intervention, however
   self-sacrificing, can be any sufficient power on character to be a
   salvation.

   By the moral power of God, or of Christ as the manifested reality of
   God, we understand, comprehensively the power of all God's moral
   perfections, in one word, of his greatness. And by greatness we mean
   greatness The moral power of God is the greatness of God. of character;
   for there is no greatness in force, no greatness in quantity, or
   height, or antiquity of being, no greatness any where but in character.
   In this it is that so great moral power is conceived to be developed,
   in the self-devoting sacrifice of Christ's life and death.

   It would even be a kind of irreverence, not to assume that God is
   mightiest, and capable of doing the most difficult things, even as
   great men are, by his moral power. Alexander, for example, leads the
   tramp of force and victory across resisting empires, finally to be
   vanquished, in turn, by the fascinations of a woman, and to die, a
   second time vanquished by his appetites, in a fit of debauch. But those
   great souls of his countrymen who rose into power by their virtues, and
   died for their virtue's sake, such as Aristides and Socrates--why they
   keep on vanquishing the world and binding it to the sway of their
   character, and will as long as it exists. The power of Napoleon is, in
   the same way, force; that of Washington, character. One is the terror
   of his time, and when his time is over, is no more any thing but a
   prodigy of force remembered. The other holds the spell of a morally
   great, ever-increasing name, felt by all rulers of men both good and
   bad, penetrating more and more resistlessly the revolutions, and laws,
   and legislations of all proudest empires, and newest commonwealths of
   the globe; more to be felt than now, just in proportion as the world
   grows older, and is more advanced in good. So also it is that God is
   doing always, and to do, what is most difficult and nearest to being
   impossible, not by his omnipotence, The greatest power of God. but by
   his great character and feeling. When he commands--"Let there be
   light"--and the new sprung day flashes athwart all orbs and skies, it
   is indeed a mighty and sublime power that he wields, but his great
   character in good, what he is, and loves to do, and is willing to
   suffer, as discovered in the incarnate mission of Jesus--how much
   vaster, and nobler, and more sovereign, is the power, new-creating all
   the fallen sentiments, affinities and choices of souls. It did not
   burst fiat-like on the world, six thousand years ago, and stop, but it
   flows out continuously, as a river of great sentiment, bathing men's
   feeling as a power of life, raising their conceptions of good and of
   God, and dissolving their bad will into conscious affinity with His.
   Doing this from age to age, it will finally transform, we can easily
   believe, the general apostasy and corruption of mankind. Now that
   Christ came into the world to be this kind of power, was most evidently
   the impression that he had of himself. Thus it is to this very point
   that he is brought, in his remarkable discourse on re-generation, where
   he passes on to say--"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
   wilderness, Christ has this conception himself. even so must the Son of
   man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
   but have eternal life." According to the analogy of the figure referred
   to, he is here, and is in fact to be lifted up, that he may be a
   quickening, healing power--"eternal life"--in men's hearts. The
   representation is that he will be the regenerator of souls, not by
   action upon them, but by what he is to sight. There shall be that in
   him, that quality of good and glory, which, being fixedly beheld, shall
   go through all inmost distemper and subtilty of sin, as a power of
   immortal healing.

   It comes to very nearly the same thing when he says--"And I, if I be
   lifted up, will draw all men unto me." The supposition is, we perceive,
   that he is going to the cross for men, and that by that powerful
   argument he will draw them, as by new-born affinities, away from their
   sin, to a lasting and fixed unity with his person.

   We distinguish the same thing under a different version, where he gives
   it so expressly as the meaning of his errand, that he is come to be the
   king of truth, and sway men's hearts by the truth-power of his life.
   "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that
   I should bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth
   heareth my voice." In a very important sense, he is to be the truth;
   for all that is most quickening in God's feeling and beauty, all that
   is most powerful to sway the convictions and constrain the free
   allegiance of souls, is to be shown, not in his doctrine only, but more
   mightily far in his healing ministry and death of sorrow. And so he is
   to gain subjects for his kingdom, not so much by any direct doing in
   them, or action upon them, but by the sublime royalties of his
   character.

   Beginning thus at the conception Christ has of himself we should
   naturally look to find expectations going before, and impressions of
   witnesses coming after, holding a perceptible agreement The ancient
   Scriptures have this conception of the Messiah. with him. Thus we have
   a picture given of his coming in the stately Messianic Psalm--"He shall
   come down, like rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the
   earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace
   so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion from sea to sea,
   and from the rivers to the ends of the earth." Being thus like rain, or
   like showers, he will quicken men's hearts by absorption, as it were,
   of his fertilizing properties, and so take "dominion" from within.

   So the famous vicarious prophecy of Isaiah is a prophecy, in fact, of
   power. He shall heal by the "stripes" of his patience. He shall even be
   a great conqueror--not by his prowess, but by his suffering death.
   "Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall
   divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul
   unto death." To the same general effect is the prophet's word, when he
   writes--"Who is this that cometh from Edom, and with dyed garments from
   Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel traveling in the greatness
   of his strength? I that speak in righteousness mighty to save." There
   is a mixture of suffering and power, crowding each the other, as it
   were, all through the picture. His apparel is "red" with stains of
   blood, and yet it is "glorious apparel." He "treads the wine-press
   alone," yet "travels in the greatness of his strength." Finding "none
   to help or uphold," he is none the less "mighty to save." And what is
   the solution but that power is to be the fruit of his suffering?

   It is generally understood that Ezekiel's rill, flowing out from under
   the threshhold of the temple, widening into a river in its flow, and
   pouring on through desert regions, "healing the fishes," and causing
   "every thing to live, where it cometh," fringing also its border all
   the way with trees whose "fruit shall be for meat and leaf for
   medicine," is a picture of that originally despised but ever increasing
   power, by which Christ will renovate and restore the world. It will be
   that kind of power which is at once silent and sovereign, moving by no
   shock, but only as health, when it creeps in after, and along the
   subtle paths of disease.

   With these more ancient prophecies and expectations the contemporaneous
   impressions of John correspond. He announces a great king at hand, who
   shall be so transcendent in dignity, that he himself shall not be
   worthy even to untie his sandals--"He must increase, but I must
   decrease." Some of the imagery he employs is energetic and almost
   violent; but when the Great Expected appears, what but this is the
   greeting he offers--"Behold the Lamb of God!"

   In this manner we are prepared, when we come to the apostles and first
   preachers after Christ, to hear them break into expression, by some
   word more adequate and thought more definite. And therefore we are not
   surprised, when they put down their testimony, in the word power. And
   this we shall find is their impression of the gospel and of Christ as
   the His apostles coming after have the same. sum of it. They have
   other, more circuitous and tropical expressions, but when they come
   directly to the matter as it is, they say Power--"declared to be the
   Son of God with power"--"to us who are saved the power of God"--"the
   power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."

   Of these three several testimonies, the first is connected with the
   fact of the resurrection. "Declared to be the Son of God with power, by
   the resurrection from the dead;" with which another expression
   corresponds; viz., "That I may know him and the power of his
   resurrection." The impression is not that there is any such renewing
   power in Christ's resurrection itself, but that in the fact of his
   resurrection comes out the real height of his person, and that so the
   moral wonder of his sacrifice is there, for the first time, discovered.
   Before in his death he was but a man, a defeated and prostrate man,
   covered with unutterable ignominy; but when he rises, the fact of some
   transcendent nature is discovered in him, and a great revision follows
   in the impressions had of his person. He becomes, at once, a wholly
   different being, whose life and death take, both, a wholly different
   meaning. In respect of the flesh, he was the seed of David; now he is
   the Son of God with power, according to the higher divine Spirit
   working in his person.

   In the second passage cited, the preaching of the cross is the subject,
   and any kind of preaching, which undertakes to catch men by fine words,
   and tricks of philosophic subtilty, is deprecated, because it makes
   "the preaching of the cross of none effect." All genuine effect, the
   apostle is showing, comes of the power of the cross itself. This to us
   who are saved is even the power of God; or, as he says again shortly
   after, unable to get away from the ruling thought of his
   ministry--"Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

   Again, in the third passage, the apostle is giving his deliberate
   account of the gospel, that which constitutes the essential meaning and
   operative value of the gift--"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of
   Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that
   believeth." Therefore he was always sighing--"that the power of Christ
   may rest on me." I know not how it is, but this word power appears to
   pass for nothing in common use, and the passage is apparently
   understood as if it read only--"the way of God unto salvation"--the
   understanding had of it being, that Christ has purchased forgiveness
   for us and made salvation possible and nothing more. Whereas it was the
   particular intent of the apostle to give his deliberate summation of
   the gospel in this very word power, and to magnify Christ in it, as
   being the new-creating life of God in souls--in that sense and no other
   a salvation. And if any one still doubts, whether he has any so
   stringent and decisive meaning in this word, imagining that he does not
   think, after all, of asserting any thing in that precise way, but only
   throws in the word for declamation's sake, as a word of emphasis, or
   enhancement, it will be found that he uses the word again in a
   connection that shows him to be thinking specially of the moral
   efficacy of Christ, and also with a predicate of degree that fixes the
   meaning. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
   [saying, "Let there be light"] hath shined [with a like moral
   sovereignty] in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the
   glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in
   earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and
   not of us" [as if vessels of power in ourselves.] If he means, after
   all, to only magnify the gospel in a declamatory way by this word
   power, why does he fasten our attention down upon the degree of its
   efficacy by this predicate of "excellency?"

   Thus far we appeal to Paul. Peter also expresses the same conception of
   the gospel, only less vigorously, when he says--"According as his
   divine power hath given us all things pertaining to life and godliness,
   through the knowledge of him [Christ] that hath called us by glory and
   virtue;" that is, by the manifested glory and excellence of his life.
   The English translation, "called us to glory and virtue" it is
   generally agreed is mistaken.

   John again expresses the same thing in many ways, as when he says--"the
   blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin;" or again when
   he says--"Ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins." To
   cleanse us from all sin, to take it away, by force of what is
   manifested in him, is the same thing as to be the moral power which
   masters the soul's inward disorder, and renews it in holiness of life.

   I will not go on to multiply citations, but, lest it should seem that
   we are obliged to glean for them, I will simply say that this moral
   power of God in Christ bears The apostles make use of all most violent
   figures when they speak of it. such immense sway, in the feeling of all
   the New Testament writers, that they are continually seizing on this or
   that image, or fact of physical power in the world, to give their
   impression. Even the most forcefully violent and terrible images are
   laid hold of--any thing to represent the all-subduing, all-
   transforming, inwardly renewing, outwardly dominating, efficacy of
   Christ and the kingdom of God, revealed in his Messiahship.

   They conceive him as a wondrously detergent power in souls, "washing
   and making white," "cleansing from sin," "purging the conscience."

   They conceive him going through the sick, disordered mind, even as some
   healing medicine, or miracle, goes through the hidden maladies of
   bodies, to search out and expel disease.

   They call him a power of leaven, brought into the world to work;
   heaving in the general mass and willful stupor of it, till all is
   leavened.

   They call him the day-star, because he heralds the mind's day and the
   expulsion of its dreadful night; and the light, because the instant
   flash of that element strikes farthest into God's physical empire, and
   changes most the face of it; and the sun, because the exhaustless heat
   of that central fire in the sky, has power to keep the planet in
   habitable order, and even to vivify the otherwise dead matter of it in
   processes of growth.

   They call him Life itself, because the quickening spell of it, among
   the world's dead atoms, carpets the ground with beauty and fills the
   air itself with hovering motion.

   They conceive him as a fire that is already kindled, in the rubbish of
   the world's prescriptive falsities and wrongs, whose burning nothing
   can stop.

   His kingdom and the resistless moral power of his gospel, they resemble
   to lightning, darting from east to west, and flashing across all
   boundaries.

   His word they compare to the swing of an earthquake, "shaking not the
   earth only but also heaven"--shaking down, that is, all stoutest
   fabrics of error and prescriptive wrong, and leaving nothing to stand,
   but that immortal truth and good that can not be shaken. [16]

   They describe him in his cross as an immense, world-compelling
   attraction, moving such control in the once dead feelings and
   convictions of sin as will "draw all men unto him," even as the
   whirlpool draws all drifting objects and even passing ships into its
   vortex.

   He is even to be a chariot of thunder in the clouds--"coming in the
   clouds of heaven in power and great glory"--by that oriental sign of
   royal majesty, showing that the kingdom of God is come with power.

   It is, in short, as if some new, great power had broken, or was
   breaking into the world, in the life and cross of Jesus, which all the
   known causations of the land, and sea, and air, and sky, can but feebly
   represent. The difficulty appears to be that no force-figures can be
   forcible enough, to express the wondrously divine, all-renovating,
   all-revolutionizing, moral power of God in the gospel of his Son.

   I have only to add, as a considerable argument for the moral view of
   Christ and his sacrifice, in distinction The day of his coming
   coincides. from all others, that the time of his coming coincides with
   this only. Had he come, having it for his principal object to satisfy
   God's justice and be substituted, in that manner, for the release of
   transgression, there appears to be no reason why he should have delayed
   his coming for so many ages. If the effect was to be on God, God was
   just as capable, at the very first, of feeling the worth of his
   sacrifice, as at any time afterward; and, if this was to be the
   salvation, why should the salvation be delayed? But if lie came to be
   the moral power of God on men, nothing is so difficult as the due
   development of any such moral power; because the capacity, or necessary
   receptivity for it, has itself to be prepared. Thus, if Christ had come
   to the monster age before the flood, when raw force was every thing,
   and moral greatness nothing, his death and passion, all the
   significance of his suffering and sacrifice, would have been lost, and
   probably would not even have been preserved in the remembrance of
   history. The world was too coarse, and too deep in the force-principle
   of violence, to apprehend a visitation so thoughtful and deep in the
   merit of character. There was no room or receptivity, as yet, for
   Christ in the world. A long drawn scheme of economy is previously
   needed, to prepare that receptivity; a drill of outward sacrifice and
   ceremony, a providential milling of captivities, deliverances, wars,
   plagues, and other public judgments; commemorated in hymns, interpreted
   and set home by the preaching of a prophet ministry; till finally there
   is a culture of mind, or of moral perception produced, that is
   sufficiently advanced, to receive the meaning of Christ in his
   sacrifice, and allow him to get an accepted place in the moral
   impressions of mankind. Conceiving, in this manner, that he came to be
   the moral power of God on character, there is good and sufficient
   reason for his delay. He came as soon as he could, or, as the Scripture
   says, "in the fullness of time;" came in fact, at the very earliest
   moment, when it was possible to get hold of history.

   Indeed, so very slow is the world in getting ready for the due
   impression of what lies in moral power, that only a very partial
   opening to it is prepared even now. The world is still too coarse, too
   deep in sense and the force-principle, to feel, in any but a very small
   degree, the moral power of God in the Christian history. Slowly and
   sluggishly this higher sense is unfolding, but there is a perceptible
   advance, and we may anticipate the day, when there will be a sense
   opened wide enough for Christ, in his true power, to enter; thus to
   fill, and new-create in good, all souls that live. Then, and not till
   then, will it be known how grand a fact the moral power of God in the
   person of his Son may be.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [16] The passage referred to (Heb. xii, 36-7) is commonly interpreted
   as relating to the second coming of Christ, and perhaps it is partly so
   used by the apostle, but the promise cited from Haggai (ii, 6) plainly
   relates to his first coming, in which view the things shaken are the
   old religion; those which remain and can not be shaken, the gospel.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER IV.

  HOW HE BECOMES SO GREAT A POWER.

   IN his descent to the flesh, we might naturally expect that Christ
   would bring all deific perfections with him, and have them expressed in
   his person. And this, indeed, is true; but with the large qualification
   that they will be expressed only by degrees, and under conditions of
   time; that is, under such laws of expression as pertain to humanity. In
   one view, God is emptied of his perfections in becoming incarnate, and
   has them all to acquire and bring into evidence, by the same process of
   right living that obtains character and weight for men. Otherwise the
   incarnation would be no real fact. It must be with Christ as with men,
   and moral power, as we commonly use the term, among men, is the power
   that a man finally gets, by the courses and achievements of a great and
   worthy life, to impress and sway other men. The subject may be dead, or
   he may be still alive; his name awakens homage, inspires, becomes an
   argument in itself, by which opposition is concluded, or assent
   determined; all because of some great virtue, or victory, or
   championship of right and beneficence, accomplished in his life. It is
   a power cumulative in its very nature. Once the man had it not; as
   regards any such thing, he was virtually nobody. But the process of his
   life was such that Moral power is cumulative. power grew up with it,
   rolled up into volume and majesty, in the facts and doings of it. If he
   was a benefactor, like Howard, his name became a power, through the
   trains of good, led on by his works and sacrifices. If he was a saint,
   like Savonarola or George Fox, his inspirations obtained for him the
   homage due to God's oracle. If he was a preacher, like Whitfield, the
   immense crowds, conquered by his words, prepared other and greater
   crowds, to be half-conquered even before he spoke. If he was a hero,
   proved by many righteous victories, his soldiers went to the fight,
   with victory perched on their banners beforehand. In all such examples,
   we perceive that moral power is a growth, and the result of a process.
   It is what a man once had not, but now has. It was not in his nature,
   as a child, or a youth, or even as a man; but it has been conquered, or
   obtained by the conduct of his life. We sometimes say that it is
   contributed by the admiration of men, but it is not contributed gratis;
   it is won by deeds and represented by facts.

   And this, exactly, is what we are to understand by the moral power of
   God in the gospel of his Son. It Attribute power is different. is a new
   kind of power--the greatest and most sovereign power we know--which God
   undertakes to have by obtaining it, under the human laws and methods.
   Hence the incarnation. God had a certain kind of power before; viz.,
   that which may be called attribute power. By attributes we mean what we
   attribute to God, when we think God, or unfold our idea of God as the
   Absolute Being. As being infinite and absolute, we ascribe to him
   certain attributes, or perfections. Such attributes, or perfections,
   are a kind of abstract excellence, such as we bring out, or generate,
   by our own intellectual refinements on the idea of God, to answer to
   our own intellectual demands. Still, as God is infinite, the
   perfections are distant. We hardly dare think them, if we could, into
   our finite molds. We almost reason them away. Thus God, we say, is
   omnipotent, therefore he will bring to pass exactly all that he
   desires; and does, in fact, desire nothing but what comes to pass.
   Again, God is eternally sovereign; therefore he regrets nothing, as we
   do; for what he wills he does. Again, God is omniscient, knowing every
   thing beforehand; therefore every thing is immovably fixed beforehand.
   Still again, God is infinitely happy; therefore he is impassible and
   can not suffer in feeling any way. Yet once more, God is immutably
   just; and must therefore have his justice satisfied by the necessary
   quantum of suffering. And so it turns out that, in making up an
   attribute power, we very nearly think away, or annihilate, all that
   creates an effective impress on our sentiment and character We make him
   great, but we also make him thin and cold. We feel him as a platitude,
   more than as a person. His great attributes became dry words; a kind of
   milky-way over our heads; vast enough in the matter of extension, but
   evanescently dim to our feeling.

   This result had been mitigated, somewhat, by his works and word and
   Providence, before the coming of Christ. But the tendency still was to
   carry back all the more genial impressions thus unfolded, and merge
   them in the attribute-power, by which, as an unseen, infinite being, we
   had before contrived to think and to Christ incarnated to obtain moral
   power. measure his character. Till, finally, in the fullness of time,
   he is constrained to institute a new movement on the world, in the
   incarnation of his Son. The undertaking is to obtain, through him, and
   the facts and processes of his life, a new kind of power; viz., moral
   power; the same that is obtained by human conduct under human methods.
   It will be divine power still, only it will not be attribute power.
   That is the power of his idea. This new power is to be the power
   cumulative, gained by Him among men, as truly as they gain it with each
   other. Only it will turn out, in the end, to be the grandest, closest
   to feeling, most impressive, most soul-renovating, and spiritually
   sublime power that was ever obtained in this or any other world.

   Hence that peculiar and continually recurring set of expressions in the
   New Testament which appear, in one form or another, to attribute so
   much to the name of Jesus. For if we can rightly distinguish between a
   name and a fame, if we can exclude the airy fictions of repute and
   coveted applause, conceiving that the name obtained by Jesus signifies
   the condensed reality of all that he is, no power will be so genuine,
   or vital, or so like a sun-rising on transgression.

   There will, accordingly, be distinguished, more or less clearly, in all
   the varied uses referred to, some notion or associated impression of
   power; The "name" of Jesus is the power he obtains. as if there were
   embodied, somehow, in this name Jesus, a fund of universal soul-help;
   or as if, being in this name were the same as to be in a really divine
   element of good. This too, for the manifest reason, that the whole
   personal life-history of Jesus, all that he was, felt, suffered, and
   did, is gathered into it, and was originally designed to be, that he
   might be the new moral power of God. Thus, to glorify this name and
   make it such a power is seen to be God's purpose from the first. Which
   purpose glimmers dimly in the direction, "they shall call his name
   Jesus;" for it is to be a saving name. And again it appears more
   visibly afterwards, when he answers the prayer of Jesus, "Father
   glorify [in me] thy name," by a voice out of heaven, saying--"I have
   both glorified it and will glorify it again." And again, at a still
   later period, when his work is complete, and he gives it to his apostle
   to say, magnifying both the power and the name together--"showing us
   the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, by setting
   him [in our mortal apprehension] above all principalities, and powers,
   and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this
   world, but in that which is to come."

   Christ, also, we can easily perceive, has a like impression of God's
   purpose in his life; as when speaking of, or to, or before, his
   disciples, he says--"gathered in my name;" "ask in my name;" "cast out
   devils in my name;" "a chosen vessel in my name;" "I have manifested
   thy name."

   The apostles coming after are even more explicit, as we should expect
   them to be. They even dare to How the apostles do every thing in this
   name. speak of this great name as a name obtained--"Being made so much
   better in this name. than the angels, as he hath, for his heritage,
   obtained a more excellent name than they." They are "baptized" in it.
   They are "justified in" it. They "do all for" it. They "are reproached
   for" it. They "teach in his name." They "preach it boldly." They
   promise salvation to such as "believe in it." They "have life through"
   it. They work miracles and say, "by the name of Jesus this man is made
   whole." Having it consciously upon them, in their inmost feeling, they
   "hold it fast," and are "hated of all men for" it. Every one "that
   nameth it" they conceive must "depart from all iniquity." And, last of
   all, they read this name "in the forehead" of the glorified. How could
   it be otherwise when God Himself comes into human life, and makes
   himself a name there, by human acts, in human molds of conduct, that
   represents even the pleroma of his divine perfections?

   Accordingly when, Peter, another apostle, declares that "there is none
   other name under heaven given among men, whereby we can be saved," we
   shall not take the "name whereby" as a cold, theoretic, far-off method
   of reference, to some theologic matter of judicial satisfaction, but as
   meaning just what the language implies; viz., power--the power of God
   unto salvation. We only recognize in his language the fact, so
   abundantly testified in all the other terms referred to, that the
   incarnate ministry and life of Christ are designed of God, to obtain,
   and have, in fact, obtained a new moral power for the regeneration of
   lost men. What we say, at this point, is not theory but is constantly
   affirmed by the New Testament Scriptures.

   Assuming, now, this view of Christ and his gospel, it remains to go
   forward and trace the process of his life; showing how, and by what
   methods, and stages, this grand, cumulative, power is rolled up into
   the requisite body and volume.

   Of course, it will be understood, that Christ is not aiming directly at
   the. obtaining of such a name, or such a power of impression. He can
   not, How he obtains the name. of course, be ignorant of the result to
   be perfected thus in his life. Not even a man of ordinary intelligence
   will be ignorant of the respect and homage that must be obtained, by
   what is morally great and good in action. But that is not the motive
   for such action. It was not with Christ. As some great hero thinks of
   his country, when he takes the field to serve his country, so Christ
   thought of the world to be saved, when he came to save the world. He
   came with the lost world upon his feeling, gave himself to it in
   sacrifice, bore it in vicarious sacrifice, plead with it, suffered for
   it, made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant
   and a servant's labor; whereupon God hath highly exalted him and given
   him a name that is above every name, a power that is itself salvation.
   The moral power obtained is a result and not any direct motive.

   How then does it come?--let us see if we can trace the process. When
   the holy child is born, he has no Nothing in his name at the first.
   moral power at all. The halo which the painters show about his head is
   not there. He is simply the child of two very humble people, in a very
   mean provincial town. There was a good deal more circumstance and
   prospect in Washington's infancy than in his; and yet the moral power
   of that little one's name, George, had nothing of the ring that a great
   life and history will afterwards give it. Nor is it any thing if the
   name is called Immanuel; nobody will see any meaning in that, at
   present. The meaning itself is yet to be obtained.

   There had been some remarkable prophecies over the child, not much
   regarded, of course, till afterwards. A few very pleasant facts are
   given concerning his childhood and youth, which will signify a great
   deal more, as recollections, than they do to present observation. His
   look and manner, as he grows up, are winning to every body. He is
   subject to his parents and a model of filial duty. His custom is to be
   always at the synagogue worship. On a certain occasion, when he is but
   twelve years old, he astonishes the doctors of the temple, by his
   wonderful questions; and there it is that he drops the remarkable
   intimation, specially noted by his mother, that he "must be about his
   Father's business;" in which, as we can see, he already begins to be a
   little conscious of his great calling, which makes it all the more
   remarkable, that he still struggles on eighteen years longer, hurried
   by no forwardness, or impatience, till the full idea of his great
   ministry takes possession of his life. During this whole period, he
   confesses no sin, and, as far as we can judge, rectifies no mistake;
   and, if these negative facts had been noted by any body, as plainly
   they could not be, his piety would certainly have been seen to be of a
   most singular and even superhuman order.

   On the whole, it does not appear that, previous to entering on his
   public ministry, when he was thirty years old, he has done any thing
   more The name is not obtained before his ministry. than to beautifully
   and exactly fulfill his duties. His name is good, true, lovely; but as
   far as possible from being a name above every name. A certain moral
   power is felt in him, of course, by those who are with him, but. what
   he is to be, in this respect, is, as yet, quite hidden from discovery.

   But the time has now come for his great ministry to begin. The dim
   presentiment of his work, which he called his "Father's business" opens
   into a definite, settled, consciousness of his call. As it were by the
   revelation of the Spirit, he clearly perceives what he is to do, and
   what to suffer; that he is to go down into the hell of the world's
   corporate evil, to be wounded and galled by the world's malice, and
   bear the burden of the world's undoing as a charge upon his love; and
   so, by agonies of sacrifice, including a most bitter death, to
   reconcile men to God and establish the eternal kingdom of God in their
   hearts. The work attracts him, and yet his soul, or at least his
   natural human feeling, recoils. Smitten, as it were, by a kind of
   horror, he is hurried off into the wilderness, to wrestle with his
   temptations; groaning there alone, under the heavy load he is to bear,
   and bowing his reluctant humanity to the call, by the discipline of
   fasting. He comes out victorious, but as a victor spent. The angels of
   God recruit him by their tender and cheering ministry, and he goes to
   his work.

   No man of the race, it is quite safe to say, ever went to the calling
   of his life against impediments of natural sensibility so appalling.
   Men do often make great and heroic sacrifices in a cause already
   undertaken, but he undertakes the forlornest, most appalling sacrifice,
   fully perceiving what it is to be beforehand. Men have the brave will
   raised in them afterwards, by the heat of encounter; he has his victory
   at the beginning, alone, in a desert, where only love and God, in the
   moods of silence, come to his aid. In this simple beginning of Christ,
   there is character enough to create a moral power never before
   conceived, never since realized. But it does not appear that even the
   facts of his temptation were made known, till some time after--when, or
   how, we can only guess. He goes into his work, therefore, as a merely
   common man, a Nazarene carpenter, respected for nothing, save as he
   compels respect by ]his works and his words.

   Meantime John has been testifying, as a prophet, of another, who is to
   come, or is even now at hand, whose shoes even he is not worthy to
   untie, and by whom the kingdom of heaven is to be set up on earth. And
   this other, viz., Jesus, comes to him shortly after to be baptized;
   when he breaks out, in prophetic vision, as soon as he perceives him
   coming--"Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the
   world." The consecrating dove lights upon him in his baptism, and a
   voice out of heaven declares--"This is my beloved Son in whom I am well
   pleased." And yet even John is so little impressed, or so little
   believes in what he hears, shortly after, of his miracles and his
   doctrine, that he sends to inquire, as if he might still be only an
   ordinary man, possibly an impostor, "art thou he that should come, or
   look we for another?" As yet he has not made impression enough for
   God's love and power by his ministry, beautiful and wonderful as it is,
   to even hold a prophet's opinion of him up to the pitch of his own
   prophetic testimony!

   But he goes on with his ministry for three years; traveling on foot,
   sleeping in desert places and upon the mountain tops, associating
   mostly with How the ministry goes on. the poor and humble, who have
   scarcely cultivation enough to yield him any fit return of sympathy, or
   even to be duly impressed by his miracles. The learned and select are
   alienated from him, partly for this reason. They deny his miracles, or
   they charge them openly to his conspiracy with devils.

   His doctrine is wonderful to every body--what can be more wonderful
   than his sermon on the mount? The people were astonished and rightly;
   for there was never any such utterance in the world before. There was
   no learning, no cabalistic juggle in his words; he taught them "as one
   having authority and not as the scribes." This kind of impression was
   always made by him, and the puzzle was that a man who had never
   learned--the son of a mean provincial, in a mean provincial town--could
   discourse with such intelligence, in a manner so nearly divine. A
   company of bailiffs sent out to arrest him, just before the close of
   his ministry, were as profoundly impressed by his manner and words as
   if the angel in the sun had spoken to them, and could only go back and
   report--"Never man spake like this man." And yet it does not appear
   that Christ grew, at all, on the public sentiment, by means of his
   discourses. He only mystified, a little, the public feeling, and made
   himself a character about as much more suspicious and dangerous.

   A few persons of a specially honest and fair temperament were so
   wrought upon, by his miracles, and manners, and words, as to feel the
   impression of some very strange, or even sacred power in his life; Mary
   and Martha, for example, and the centurion, and the two senators
   Nicodemus and Joseph, and probably all his apostles--not excluding even
   Pilate, who was evidently shaken out of all confidence, by the sense he
   had of some strange quality, in the manner and bearing of the victim he
   is compelled to sacrifice. And yet there was a certain wavering,
   probably, in all these minds, as if they could not imagine him, or
   guess, after all, how he might turn out. Their misgivings half took
   away what would have been their opinions. What they felt in him,
   therefore, was not so much a power as a possibility of power. Nothing
   was immovably fastened, save, perhaps, in the centurion, or the woman
   that came with her box of ointment, and, it may be, one or two other of
   his disciples. Great things have been done by him, wonderful beauties
   of feeling unfolded, and yet all these are felt dubiously under a kind
   of peradventure.

   And the reason plainly enough is, that no point of view, as respects
   his person, has yet been attained to, that will verify the facts and
   impressions of his life. His friends think he is the Messiah, but they
   have only the faintest notions who the Messiah is, or is to be. His
   person is not conceived, and so it results that his doings make a
   seemingly rough compound of strange things, jumbled together in a kind
   of moral confusion that has really no right to be very impressive.

   As we go back to inventory the matter of his life, we find some things
   that are wonderfully sublime, some that are deep in the spirit of
   wisdom, Sublime and wise, and so far impressive. some that repel and
   hold aloof, some that bear a grotesque look, some that are attractive
   and subduing to feeling as nothing else ever was, and some that even
   discourage confidence. The sublime things are such as these; the virtue
   that went out of him, when faith touched the hem of his garment; the
   raising of the widow's son; the healing of the lepers; the voice out of
   heaven; the stilling of the sea; the transfiguration, and all the
   matter of his last discourses and prayer as given by John. In these
   facts the glory of deity and of heaven appears to be let into the
   world, and made visible in it. But they were witnessed only here and
   there, and, for the most part) by different classes of persons;
   creating rather mazes of' wonder, than a settled feeling of homage and
   awe.

   The wise things, such as indicated even a marvelous diplomatic talent,
   in the good sense of the term, were his answer to the Pharisees, who
   came to entangle him with the government--"Render therefore unto Caesar
   the things that are Caesar's;" the confusion he brought upon the chief
   priests and elders, coming with a like artful design, when he answered
   their question--"By what authority," by another question--"The baptism
   of John, whence was it;" his reply to the puzzle or catch of the
   Sadducees--"Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be,"
   by his Scripture citation and his inference from it--"I am the God of
   Abraham, and the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob; God is not the God of
   the dead, but of the living;" and more than all by his fearfully
   impressive reserve, and the brief, but immensely significant
   intimations he gave to Pilate about his kingship, as the king of truth;
   taking, in fact, all courage out of the man, by the superstitious dread
   awakened in his feeling. No teacher, prophet, or champion of truth,
   ever evinced such complete insight of men, or was ever able to reduce
   them to utter confusion so easily, by his mastery of their motives and
   points of weakness. His profoundly artful enemies in fact, were all in
   sunlight before him.

   The points in which he repelled and set aloof multitudes that came to
   be his clients and followers were such as these--he would not have a
   partisan, and as most men expect to be taken as partisans, Sometimes he
   repelled by his manner. when they adhere to another, they were chilled
   and could not long follow him; he offended their Jewish prejudices
   without scruple m the matter of the Sabbath, and also in the matter of
   their exclusive nationality by the declaration of a universal kingdom,
   where the men of all nations should come from the east, and the west,
   and the north, and the south, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and
   Jacob; he turned the preposterous learning of the lawyers and scribes
   to derision; he galled the consciences of many who were righteous in
   the law, by his terrible exposures of their motives and their hearts;
   he made God fearfully great and holy by his doctrine of future
   punishment; his terms of discipleship were uninviting and severe--ye
   shall be baptized with my baptism, hated of all men for my name's sake;
   take up your cross and follow me; if any man hate not father and mother
   yea and his own life also he can not be my disciple; resist not evil;
   consent to serve and suffer, even as the Son of man came to minister,
   and give his life a ransom for many. He made nothing of the popular
   favor, nothing of gaining or retaining friends, which, though it was
   one of the sublimities, even of his character, as regarded by us, was
   in fact only a continual offense to the men of his time.

   Some few of the facts of his life bore a grotesque look, at the time,
   and could easily be turned to ridicule, as indeed they have been since.
   Thus when the woman is brought before him craftily, by her accusers, to
   Sometimes he was grotesque. obtain his judgment on her sin, he writes
   abstractedly on the ground, lifting himself up at length to shoot in
   his bolt--"let him that is without sin cast the first stone"--and then
   stooping down again to write on the ground as before. This would be
   ridiculed in a man, as a figure of mere hocus-pocus. And yet the
   mystery of the manner, the silence, the abstraction, roused the
   consciences of the accusers to such a degree, that they heard even
   terrible thunders within, and shortly drew off, one by one, and left
   him quite alone. No most eloquent sermon could have done as much. No
   stroke of natural eloquence was ever more impressive. We have also what
   some have called another grotesque figure in his triumphal entry into
   Jerusalem. Multitudes go forth to meet him, branches of palm-trees are
   thrown in his way, as if it were the day of his crowning, and the great
   concourse of the people and the children in the temple, after he
   arrives, fill the air, as it were by some outburst of inspiration, with
   the cry, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the
   name of the Lord!" And yet he comes riding upon an ass! Neither does it
   raise at all the dignity of his figure, that he fulfills a prophecy;
   for that is probably not observed at the time. Besides a prophecy that
   requires the great Messiah to celebrate his triumph in such a figure
   puts inspiration itself under a ban of derision, till we are able to
   see as could not be seen till some time after, how this outward type
   represents a king riding into power among men, through a suffering and
   sadly humiliated life. What livery or mounting then will he most fitly
   take for his type, in such a procession? on what shall he ride, but on
   one of the humblest and least airy-gaited of the animals?

   The facts, in which he drew on human feeling by the loving and subduing
   energy of his own, compose the staple, we may almost say, of his life.
   His tenderness. All his healings, raised in dignity by the manifestly
   divine power in which they are wrought, display such assiduity of
   kindness and devotion to the forlornest conditions and bitterest pains
   of a world under sin, as to make up a kind of gospel in the plane of
   bodily treatment; engaging most tenderly just those fallen
   sensibilities that must be engaged, and yet could not, by mere
   demonstrations of spiritual excellence. His union to the poor in their
   sad lot, and his beautiful tenderness to their wants and troubles,
   attract their personal sympathy and gratitude in the same manner. His
   call, "come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden"--it is as if
   heaven's love to the world were going forth to its weary, sin-burdened
   millions, from a heart large enough to contain them all, and strong
   enough to give them rest. His love to little children takes the
   feeling, not of children, but of every body. His domestic, home-like
   feeling when with Mary and Martha, and his yet more intensely human
   sensibility, when he weeps and groans at the grave-side of their
   brother--what a spell of more than mortal majesty is there in his,
   "Lazarus, come forth," answered by the bursting tomb and rising form of
   the man! How touching his delicacy, when, by loving anticipation, he
   calls those "friends," who were not, and speaks of his death as a
   laying down of his life for his friends. What woman's heart will not be
   drawn to him by his manner to Mary, when she comes to him with her box
   of ointment, and when he commends her, in her simple tribute of love,
   as he never did any other of mankind; telling her that her little
   gospel shall go down the ages with his, to be witnessed for a memorial
   of her. His "one of you shall betray me," how sadly and tenderly is it
   spoken, bitter and dreadful as the charge it lays most certainly is.
   His whole farewell discourse and prayer, as given at large by John,
   full of the loftiest assumptions, and tenderest promises, and lowliest
   protestations of brotherhood--warm, and gentle, and strong, as inherent
   divinity should be--what greater, more subduing power of love, on a
   race broken loose from God, can we even imagine to be embodied in
   mortal words!

   And yet, over against all these affecting and subduing demonstrations
   in his life, there were a great many Baffled expectation. things, we
   know, which, at the time, seemed even to discourage confidence in him.
   For example he was baffling always the expectations of his friends;
   they could hardly name an expectation, and they had abundance of them,
   which he did not forthwith take away, by the notification of some loss,
   or cross of dejection, which to them wore a look totally opposite to
   every feeling they had respecting the great Messiah. Not to multiply
   instances in which he tried their confidence by other methods, we pass
   directly to the two great closing facts of his life, his agony and
   crucifixion. His work is now done, and nothing remains, but to let
   others bring him to the murderous end they are planning to accomplish.
   His whole feeling is now loose upon him, respited by no occupation; and
   the dreadful burdens of concern for men, which his divine love, too
   strong for the body, rolls down upon him, press him, as it were, to the
   ground. He beholds the corporate curse, too, of the world's evil and
   madness just ready to burst upon his person, and though he is not moved
   by fear, his pure innocence struggles heavily, with instinctive horror,
   before that retributive phrensy, which is going to baptize itself in
   his blood! No so grand mystery of divine feeling was ever before or
   after set before the gaze of mortals. But his friends are at no point
   of view, where they can even begin to conceive it. His person, his
   errand, his work, are as yet wholly beyond the reach even of their
   guesses. They have seen strange gleams of quality in him, they have
   been drawn, repelled, impressed, astounded and thoroughly posed by his
   mystery, and they only try to settle the whirl of their brain by
   calling him a great prophet, Messiah, the Christ, thinking him
   virtually always as a man. And now, in the agony, just after his
   triumphal entry into the city, when they look to see him rise and take
   on his kingship, he collapses in weakness, without any visible reason;
   falling on the ground, groaning, writhing, dripping in bloody sweat,
   like grapes in the wine-press, and calling on God and men for help, in
   meeting some unknown calamity that he does not name. It is as if he
   were just at the end of his pretensions, and struggling, as a convict
   might, under his impending doom. All heart is taken away from his
   disciples at once; their confidence in him is fatally broken; as we can
   plainly see in the fact that when he is arrested, an hour or two after,
   they forsake him utterly. Peter makes one or two wild slashes for him
   with his sword, and then he too is gone; only he will hang about the
   hall when the trial goes on, carefully denying his discipleship.

   In this manner Jesus goes to his cross; and the manner of his trial and
   death, though supported with a His death takes away all confidence.
   transcendent dignity on his part, that makes him even the chief figure
   in the scene, are yet so thoroughly contemptuous and ignominious, that
   the poor disciples are obliged to confess to themselves, if not to
   others, that their much loved Messiah is now stamped as another
   exploded pretender! A great reaction begins however, to be visible in
   the minds of the multitude. As the Roman governor himself, before whom
   he was dragged to a mock trial for sedition, was quite shaken out of
   self-possession, by the dignity of his manner under the
   questioning--quailing visibly in the sense of a mysterious something in
   the man, justifying, equivocating, consenting, condemning, giving him
   up to his accusers, and washing his hands to be clear of the innocent
   blood--so in the death-scene of the cross, slave's death though it be,
   in the outward ignominy of the form, the multitude grow serious, and
   drop out their jeers in awe of his felt majesty, and finally go home,
   at another swing of oscillation, smiting their breasts in dumb
   confession of their murderous crime. They had expected nothing of him,
   and, for just that reason, they are the more easily impressed by the
   strange power in him--under such ignominy, dying in such majesty. Not
   so with his disciples. They had expected every thing of him, and now
   that he is dead, every expectation is blasted. Even their profound
   respect, unwilling as they are to shake it off, and tenderly as they
   would fain cling to it still, is yet a really blasted confidence, now
   that he is dead under such ignominy. The two senators, Nicodemus and
   Joseph, come with their spices, revealing what impressions they have
   felt of his wonderful character, and daring now to show their respect
   just because he is dead. Finally, on the third day morning, it is
   rumored among the disciples that he is risen, but their soul is under
   such a weight of stupor that they can not believe it. And two of them
   we find trudging back homeward to Galilee, sad, and heavy-hearted, and
   weeping, as it were, in doleful refrain --"We thought it had been he
   that should have redeemed Israel!"

   Where now is the power? We have been exploring a large field, hunting
   down along the whole course of Christ's life, expecting, looking to
   see, The power is not yet. the great name rolled up into volume and
   majesty, but that any thing we have found should have power to
   new-create the moral sentiments and affinities of mankind, we can
   hardly believe. We have seen, between the infancy and the death, a
   great many strange things, and a great many lovely. Coruscations of
   glory have been shooting out, all along the remarkable history. But
   there have been severities, and repellences, and discouraging tokens,
   blended so continually with the story, and the end of it is so dark, if
   not weak, that we get no such densely compacted unity of impression, as
   belongs to a great moral power. We are put in a maze, or even a
   thrilling kind of mystery, but that all-the-while cumulative power and
   weight, that great name which is to be a gospel of life in men's
   hearts, does not appear. And yet there is, it may be, a certain latent
   heat in the facts we have noted, that is finally to become sensible
   heat, or blaze into splendor. No life becomes a power, till we somehow
   get the clue of it. A great many human characters are very much of a
   riddle, till they come on to the crisis of fact, where their objects,
   and ends, and secret aims, are all discovered, and where the seeming
   faults and contrarieties, that were mysterious, get their solution--all
   to be approved in the admirable and wise unity that could not sooner
   appear.

   Christ only differs here from such mysterious, peculiar men, in the
   fact that he dies before the clue is The resurrection is the crisis of
   his glory. given. It is only the resurrection and ascension back into
   glory, that bring us out the true point of understanding. Now his most
   extraordinary nature and mission, for the first time, come distinctly
   into thought. Now, since he has gone up visibly into heaven, we begin
   to understand what he meant, when he said, that he came down from
   heaven. We conceive him as the incarnate Word, and begin to look upon
   his glory, as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of
   grace and truth. In him now there may be more than we saw, a greater
   name and power; for the righteousness and love of God are in him, and
   it puts a new face on his whole life, that he is here to save the
   world.

   We begin back now at the point of his infancy and we follow him onward
   again, going over all the points we have named, but with results how
   different! Every thing falls into place, and every step onward is the
   unfolding of power. The wonderful authority becomes more wonderful; in
   the right of a superior nature to give it sanction, the severity
   becomes majesty; knowing who the teacher is, what before was truth
   brightens into a glorious wisdom; the soft-looking innocence of the
   life becomes a kind of general transfiguration; the agony, that seemed
   to be wanting in magnanimity, becomes the love-groan, as it were, of
   his mysterious nature; the crushing defeat of the death breaks into
   immortal victory. Whatever, in a word, seemed weak, distracted,
   contrarious, takes on a look of progressive order, and falls into
   chime, as a necessary factor in his divinely great character. And so
   the merely human beginning grows into what is more and more visibly
   superhuman, dying into boundlessness and glory, as the sun when it sets
   in the sea. The rising and the ascension put us on the revision, and
   helped us to conceive who he was; but now he is so great that the
   rising does not raise him any more, and the ascension does not glorify
   him.

   When we conceive the glorification of Christ, and the completion of his
   great name, as a revision or revised How revisions of character affect
   our impressions. impression, to which we are incited by his
   resurrection and ascension, we are not without many illustrations. I
   send these sheets to the press, when our great nation is dissolving, as
   it were, in its tears of mourning, for the great and true Father whom
   the assassins of law and liberty have sent on his way to the grave.
   What now do we see in him, but all that is wisest, and most faithful,
   and worthiest of his perilous magistracy. A halo rests upon his
   character, and we find no longer any thing to blame, scarcely any thing
   not to admire, in the measures and counsels of his gloriously upright,
   impartial, passionless, undiscourageable rule. But we did not always
   see him in that figure. When, already three full years of his time were
   gone by, many of us were doubtful whether most to blame or to praise,
   and many who most wanted to praise, had well nigh lost their confidence
   in him, and even retained their respect with difficulty. But the
   successes he deserved began, at last, to come, and the merit of his
   rule to appear. We only doubted still whether wholly to approve and
   praise. A certain grotesqueness and over-simplicity, in spite of all
   our favoring judgments, kept off still the just impression of his
   dignity, and suffered us to only half believe. But the tragic close of
   his life added a new element, and brought on a second revision; setting
   him in a character only the more sublime, because it is original and
   quite unmatched in history. The great name now of Abraham Lincoln
   emerges complete, a power of blessing on mankind, and a bond of homage
   in the feeling of his country forever. Shall we not see, in this
   humbler and yet striking example, how it is that moral power, even the
   moral power of Christ, emerges finally and is crowned, only when the
   necessary point of revision is reached? So it is that Christ begins to
   be known as "the wisdom of God and the power"--"the power of God unto
   salvation." This, too, is what an apostle means when he prays, that he
   may "know him, and the power of his resurrection." It is not the
   omnipotent power that raised him, which he longs to know, but the
   heart-power, the power of his great name and glory, which began to be
   discovered and conceived, when he rose from the dead. And the same
   exactly is true of another famous passage, if only we had time to make
   out the interpretation, where he says--"And declared to be the Son of
   God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the
   resurrection from the dead."

   If then so great a power has been obtained by Christ, in the matter of
   his life, we shall expect, of course, to see it in effects on human
   life and character The power is proved by its effects. that correspond.
   And we have not far to go before we find them. A few weeks after, when
   the disciples are waiting to be endued with power from on high, even
   for the promised Spirit, who should take the things of Christ and show
   them unto men, convincing thus of sin, of righteousness, and a judgment
   to come, a new scene is suddenly opened in their assembly, by the
   arrival of the promise; whereupon the preaching of the great, hitherto
   unknown, gospel is inaugurated as a power on the world. The cloud that
   was on Peter's mind is now taken away; his understanding is opened; and
   suddenly grasping the true meaning of his Master's life and death, as a
   gospel of salvation for men, he begins to preach it. He goes over the
   outline of his Lord's miracles and death, turning his discourse
   principally on the matter of the resurrection, and proclaiming him
   boldly, as the ascended king of the world. "Therefore being by the
   right of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of
   the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." And
   then he turns directly down upon the consciences of the assembly all
   the tremendous guilt of their crime in his crucifixion.--"Therefore,
   let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that
   same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ."

   The result was that thousands in the immense assembly, overwhelmed and
   utterly broken down, by the sense of their guilt, turned themselves, by
   faith, as the apostles exhorted, to the now ascended victim of their
   malice, for the remission of their sins. And how mightily are they
   changed! It is as if some irruption of heaven's love had broken into
   them; as it verily has, in the person of the just now hated and
   murdered Nazarene. They appear to hardly know, as yet, what has
   befallen them. They are so happy in their dear, mysterious fellowship,
   that there are not hours enough in the day and the night for their
   enjoyment of it. The city converts sell their goods and possessions to
   feed the pilgrims on a longer stay, and they go on breaking bread, in
   open hospitality, from house to house, eating their meat with gladness,
   and praising God as they go.

   This now is the power; first a convincing power, next a power of love
   begetting love --how great a power it is and is to be, we may perceive
   in these its first effects. By this power it was that the apostles and
   first Christians gained their rapid victories over the learning and
   philosophy, and finally the military empire of the heathen world. They
   went every where preaching Christ and his resurrection, testified every
   where the great name Jesus, saying--"there is none other name under
   heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved."

   And this name is a greater power now than it was then, and has a
   greater hold of the world. It penetrates more and more visibly our
   sentiments, The power increases still. opinions, laws, sciences,
   inventions, modes of commerce, modes of society, advancing, as it were,
   by the slow measured step of centuries, to a complete dominion over the
   race. So the power is working and so it will till it reigns. Not that
   Christ grows better, but that he is more and more competently
   apprehended, as he becomes more widely incarnated among men, and
   obtains a fitter representation to thought, in the thoughts, and works
   of his people. If in some particular century the gospel seems to suffer
   a wave of retrocession, it is only gathering power for an other great
   advance. Bad power dies, right power never. Prophecy, or no prophecy,
   such a Christ of God could not come into the world, without a certainty
   coming in his train, that all the kingdoms of the world shall become
   the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever.

   I can not better close this exposition, than by citing a single passage
   of Scripture, that contains and sums up Glorious affirmation of the
   power. all we have been trying to show, in the briefest and most
   pregnant testimony possible, every syllable of which deserves to be
   profoundly meditated by itself--"Let this mind be in you which was also
   in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery
   to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon
   him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and,
   being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became
   obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; wherefore God also
   hath highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name;
   that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
   and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue
   should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
   Father."

   The historical exposition of the moral power of Christ, or of the
   process by which it is obtained, is now finished, and yet certain
   points of rational consequence remain to be suggested, which could not
   be crowded into the body of it, without creating an No dogmatic
   statement possible. appearance of distraction. The view of Christ's
   mission, I have been trying to establish, excludes the possibility, it
   will be seen, of any dogmatic formula, in which it may be adequately
   stated. It is not a theorem, or form of thought, but a process, and the
   process includes all the facts of a life. It will also be seen how the
   apostle labors, in the passage just cited, even to condense an outline
   view of it into seven full verses of his epistle; in which also it is
   made sufficiently evident, that the Scriptures themselves do not know
   how to make up any formula of three or four lines, that will adequately
   express, in the manner of our theologians, the import of Christ's
   reconciling work. That work, accurately speaking, consisted in exactly
   the whole life of Jesus; all that he said and did, and, to human
   impression, was, in the conditions through which he passed. No such
   life was ever written even of a man. Not even the gospels themselves
   are any thing more than brief outline records. And one of the writers
   distinctly intimates the impossibility of a complete narrative, because
   it would make the record too cumbersome to have any value--the world
   itself would scarcely contain the books. How then can any formula, or
   brief summation of words, be imagined to fitly represent the meaning of
   the life-work of Christ, when that meaning is exactly the power
   obtained by the life, and can be represented only by the facts, of
   which it is the character and expression.

   Christ I just said is not a form of thought. He is no proposition. He
   is given, neither by nor to, logical The reality of Christ is what he
   expresses. definition. He is no quantitative matter, like a credit set
   in a book, or a punishment graduated by satisfaction. His reality is
   what he expresses, under laws of expression; the power, the great name,
   he thus obtains under forms of human conduct that make their address to
   reason, conviction, feeling, passion, sympathy, imagination, faith, and
   the receptivities generally of the moral nature. What rational person
   ever imagined that he could state, in a defined formula, the import of
   any great character; Moses, for example, Plato, Scipio, Washington.
   Hence the necessary poverty, and almost mockery, of all attempts to put
   the work of Christ in formula, or to dogmatize it in a proposition, or
   church article. The Iliad, or Paradise Lost could as well be formulized
   in that manner as his gospel. We can give the "Argument" of these, in
   so many headings for so many books; but the epic power will be wholly
   in the acts and incidents that fill the books, never in their
   "Argument." So we can say of Christ's work, and of the sublime
   art-mystery of his incarnate life, what is not absurd, what may even be
   of use--we do so when we call it God's method of obtaining power over
   fallen character--still it must be left us to feel, that just nothing
   of the power, that is of the whole living truth, is in the account we
   have given. Nothing we can say of the power will appear to have much
   power in it; for nothing raises the true sense of that power, but just
   what he did, taken just as he did it. The most that can be hoped is,
   that, by what of dissertation we may indulge, the sense of his work and
   the facts by which his power is obtained, may be unlocked more easily.

   In this manner, four points, in particular, may yet be made, in regard
   to the process and effect of his life, that will render the power of it
   still more intelligible, and so far more impressive.

   1. That the kind of moral power obtained by Christ is different from
   any which had been obtained by men, more difficult, deeper, and holier.
   He No similar power among men. founds no school of philosophy, heads no
   revolution, fights no great battle, achieves no title to honor, such as
   the world's great men have achieved. Men consciously feel, that a
   strong power is somehow gathering about his person, but will only know,
   by and by, what it is. It is the power, in great part, of sorrow,
   suffering, sacrifice, death, a paradox of ignominy and grandeur not
   easily solved. Honor, in the common sense of that term, can make
   nothing of it. Fame will not lift her airy trumpet, to publish it, and
   would only mock it if she did. If we call him a hero, as some are
   trying to do, then all other heroes appear to be scarcely more than
   mock heroes in the comparison.

   There is no wrong or impropriety in calling Christ a hero, if we do not
   assume that, having found him in the class of heroes, we have thus
   accounted for his wonderful eminence, on the ground of his mere natural
   manhood. I believe that I have once or twice spoken, casually, of the
   heroic element in his life; and I In what sense Christ was a hero. have
   hesitated much, whether I should not present him more deliberately in
   this figure. The only reason why I should not is that, regarding him as
   the manifestation, or demonstration, of God, the honor I should claim
   for him might only seem to put him below the scale of divinity and not
   in it. And yet, in as far as he ranges in the scale, or under the
   conditions, of humanity, obtaining a name and a power under such
   conditions, it is even a gloriously divine token for him, that he so
   visibly, remarkably, immeasurably, transcends all known examples of
   heroism. Besides there is a very important matter to be gained by such
   a conception of his character. We conceive him in the travail of his
   suffering life and sacrifice, we magnify his tenderness and patience
   and submission to the cross, we call him the Lamb that is offered for
   our sin, and pressing wholly on this side of passivity, we are in no
   small danger of enfeebling the moral power he is obtaining by his life.
   Accordingly, to right the conception we get by such overdoing of his
   passive and submissive virtue, there is needed also some just reference
   to the energetic, and positive, and really grand heroism of his
   mission. For really there is nothing, in all the heroic characters,
   whether of history, or fiction, at all comparable to the sublime figure
   he maintains, in his very humble, or, as we might even say, dejected
   ministry.

   He plainly does not think himself that he is in the passive key, even
   when he suffers most; but he calmly asserts the power he has to keep
   his life unharmed against all enemies--"No man taketh it from me, but I
   lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to
   take it again." Nothing compels him to die, but the grandly heroic
   motive supplied by his love to his enemies. All true martyrs we
   conceive to be God's heroes; but what martyr ever bore witness to the
   truth, whose death had not some reference to the original, transcendent
   martyrdom of the Son of God? Heroes throw their life upon their cause,
   by inspiration from it; he had meat and drink and home for his
   houseless body, in the work he had taken upon him, and knowing that he
   must die for his cause, he could say "how am I straitened till it be
   accomplished." Heroes are men who go above all the low resentments; he
   could even pray the prayer of pity and apology for his enemies, when
   dying under their hands. Great souls are not flurried and disconcerted
   by the irruption of great dangers; behold the solid majesty of this
   man's silence, this provincial man, this country mechanic, when so many
   fierce accusations, by so many fierce conspirators in high life, are
   hurled against him. Heroes that die, and bear themselves nobly in the
   terrible hour of their conflict, are commonly caught without much
   warning, and are fortified by the tremendous excitement of the hour;
   Christ was facing death for at least three whole years, and waiting for
   his time to come; yet never weakened, or swerved, by the doom that he
   knew to be on him, but comforting his great mind constantly in the hope
   that, when he should be lifted up, he would draw all men to him. The
   great causes of heroes are commonly under the eye, and are more or less
   computable in their time; but Christ, the poor rustic of Nazareth,
   undertakes a cause and kingdom that comprehend the world, and require a
   run of time outreaching all definite computation, and shows not half
   the misgivings of the great heroes of the world, who expect their
   triumph and perhaps their meed of fame, within a few short years..
   There was never, we may safely say, any such instance of self-devotion
   among men, never so little of heat or excitement, never such firmness
   coupled with such tenderness and gentleness, never such oblivion of
   popularity, never such incapacity to be humbled by ignominy. So that if
   we speak of heroes, we are tempted either to say that he is no hero at
   all, or else the only hero. And here it is that the moral power we have
   seen him obtaining culminates. In this fact, the almost feminine
   passivity we are likely to figure as the total account of his
   character, reveals the mighty underwork and robust vigor of a really
   immortal confidence and tenacity. The moral power he obtains, in a
   character of such transcendent heroism corresponds. We make no true
   account of it, till we take it as the supernatural flowering on earth,
   of a glory that he had before the world was.

   The example most nearly correspondent, among men is that of Socrates,
   and yet the superficial, almost flashy merit of his power, heroic as he
   certainly was, is about the most striking result of a just comparison.
   There had been different opinions about Socrates before, and many
   scholars even now do not hesitate Socrates the nearest human example.
   to speak lightly of his coarse manners, and the general lightness and
   rudeness of his character. Be the truth what it may, in regard to these
   matters, there was certainly a remarkable dignity, and even sublimity
   in his death. Arraigned and sentenced to death unjustly, for a mere
   political offense, he refused, as a philosopher and good citizen, to
   save his life by an escape that would make him a violator of the laws
   of his country; and the Athenian people had been sufficiently exercised
   in political matters to appreciate the merit of such a sacrifice. A
   great popular reaction immediately followed, that overwhelmed his
   accusers, and made his name, forever after, one of the great powers of
   the world. A merely casual reaction followed the death of Christ, in
   the same manner, but it came to no practical issue, just because the
   sacrifice he made of his life was too deep in its heroic meaning to be
   practically valued, and too profoundly accusatory to awaken sympathy.
   He died for no ends of patriotic devotion, or even of moral
   reformation, as regards the social wrongs and destructive vices of the
   world, but for the state of sin itself and the recovery of souls to
   God--just that kind of benefaction which only a very few of mankind,
   such as Plato, for example, and like meditative teachers here and
   there, had once thought of as a want, or could even begin to conceive.
   To such a kind of sacrifice the world itself was a dead receptivity,
   and it was to be the glory of his power, that he could open a
   receptivity where there was none; that he could stir the consciousness
   of lost men deeply enough to make the state of sin a dread reality, and
   the want of reconciliation to God the prime necessity of their being.
   And just here lies the wonder of his power; that he opens such a sense
   of the holy and of men's relations to a holy God, as to make his own
   public, where there was none, and create the very homage by which he is
   to be received; raising nature up to ask the supernatural, and join
   herself to it, in a faith that goes above all of this world's honors,
   homages, and applauses.

   2. It is a very great point, as regards the kind of power, Christ is
   obtaining, that he humanizes God to God humanized to us. men. I have
   already spoken of the necessary distance and coldness of a mere
   attribute power, such as we ourselves generate, when trying to think
   God as the Absolute Being. The incarnate life and history of Jesus meet
   us here, at the point of our weakness. God is in Christ, consenting to
   obtain the power, by which he will regain us to him. self, under our
   own human conditions. He is in our plane, acting with us and for us,
   interpreted to our sympathies by what he does and is, in social
   relationship with us. His perfections meet us in our own measures, not
   in the impossible measures of infinity; and so he becomes a world-king
   in the world, and not above it and far away from it. We know him, in
   just the same way as we know one another. He becomes the great Head
   Character in human history, by living in it Himself--such a kind of
   power, as being once in it, can never be gotten out of it, any more
   than if it were a new diffusive element in the world's atmosphere. God
   is no more a theosophy, or mere phosphorescence of our human
   intelligence; no more a theophany, like those casual appearances of the
   Jehovah Angel in the old dispensation--all which left him a God more
   separate, in a sense, than before, as any such unveiling by mere
   phantasm must--but a God-human or God-man, born into our race itself,
   and even into a place in our human tables of genealogy. And since we
   are so deep in the senses, he contrives to meet us there, that we may
   hear, see with our eyes, look upon, handle him with our hands. Nay, he
   comes directly into our bodies themselves, by the healing of his inward
   touch, and occupies a great part of his ministry in works that take
   hold of our sympathy, by means of our diseases. No greater advance on
   human sensibility, we may fairly say, could possibly be made, than is
   in fact made, in this wonderful chapter of humanization, that contains
   the teachings, healings, tender condescensions, and sufferings, of the
   divine man Jesus. He builds up anew, so to speak, and before our eyes,
   in the open facts of his ministry, the divine perfections themselves,
   and the moral power he obtains in doing it is just what it must be; a
   name that is above every name.

   3. It is another great article of his power, that he is able to raise,
   at once, the sense of guilt and attract the confidence of the guilty.
   By his purity of life, by the sublime reach of his very simple
   doctrine, by his terrible warnings and reproofs, by his persistent
   coupling of It both wakens guilt and draws confidence. disease, in all
   his healings, with sin, by the sorrows and the suffering patience of
   his life, by the bitter ignominy of his death, followed by the Spirit
   coming after his resurrection, to show the things of his life to men in
   their true light of meaning--by all these piercing demonstrations he
   stirs the conviction of guilt, as never it was stirred before, and yet
   with no such consequences of revulsion from God, as belongs to the
   natural action of guilt. The feeling of guilt, under mere natural
   conviction, is a feeling of recoil. The instinctive language of it
   is--"I was afraid and hid myself." It shoves the soul off from God and
   then it pictures God as being withdrawn from it. A certain chill is
   felt when he is thought of, and the soul shivers in cold dread of his
   purity. But the incarnate Saviour, taking his place with us in our bad
   level, after the manner just described, stops the natural recoil of our
   guilt, and marries even our self-condemnation to confidence. Great as
   our guilt is, Christ, we see, can be our sponsor for all the wrong and
   damage of it. As the guilt kept him not away from us, so it shall not
   keep us away from him. Nay as it even drew him after us, shall it not
   also draw us after him? True we have sinned, our sin is upon us, and
   not even his forgiveness can ever annihilate the fact of our sin; but
   if he has come over it all to be the righteousness of God upon us, may
   we not come away from it, and be the righteousness of God in him? And
   so when the tough and sturdy fact of our guilt would thrust us quite
   away from God, Christ so far reverses every thing with us by the
   wonderful power of his ministry, that our guilt is even made to be the
   argument that draws us, and, as it were, fastens our confidence. It
   would almost seem to be a miracle, and yet the result is only a simple
   incident of that great moral power, by which he is able to reverse
   every thing in the fallen condition of our sin. We come now--

   4. To another and last point, where the moral power obtained by Christ
   gets even its principal weight of impression; viz., to the fact made
   evident, The culminating fact is God's affliction for sin. by his
   vicarious sacrifice, that God suffers on account of evil, or with and
   for created beings under evil--a fact very commonly disallowed and
   rejected, I am sorry to add, even by Christian theology itself, as
   being rationally irreconcilable with God's greatness and sufficiency.

   It was very natural that the coarse, crude mind of the world, blunted
   to greater coarseness and crudity by the chill of guilt in its feeling,
   should be overmuch occupied in conceiving God's infinity and the merely
   dynamic energies and magnitudes of his nature; the sovereignty of his
   will, his omnipotent force, his necessary impassibility to force
   external to himself, his essential beatitude as excluding all
   inflictions of pain or loss. Hence it has been very generally held,
   even to this day, as a matter of necessary inference, that God is
   superior, in every sense, to suffering. Our theologians are commonly
   shocked, as by some frightful word of derogation, when the contrary is
   affirmed, and when they come to the matter of Christ's suffering, they'
   are careful to show, regarding it as a necessary point of reverence,
   that it was only the human nature that suffered, not the divine,
   suffering by itself. Besides, it will even be admitted, perhaps
   unwittingly, by those who dare to obtrude in this manner upon the
   interior mystery of Christ's person, where all reasonings about the
   physical suffering must be at fault, that even God himself, as well out
   of Christ as in the incarnate person of Christ, does incur a profoundly
   real suffering--not physical suffering, as I now speak, yet a suffering
   more deep than any physical suffering can be.

   The principal suffering of any really great being and especially of God
   is because of his moral sensibility, God's perfections even require him
   to suffer. nay, because of his moral perfection. He would not be
   perfect, if he did not feel appropriately to what is bad, base, wrong,
   destructive, cruel, and to every thing opposite to perfection. If the
   sight of wrong were to meet the discovery of God, only as a disgusting
   spectacle meets a glass eye, his perfection would be the perfection of
   a glass eye and nothing more. None of us conceive Him in this manner,
   but we conceive him as having a right sensibility to every thing. We
   say that he is displeased, and what is displeasure but an experience
   opposite to pleasure? so far a kind of suffering. We say that he
   "loathes" all baseness and impurity, and what is closer to a pain than
   loathing? We say that he "hates" all unrighteousness, and what is
   hatred but a fire of suffering? Is he not a "long suffering" God, and
   is there no suffering in long suffering? Is he not a patient God, and
   what is patience but a regulated suffering? So of compassion, pity,
   sympathy, indignations suppressed, wounds of ingratitude, bonds of
   faith violated by treachery. So far we all admit the fact of divine
   suffering, no matter how sturdily we deny it in theory. The suffering
   is moral suffering it is true, but it is the greatest and most real
   suffering in the world--so great that a perfect being would be likely,
   under it, to quite forget physical suffering, even if it were upon him.
   Making then so vast an admission, what does it signify, afterward, to
   turn ourselves round, in what we conceive to be our logical sagacity,
   and raise the petty inference that God, being infinite, must be
   impassible!

   But we must not omit, in this connection, to notice a fact, as regards
   the moral suffering of God, that is not commonly admitted, or even
   observed, God's beatitude not diminished by the suffering of is love.
   like the others just referred to. Thus we conceive, that God is a being
   whose moral nature is pervaded and charactered, all through, by love.
   Some teachers even go so far as to insist that the Scripture
   declaration--"God is love"--is no rhetorical figure, but a logical and
   literal teaching; that God's very substance, or essence, is love. And
   yet love is an element, or principle, whether substance or not, so
   essentially vicarious, that it even mortgages the subject to suffering,
   in all cases where there is no ground of complacency. As certainly as
   God is love, the burdens of love must be upon him. He must bear the lot
   of his enemies, and even the wrongs of his enemies. In pity, in
   patience, in sacrifice, in all kinds of holy concern, he must take them
   on his heart, and be afflicted for them as well as by them. In his
   greatness there is no bar to this kind of suffering; He will suffer
   because he is great, and be great because he suffers. Neither is his
   everlasting beatitude any bar to his suffering; for there is nothing so
   essentially blessed as to suffer well. Moral greatness culminates in
   great and good suffering; culminates also in blessedness, for there is
   a law of compensation in all moral natures, human as well as divine,
   divine as well as human, by which their suffering for love's sake
   becomes always a transcendent and more consciously sovereign joy. There
   ought to be no incredible paradox in this; for it is a fact every day
   proved--always to be known by mortal experience.

   Now it is this moral suffering of God, the very fact which our human
   thinking is so slow to receive, that Christ unfolds and works into a
   character Christ's moral power consummated in the agony and the cross.
   and a power, in his human life. His compassions burdened for guilty
   men, his patient sensibilities, sorrows, sacrifices, the intense
   fellow-feeling of his ministry, his rejected sympathies, wrongs,
   ignominies--under and by all these it is that he verifies, and builds
   into a character, the moral suffering of the divine love.

   Hence what is called the agony, which gives, in a sense, the key-note
   of his ministry; because it is pure moral suffering; the suffering,
   that is, of a burdened love and of a holy and pure sensibility, on
   which the hell of the world's curse and retributive madness is just
   about to burst. There is here no physical suffering, save what results
   from his moral and mental suffering. There is no fear; for, to human
   appearance, there is nothing as yet to fear; and, besides, the
   pathology of the suffering is exactly opposite to that of fear; in
   which the blood flies the skin, retreating on the heart, instead of
   being forced outward and exuding from it. There is, too, no appearance
   of panic in the sufferer's action, and he expresses, no doubt truly,
   what he feels when he says, that his "soul is exceeding sorrowful." We
   discover, also, at several distinct points in his ministry before, that
   he is under a tendency to just this kind of agony; as when he groans in
   Spirit, declares that his soul is troubled, spends whole nights in
   prayer. It is as if there were a load upon his sensibility which his
   mere human organization could with difficulty support. And accordingly,
   now that his active labors are ended, and his feeling is no longer
   diverted and drawn off by occupation, now that he has made his farewell
   discourse, offered his parting prayer, instituted his supper of
   communion, the surge of burdened sensibility rolls in upon him all too
   heavily to be sustained. And this is the agony. It is just what such a
   nature, made the vehicle of such feeling, facing such a juncture, ought
   to suffer and could not, humanly speaking, avoid. It is the moral pain
   of his love, sharpened by the crisis of his love; and, and a bloody
   sweat is wrung from his too frail body, by the overload of divine
   feeling struggling under it.

   In his cross there is also a physical suffering, of which something is
   made by the Scriptures, and a great deal more by theology; for
   multitudes conceive that this physical suffering is the pain God takes
   for satisfaction, when he releases the pains that are due under the
   just liabilities of sin. I will not undertake to solve the mystery of
   these physical pains; for it must be admitted that God is a being
   physically impassible. But it is something to observe that there is
   nothing peculiar in them, as distinct from the mystery of the
   incarnation. God is not finite, or subject, any more than he is
   impassible, and yet he is, in some sense, uninvestigable by us, both
   finite and subject. Enough for us, as regards the subject state of
   Christ, that he is able to express so much of the glory of the Father.
   So of the pains or physical sufferings. Their importance to us lies
   probably, not in what they are, but in what they express, or morally
   signify. They are the symbol of God's moral suffering. The moral
   tragedy of the garden is supplemented by the physical tragedy of the
   cross; where Jesus, by not shrinking from so great bodily pains, which
   the coarse and sensuous mind of the world will more easily appreciate,
   shows the moral suffering of God for sinners more affectingly, because
   he does it in the lower plane of natural sensibility. And yet even the
   suffering of the cross appears to be principally moral suffering; for
   the struggle and tension of his feeling is so great that he dies, it is
   discovered, long before the two others crucified with him, and sooner
   than, by mere natural torment, was to be expected.

   But there is a much harsher and sharper meaning frequently given to the
   agony and the cross, as if Jesus were in the lot of sin a great deal
   more Nothing penal in the agony and the cross. literally than I have
   conceived him to be, and God were giving him a cup of judicial anger to
   drink, from which his soul recoils This conception is supposed to be
   specially justified by his exclamation from the cross--"My God, my God,
   why hast thou forsaken me;" where it is imagined that God is dealing
   with him in severity, hiding his face behind a cloud of ire, and
   leaving him to bear the penal woe of transgression; or, if not this, so
   far withdrawing from him as to drape the scene of his death in a felt
   darkness of soul, that shall somehow express the divine abhorrence to
   sin. The assumption, whether in one form or the other, appears to be
   gratuitous. That the soul of Jesus, just reeling into death, should
   utter such a cry was most natural, and it should be printed with a
   point of exclamation, as being a cry of distress, not with a point of
   interrogation, as if he were raising a question of remonstrance about a
   matter of fact. When will theologic dogmatism understand the language
   of passion? Besides an angel is sent to him in his agony to strengthen
   him-an angel sent to support him in the desertion of God? Does he not
   also protest that he can have twelve legions of angels to help him, by
   simply asking for them? And in what does he close the scene of his
   suffering, just after his bitter cry on the cross, but these most open,
   trustful words of confidence--"Father into thy hands I commend my
   spirit." It is hardly necessary to say that this hard and revolting
   conception of the agony and the cross has a purely theologic origin. At
   no other two points, in the ministry of Jesus, would the eternal Father
   have testified with a warmer approbation or a sympathy more
   close--"This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Nay, the
   Father did, in fact, give just this testimony for him beforehand, in
   this article of his suffering; for when he was speaking of his death
   now at hand, and his soul was troubled, falling into a kind of
   incipient agony, how does he quell his feeling but in the petition,
   "Father, glorify thy name;" whereupon there comes a voice from heaven,
   saying, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again." Comforted
   by such a testimony, and daring, in his last prayer, to say--"I have
   glorified thee on the earth," will it be imagined that God, beholding
   such an accession of glory in his death, is even hiding from him still,
   when the last hour comes, in grim displeasure?

   Here then it is, in the revelation of a suffering God, that the great
   name of Jesus becomes the embodied glory and the Great Moral Power of
   God. In it, as in a sun, the divine feeling henceforth shines; so that
   whoever believes in his name takes the power of it, and is transformed
   radically, even at the deepest center of life, by it--born of God.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                   PART III.

THE RELATIONS OF GOD'S LAW AND JUSTICE TO HIS SAVING WORK IN CHRIST.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER I.

  THE LAW BEFORE GOVERNMENT.

   THUS far we have been ranging in a field, we may almost say,
   unobstructed by matters of difficulty and debate; we have reached, in
   fact, the middle of our journey, and have encountered none of the great
   battle points of the champions, but have only seen the smoke from afar.
   We seem, indeed, to have been occupied only in such kind of
   exploration, as could well be made for the benefit of it, and to simply
   bathe our feeling in that love which God has revealed in his Son. But
   we are now, at last, come to the borders of the Amalekites, where there
   is no way to get a passage, but to make one. All the questions that
   have troubled others are in our path also, from this point
   onward--questions of law, penalty, justice, righteousness, and their
   connections with mercy, forgiveness, and the justification of life.

   A suspicion is often suggested, by those who are looking after the
   truth among these difficulties, that there must be some hidden
   ambiguity, The political analogies suspected. or confusion of meaning,
   in the words here employed. What is said of law and justice, under the
   analogies of human government does not appear to hold, without
   qualifications not given. It can not be that such analogies of law, and
   justice, and penalty, and pardon, prepared in the civil state, are not
   to be used in religion. Like all other analogies of the outward life,
   they were designed to be. And yet there are few close observers, I
   suspect, who have not sometimes been so far impressed, by the
   fatalities discovered in attempts to resolve Christ's work under this
   kind of analogy, as to seriously doubt whether any thing reliable can
   be thus accomplished. There certainly can not be, unless the analogy is
   carefully qualified by others, such for example as those of the family,
   the field, the shop, the market. There is also another kind of
   qualifier, that is obtained by getting a partially distinct footing for
   the subject, in a province of thought which is not under such
   analogies.

   And it is in this view that I now propose a distinction, which, as far
   as it goes, takes the subject quite away from all the governmental
   figures, allowing us to speak, or to reason of law and justification,
   without being dominated by such figures--the distinction, I mean,
   between law before government, and law by government; uninstituted,
   necessary law, and law enacted and supported by instituted government.
   If I am successful in the statement and development of this
   distinction, a considerable part of the confusion which has been felt,
   in these much debated matters of atonement, will, I think, disappear.

   It is very obvious to any thoughtful person, that, in order of reason,
   whatever may be true as respects order in time, there was law before
   God's will, and before his instituting act; viz., that necessary,
   everlasting, ideal, law of Right, which, simply to think, is The law
   before God's will. to be forever obliged by it. The perfections of God,
   being self-existent and eternal, were eternally squared by this
   self-existent law; for, if they had any moral quality, it lay in their
   conformity to some moral law, apart from which no such perfection is
   conceivable. Otherwise, if God's perfections came forth only after and
   out of his will, and after the institution of his government, then he
   began to will and to institute government, without any perfections, and
   even without any moral standard--becoming all righteousness, and
   commanding all right, before even the ideal law of right had arrived.

   The grand, primal fact then is, that God's own nature was in law, or
   crystallizing in eternal obligation, before he became a lawgiver, and
   that he became a lawgiver only because he was already in the power of
   law. Not that he was in obligation to any governing force above him, or
   back of him; for he was himself the only being, and the container of
   all forces to be. The law was ideal, and not governmental, a simple
   thought, which to think was to be in everlasting, necessary, obligation
   to it. There was no command upon God, no penalty hovered by to
   threaten; but, thinking right, His whole nature answered in sublime,
   self-prompted, allegiance. And this allegiance to an idea, viz., right,
   was his righteousness--the sum of all his perfections, and the root and
   spring, in that manner, of all he governs for, or by instituted
   government maintains.

   How it is with him, in this law before government, we shall find by a
   simple reference to ourselves, and Conception of the law absolute. the
   methods of our own moral nature; for we exist in His image. I think of
   space, for example, and this eternal, necessary idea of space goes with
   me, compelling me to see all outward extensions, or distances in it. I
   think of cause, and this necessary idea compels me, or qualifies me, to
   see all goings on of change, under terms of causation. These ideas are,
   in fact, forms of the mind; forms to which it adverts in all thinking,
   and without which it could not think at all. The same is true of the
   ideas of time, and number, and quantity. Being in the form of time, I
   am put on thinking when; of number, on thinking how many; of quantity
   on thinking how much. So I think of truth, in general idea, and having
   that form of thought developed, I begin to think what particular things
   are true. In the same way is developed the grand, all-regulative, Moral
   Idea of Right; which to simply think, is to be put in everlasting
   obligation. For it is the distinction of this idea, that it is the
   Monarch Principle of the soul. It puts all moral natures under an
   immediate, indefeasible bond of sovereignty. They become moral natures
   because they are set before this idea of right. Animals think no such
   thought, and are never set before this idea. They probably have the
   ideas of space, and cause, and number, but right is of a higher range;
   else if they could think it, they would be moral natures in common with
   us.

   Here then, as being simply existent with a moral nature, and without
   being commanded, or before, we are put in a state of fixed obligation.
   It matters not whether we know of a God; for, if we do, we are none the
   more truly under law after his commandment comes than before-though we
   may be more effectively under it. The simple idea of right, if we
   accept the authority of it, and set ourselves to it for a total homage
   and conformity, will be a complete regulation for the life--for every
   thought, and act, and disposition--and will fashion us in a completely
   harmonic character and state of righteousness. It only can not do this
   after we have fallen away from it, and been thrown out of spiritual
   order, by the shock of our disobedience. Then it will even require a
   salvation to restore us.

   Let us not forget, or overlook, at this point, the distinction between
   the eternal, one idea which contains all law, as regards the
   principle--being Applications doubtful, the law, never. a simple,
   universal, always present, never doubtful idea--and those questions of
   right or wrong, so called, which relate to particular actions. Here we
   have abundance of doubt, and debate, and perplexed casuistry, bringing
   us here to one conclusion, here to another, and sometimes to none at
   all. To settle these questions we make appeal to custom, to Scripture
   usage and precept, to what is useful, to what is beautiful, setting our
   critical judgments at work, and our memory, and our tastes, and mental
   associations. But these subordinate and particular questions of duty
   are only executory, it will be observed, as regards the general
   principle, and it matters little if we mistake, or differ in these,
   doing it honestly, provided only we are trying to enthrone the Monarch
   Principle and put every thing in allegiance under it. Meantime, in this
   law of laws, we all agree without a shade of difference. It is the same
   to one human creature, in one part of the world, as to any and every
   other, in parts most remote; the same to the Gentile as to the Jew, to
   the heathen as to the Christian. Nay, it is the same to created souls
   in all orders, as to God uncreated, and the same to God as to them.

   There is then a law before government, which is common to all moral
   natures, and in which all moral distinctions have their root. It is, in
   fact, the law of the conscience; for though it is common to speak of
   the conscience as a throne of government inserted, by the creative and
   constructive purpose of God, it does not appear to be true that God
   ever contrived a conscience, in any other sense than that he has
   appointed a moral nature for us, in distinction from one that is not.
   The conscience of God is only the fact itself of his moral nature, and
   our conscience is but the fact of our kinship with him, in the central
   idea that contains the mold and law of his perfections. If we use the
   term conscience to cover the ground, not merely of that central idea,
   but of all particular actions under it, the conscience would, in that
   case, be a really infallible oracle for infinite questions in us, apart
   from all helps of judgment and discriminations of reason; only it is
   plain as need be, and can not well escape our discovery, that we
   certainly have no such oracle in us; for if we have it, whence come so
   many unsolved questions and debates of duty?

   On this point of a law before government, and a conscience that
   enthrones it, we require no better exposition than that which is- given
   by the apostle, when he declares, [17] that as many as commit sin
   without law, [instituted law] shall also perish without the same; and
   that only such as sin against instituted law will be judged by it; for,
   though they have it not, they are yet a law [uninstituted] to
   themselves, their conscience bearing witness before all commandment,
   and apart from all administrative enforcement. What he means to say is,
   that their moral nature itself answers, with inevitable conviction, to
   the eternal, necessary principle of right; placing them, so far, in a
   condition where they are a law to themselves, and would be forever, if
   no rule, or judgment, or judge from without, should appear, to
   authenticate, or vindicate, the obligation they feel.

   Let us now conceive it possible, that God and all moral natures exist,
   for a time, under this ideal, necessary law, or law of laws, having no
   The Law Absolute supposed to rule for a time by itself. other; that
   government is not yet undertaken, God having not come forth as yet, to
   be the maintainer of this law, or to assume it as the charge of his
   voluntary administration. The moral natures, in this view, simply exist
   upon a common footing of necessary obligation--bound, all alike and
   together, as a matter of inmost conviction, to do and be only right. I
   do not say, it will be observed, that the law moral had ever any such
   precedence of time, or any but a precedence of order, before the fact
   of government assumed. Still it can do no harm to raise the supposition
   of such precedence in time, if we are careful enough to use it only as
   a means of distinguishing certain points, in the great subject we have
   in discussion, that could not be as well distinguished in any other
   way.

   Having thus all moral natures upon this common footing of ideal,
   necessary law, and no personal authority, Obedience makes complete
   society. or will-force embarked, as yet, in the purpose to govern for
   it and be its vindicator, one of two things will be the result; either
   that the grand impersonal law will be accepted and obeyed, or else that
   it will not. God, we know, will receive it in everlasting honor; for
   exactly that he has done from eternity; and his being thus united to
   the right, fixedly and totally, is his righteousness--the sum, in that
   manner, of all his perfections. If created minds and orders cleave also
   to right, in the same way, they will be instated also in the same
   righteousness, and so in the same perfections with God. All moral
   beings, united thus in their homages to right, will be united also in
   love; love to each other, and love to the law, by which they are set in
   society and everlasting chime together, as in ways of mutual
   right-doing. Indeed the necessary and absolute law of right, thus
   accepted, is very nearly answered by the relational law of love; so
   that any realm of being, compacted in right, will as certainly be
   unified in love, doing and suffering, each for each, just what the most
   self-immolating, dearest love requires. Even God, in such right-doing,
   will bend himself to any most expensive, lowest burden of sympathy, for
   the benefit and well-being of such as are humblest in the order of
   their dignity. The humblest in order, too, will as certainly magnify
   and worship the Infinite Right-Doer, because there is proportion in
   their sense of right-inspiring an homage that looks up in the lowliest,
   as truly as a way of sacrifice that looks down in the highest. In this
   manner the perfect, universal righteousness will organize a state of
   everlasting order and good fellowship, whose ideal we name, in the
   words, Complete Society.

   But there is another alternative; viz., that some one or many races of
   moral natures, in the state of impersonal law we have described, will
   throw Consequences if any disobey. off the law, and break loose in a
   condition of unsubjection; and here it becomes a very important matter,
   as regards the great questions we have now in hand, to note the
   consequences that will follow, and the new kinds of work and office
   that will be undertaken.

   First of all, the internal state of the disobedient race, or races of
   moral natures, will be immensely changed. As certainly as they are
   broken loose from right, they will be chafing in the bitter
   consciousness of wrong, doing wrong to each other, feeling wrong,
   contriving wrong, writhing in the pains of wrong. Their whole internal
   state will be under a nimbus of confusion. For though nothing is
   contrived in them and the world to have a retributive reaction, their
   simply being moral natures will compel them to suffer a tremendous
   shock of recoil. There will be a terrible disjunction of order in their
   parts and powers; so that what they call their soul will be scarcely
   better than a wrangle of contrarieties, or cage of growling
   antipathies. As to any self-restoration that will be effective, it is
   quite impossible. A flock of birds let fly could much less easily be
   gathered back from all the remotest points of heaven. For the internal
   confusion is so complex and wild--so nearly infinite-that no power of
   thought can conceive it, or how it should be set in the recomposition
   needed; no power of self-exertion accomplish the recomposition, if it
   were conceived. The whole moral nature, in short, is so far abused and
   suffers a recoil so dreadful, in the rejection of its law, that
   consciousness itself becomes a mordant element, with no power left to
   master the self-corrosive sublimation of its wrong. Not that in this
   fall, or self-undoing, it suffers any thing which is called justice,
   under the political analogies. We do not know that it suffers any thing
   in the scale of desert, which is the common notion of justice; we only
   know that it receives a shock of necessary pain, or disorder, from the
   violation of an immutable idea, that belongs inherently to its moral
   nature. If necessity does not know how to think, or any way get up a
   scale of justice, then it is quasi justice, and we probably can not say
   more--only the necessity of it is too absolute to be avoided. We may
   even dare to say, with all profoundest reverence to God, that if He,
   the All-Holy, were to cast off Right--the law before government--in the
   case supposed, his wrong would be an earthquake shock, strong enough to
   shiver the integrity of his mold, and leave him a wreck of eternal
   incapacity, as respects both wholeness of being and a recovered harmony
   in good. This, not because there is any ordinance of justice above him,
   but that such is right, and such his moral nature, as related
   thereto--both self-existent--that, without regard to justice, the
   crystal must so break, by its own necessary law, and so He must
   irrecoverably fall. Thus, too, any race of finite moral creatures,
   falling irrecoverably in the same way, would be not less fearfully
   undone; not by justice, but only by the inevitable recoil of their
   offended moral nature.

   Secondly, as another sad consequence, the law so much loved by all the
   obedient natures, including God, is diminished in its honor,
   desecrated, trampled, and mocked, and their minds are filled with
   deepest concern for it. It is as if the very law of their own beatitude
   were dying under its wounds. Asserting itself unhelped, and vindicated
   by no force but its own, it seems to be even going down, or vanishing
   away.

   These two painful and disastrous consequences having arrived under the
   law before government; viz., the fall of multitudes beyond any power of
   God will institute government and redemption together. self-redemption;
   and the law itself trampled in dishonor; is there any thing that God
   will certainly undertake? His infinite righteousness contains the
   answer; for by that he is ever lastingly fastened, in profoundest
   homage, to the law, and about as certainly to the well-being of all
   moral natures related, with Himself, to the law. He will therefore
   regard himself as elected, by his own transcendent powers of will and
   working, to assume the charge of a Ruler, and will institute
   government; contriving by what assertions of authority, supported by
   what measures, he may reinforce the impersonal law, and repair its
   broken sway. To this end he will organize a complete frame of statutes,
   and penalties, and motivities general, for the will, such as He, the
   Infinite Lord, and Head Power of the worlds, may count worthy of his
   wisdom and universal sovereignty--the same combination, we may well
   enough suppose, that we have to admire in his word and Providential
   order now. In this manner, or in some other closely related, we shall
   see that He has taken the government upon his shoulder.

   Nor is it a matter very widely different, that he will undertake the
   redemption, or restoration, of the fallen race, or races; for he can
   hardly do for the law broken down all that he would, without recovering
   the disobedient to their full homage and allegiance. Besides, they are
   fellow-natures with Himself, and the righteous love he bears them will
   unite him to their fallen state, in acts of tenderest sacrifice. And so
   the instituted government and the redeeming sacrifice will begin
   together, at the same date and point, and work together, for very
   nearly the same purpose. In the largest and most proper view, the
   instituted government will include redemption; for, beginning at the
   point of transgression, already broken loose, mere legislative and
   judicial action, plainly enough, can not bring in the desired state of
   obedience. Legislation wants redemption for its coadjutor, and only
   through the divine sacrifice, thus ministered, can it ever hope to
   consummate the proposed obedience. Redemption also wants legislation,
   to back its tender appeals of sacrifice, by the stern rigors of law.
   Both together will compose the state of complete government. We are
   brought out thus by our supposition, upon the conception of a redeeming
   work, undertaken, or that would be undertaken, for and before the ideal
   law of right, and apart from any conditions of government, previously
   instituted, or violated. Precisely how, or by what plan, the restoring
   agency will operate, we, of course, do not know. Doubtless it will
   involve the grand, principal fact, that God is in vicarious sacrifice;
   and, if that is best, he will go forward in just the same ways of
   sacrifice, and the same revelations of love, that he has made in the
   suffering life and death of Christ. For since he is grounded, as
   respects all his perfections, in the eternal law of right now cloven
   down, he will love the principle itself, and love its adherents, and
   love, for the law's sake, as well as for their own, all the
   transgressors and enemies who may haply be recovered to it. And so we
   shall have on foot a grand work of redemptive sacrifice, that has no
   reference whatever to claims of justice previously incurred. The
   problem can not, therefore, be to satisfy, or pacify justice, but
   simply to recompose in the violated law the shattered, broken souls,
   who have thrown down both themselves and it, by their disobedience.

   A beginning will probably be made much like that of the Christian
   history, in the establishment of sacrifices, the sending of prophets,
   the strong discipline of Providential judgments, the long drilling and
   milling times of observances, defeats, and captivities. And then, when
   the fullness of time is come, we may look for an act of incarnation,
   provided ally thing can be so accomplished; for the love of God will
   bring him down to the fallen, and a life in the flesh among them, just
   as it has done in Christ. He will come in the very spirit of the law
   rejected, and they will see, in him, how good and beautiful it is, and
   what burdens of suffering it will put upon him to bear for their
   benefit. I am not authorized to say that, in the peculiar case
   supposed, he will do just every thing which he has done by Christ and
   his cross, I only say that he will shrink from no sacrifice, or sorrow,
   or cross, that he may regain the erring ones to their law, and have
   them reestablished in everlasting righteousness. And there appears to
   be no reason for doubting, that he will go. through a historic chapter
   of vicarious sacrifice, closely correspondent with that which is
   transacted in Christ.

   Thus far onward we are brought, in the lead of a supposition. Let me
   not be understood as resting any thing on the deductions made, beyond
   what the certain fact of a law before government will justify. There is
   really no such precedence in time, but only a precedence of rational
   order. Instituted government is, to all created subjects of God, as old
   as ideal principle, and they never had a moment under this, before
   coming under the other. My whole object in tracing this supposed
   precedence of time, has been simply to get certain distinctions of idea
   unfolded, that will serve the future uses of my argument. The
   supposition is a fiction, the distinctions are profoundly real and
   important--allowing us to get a footing for the subject, where it will
   be less oppressively dominated, by the merely political, or judicial
   analogies.

   The distinctions of idea referred to are such as these; which any one
   will see to be legitimated Conceptions legitimated. in the exposition
   now traced--legitimated, that is, as conceptions, though not
   established as existing facts.

   1. That there might be a scheme of cross, and sacrifice, and restoring
   power, every way like that which is executed in Christ, which has
   nothing to do with justice proper; being related only to that quasi
   justice which is the blind effect, in moral natures, of a violation of
   their necessary law.

   2. That instituted law is no necessary precondition of redemption.

   3. That the righteousness of God is not by any means identical with his
   justice, but includes all the perfections of God in his relation to the
   law before government, and never requires him to execute justice under
   political analogies, save as it first requires him to institute an
   administrative government in the same.

   4. That law and justice might be instituted as co-factors of
   redemption, having it for their object to simply work with redemption,
   and serve the same ends of spiritual renovation--if there was a prior
   fall, under the law before government, they naturally would be.

   5. That justification need not have any reference to God's justice, and
   probably has not, but only to a reconnection, by faith, with the
   righteousness of God, and a consciously new confidence, in the sense of
   that connection.

   It will probably have occurred to some readers, in conjunction with
   what has here been said of the law How related to the story of the
   Fall. before government, to inquire how far, and in what manner, it
   coincides with the Scripture representation of the original trial-state
   of man? Here, to the human race at least begins the instituted
   government of God. It comes in as no after thought, to supplement the
   insufficiency of an ideal law which is older. In the breathing of the
   first breath, this also arrives, and the living soul is not complete in
   its moral equipment, sooner than it is put in authority by God's
   paternal keeping and commandment. Still it will be more convenient and
   rational, not to regard the fall as literally beginning at the breach
   of a merely instituted, almost arbitrary, apparently trivial statute,
   such as by the common understanding we have in the statute of the tree,
   but to regard the real breach as beginning at the everlasting
   law-principle hid in that statute, and violated in the violation of it.

   This third chapter of Genesis is taken, by many scholars who are not
   given, at all, to the mythical interpretations, as being, in some
   proper sense, a myth. They discover a mythologic air in the story, and
   note a plain distinction of manner between it and the historic chapters
   that follow, or indeed between it and all other Scripture beside. Nor
   is it any just offense that such a conception is admitted; for a myth
   may as well be the vehicle of truth as any other form of language--be
   it epic, or ode, or parable, or fable. The sin of imputing a myth is
   when it is done against the fact of history, and not when it is the
   proper organ of history. And it may be that a myth occurs in
   revelation, just because there is, at the time, no culture of thought,
   and philosophy, and reflective reason, deep enough to express, or
   conceive the matter given, in a way of didactic statement. It is, in
   fact, historic, because it is the form of story for a matter profoundly
   abstruse in its nature, and possible to be conceived, as yet, in no
   other form.

   It comes out accordingly, laboring under such limitations of thought
   and culture, that the eternal law of right is a tree, and the knowledge
   of good and evil a fruit that hangs on it, and the declared
   threatenings of death, notifications of the consequences otherwise
   unknown. Temptation figures in the story as a serpent, and the
   new-begun race are summoned to a conflict with him, and an assured
   triumph over him. Then pass out the sad pair, excluded from all
   possible self-recovery, as if fenced away by the flashing swords of
   cherubim, to work and suffer, and conquer, as God and his Son will help
   them.

   Now there seems to be a peculiar fitness in conceiving the first sin to
   be thus specially concerned with the original law of duty--the law
   before The Fall specially related to the Law before government.
   government--because that law is really pronounced in the simple fact of
   being a moral nature. Existing as a moral nature, a man, Adam was
   already in that law, and the issuing of any command or prohibition,
   regarding a matter of action, would bind him, only as an executory
   application of that law. Not even killing, under the statute "thou
   shalt not kill," becomes a crime of murder, save as the perpetrator is
   found to have connected the statute with the prior law of laws, and
   done the deed as a wrong, by "malice aforethought." No particular act
   is sinful, save as the prior law of right is implicitly violated in it.
   It makes no difference, therefore, whether the forbidden tree be taken
   as a mythic conception of the law before government, or as an
   arbitrary, outward test of obedience in particular action; for no such
   test could touch the sense of obligation, save as it implicitly came
   under, and carried along with it, the already felt obligation of right.
   All the statutes we speak of are executory of this law, else they are
   nothing. Any fall must be transacted really before this law; for the
   guilt of breaking any law creates a fall, only as this grand,
   all-inclusive law is cast off, and the regulative principle of the life
   is changed. Be it touching a tree, or tasting a fruit, the sin has all
   its meaning in the fact that everlasting right is cast away, and the
   golden harmony of right dissolved.

   This being true, I see not any way of describing a fact so deep, and,
   for ages, so far beyond the possible conception of men, that could be
   at all equal to this paradise, and tree, and fruit, and fall, and final
   expulsion, and flashing sword of cherubim. The profound reality of the
   fall must, in any view, have been passed before the eternal, inborn law
   of right, and the death and the curse that followed, signify a great
   deal more as declaratives of natural consequence, in such a breaking
   out of law, than they can, as penal sentences of desert, in the matter
   of tasting a fruit.

   Here then is the want and true place of redemption. It must have some
   primary and even principal reference to the law before government, and
   not to any instituted law, or statute, or judicial penalty existing
   under that. Every thing God does in his legislations, and punishments,
   and Providential governings of the world, is done to fortify and
   glorify the Law before Government. All that he will do, in redemptive
   suffering and sacrifice, revolves about this prior Everlasting Law, in
   the same manner. In this law his supreme last ends are gathered; out of
   this law all his beatitudes and perfections have their spring. No so
   great thing as redemption can have principal respect to any thing else.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [17] Rom. ii, 12-15.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER II.

  INSTITUTED GOVERNMENT.

   WHAT is to be understood by God's instituted government has been
   already indicated in a general way; Instituted Government--what it is.
   if we are to conceive it more accurately, we must first of all,
   distinguish what is included in a moral nature as being necessary to
   it; and then all that we find superadded, or conjoined to it, will be
   the administrative matter God has instituted, as a religious polity for
   the world. A moral nature, in the closest sense of the term, appears to
   be no matter of divine contrivance, more than the circles are in which
   the heavens are set--it must be a nature that can think the everlasting
   law, and has liberty of will to reject, or embrace it. God is not
   obliged to create this moral nature, but if such a nature is to be
   created, it can not, as far as the necessary idea is concerned, be
   either less or different. But there is room outside of this, for a
   large creative outfit and providential management, where contrivance,
   and counsel, and statute, and judgment, and all that belongs to an
   administrative polity may get ample range of opportunity. And here we
   find the instituted government of God. In this government, counsel and
   will are added, to maintain the everlasting law. God undertakes, in
   this, to be its Guardian and Vindicator, making specific applications,
   adding retributive enforcements, casting soul and body, as far as
   contrivance may, and arranging the whole economy of causes, to throw
   the strongest possible motives on the side of right, and against the
   choice of wrong, or continuance in it.

   Inasmuch, too, as the government he institutes looks beyond mere ideas
   of legal enforcement, comprehending, or at least associating, purposes
   Comprehends law, penalty, Providence, and grace. of recovery, he will
   incorporate a grand machinery of discipline, and also of
   reconciliation, working by all the g secret griefs of persons, and
   public woes of society--by the migrations of conquered peoples, by the
   persecutions of religion, by the oppressions of governments, by the
   wars and rebellions overruled. And then to these he will add, for the
   same final end, what is more effective than all discipline, the
   incarnate mission of Christ, and all Christly causes, the mission also
   of the Holy Spirit, with all Spirit-causes threading the world's bosom;
   the church also, the word, life, death, resurrection, and eternal
   judgment. The matter is large, but solidly compacted in God's eternal
   counsel, not intelligible always to us, but intelligible to Him--good
   as intelligible; because it is the solemn ordering of his will, for the
   one good end of right.

   That we may conceive the nature and offices of this instituted
   government more exactly, let us note a few points that will require to
   be observed, in the right understanding of the relation it holds to the
   law before government, and also farther on, to the vicarious sacrifice
   and free salvation of Christ.

   1. Let it be observed that law and obligation do not begin with God's
   will, and are not created by his will. Law exists before God's will. It
   appears to be the supposition of many, that God creates all law by his
   will, and can make any thing right, or obligatory, by his enactment.
   Contrary to this he makes nothing obligatory which is not right, or
   somehow helpful to right, enacting nothing in which he is not first
   commanded, as, regards the principle, by that everlasting, ideal law,
   in which even his goodness itself is fashioned. In one view, all the
   statutes he enacts are explicatory, simply, of the law before
   government. In another view, they are only vindicatory of the same. So
   that the one fundamental precept of right contains, or demands, in a
   way of organic enforcement, all the statutes ordained; having these for
   its complete explication, or fulfillment, and being fitly vindicated by
   the executive energy of these. The law before government measures, in
   this manner, all the law declared by government, only it obtains an
   immense accession of authority by the specifications in which it is
   drawn out, and the sanctions of God's infinite will superadded for its
   enforcement.

   It is a great mistake of multitudes, and one that amounts well nigh to
   a superstition, that they take the Decalogue not fundamental.
   decalogue, or ten commandments, for the fundamental law of duty and
   religion, back of which there is no first principle more radical, or
   inclusive. Just contrary to this, they are most, of them statutes
   reenacted from the common law maxims, prevalent among the people to
   whom they are given. Indeed, they have a great part of their
   excellence, in that which is their defect; viz., in their merely
   preventive, negative form; running, all but one of them--"thou shalt
   not," "thou shalt not,"--as if made for a people who had lost all sense
   of obligation to the positive good of a well-doing, right-doing life,
   and could only be reached, by commanding them away from wrongs they
   love to practice. In the one positive statute--"Thou shalt love the
   Lord thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself," there was really something
   fundamental; it was in fact the law of laws; but for just that reason,
   it was too much, and the ten particular negatives signified more to
   such low servile natures, because of their contracted quantity and
   minatory sound.

   2. The instituted government differs from the law before government, in
   the fact that it inaugurates justice and penal sanctions. There is no
   Justice pertains to Instituted Government. express sanction to
   vindicate the law absolute, and no definitely understood sanction.
   Certain effects of disorder and pain would follow disobedience, but
   that they would follow in any scale of desert, we do not know. The
   justice they will execute, therefore, is only a blind quasi justice, if
   it be any thing which deserves the name. But the instituted government
   of God is fast anchored in the terms of justice, declaring definite
   penalties, and maintaining them with: impartial exactness. It rules by
   the majestic will-force of God, asserted in its statutes and penalties.
   And, in this fact, it gains a mighty accession of power; especially
   when considered as in reference to minds already broken loose from
   obedience.

   In one view, it was the beauty and dignity of the impersonal law, that
   it spoke only by its own excellence, with no adventitious, or external
   compulsions to help it. It would rule by what it is, and not by what
   will be done for it when violated. In this manner it would most fitly
   address righteous minds; speaking to them even as it does to God. No
   sanctions appealing to interest, or fear, would be at all appropriate
   to them, but would even be a mockery rather of their liberty; for to be
   in the right is already their choice, and they love it, even as God
   does, because it is right. Enforcements are wholly out of place, till
   such time as they are sunk away from right into the lower ranges of
   motivity, where the smart of justice and its penal sanctions becomes
   fit argument for them. To arrest them now and turn them back, on such
   kind of consideration as prepares them to be taken with the love of
   goodness and right for their own sake, is the first thing wanted.
   Nothing will answer for them, in a way of being recovered, but to have
   their collision with a government fortified by sanctions penally
   threatened and judically executed. And this brings me to say--

   3. That instituted government, if not taken in the large view as
   containing, is the necessary co-factor of, redemption. By it the law
   before government is reënacted, or applied specifically, and the
   definitely enforced applications are so many points of obligation
   impressed. The soul therefore, living The necessary co-factor of
   redemption. under sin, can not drum itself to sleep in mere
   generalities of wrong; for it hears condemning thunders breaking in
   from almost every point of duty in the scheme of life. The moral sense
   too is mightily quickened by the arrival of justice, and the tremendous
   energy in which it comes. For it is a great mistake to imagine that the
   sanctions of justice are valuable only as intimidations. They are God's
   strange work, and the fearful earnestness they show raises our moral
   impressions, or convictions, to the highest pitch of tensity. Capital
   punishments, in the civil state have their value, in the same way, not
   in merely making it fearfully perilous to commit the crime so punished,
   but a great deal more in the tremendous reverberation raised in our
   moral nature, when the public law utters its opinion of the crime, in
   sanctions so appalling. Operating in these ways, to enforce and sharpen
   moral conviction, the Scriptures are always conceiving the instituted
   law as a necessary co-factor in the matter of redemption. It is even
   declared, to be "not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and
   disobedient;" as if it were set like the cherubim before Paradise, to
   flash, and cut, and drive away, and pen the guilty in their outcast
   lot. So far the instituted government is law for the sake of
   redemption. It is called, indeed, "the letter that killeth," "the
   ministration of condemnation;" but the meaning is simply, that the
   knowledge of sin is by it, and that when a soul is truly slain by the
   law, it is only the more ready to be quickened by the faith of a
   gratuitous mercy. Good in itself it becomes death unto the subject,
   that sin may appear sin, according to its now discovered perversity and
   exceeding sinfulness. And so--this is the gospel outline--"what the law
   could not do in that it was weak, through the flesh [or fallen state of
   sin] God sending his Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and [to be a
   Saviour] for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of
   the law [even the eternal righteousness of God] might be fulfilled in
   us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit."

   There is also still another point of view, in which the instituted
   government of God works redemptively. All the previous history of the
   world, Includes world-government as co-factor with redemption. from the
   creation downward, till the fullness of time for Christ is come; all
   the migrations, deliverances, captivities; all the callings, and
   covenants, and prophetic inspirations, have been managed to bring on
   the fit day, and get the preparations ready. And, besides all this, the
   people have had a religion organized by statute, and been drilling in
   rites and observances, divinely ordered--all profoundly related to the
   grand vicarious sacrifice to come. In this manner, the religious mind
   has been cast in the mold of Christian ideas, and a language has been
   provided, otherwise impossible, on artificial roots, for the reception
   and perpetual publication of the new gospel. God's instituted law
   therefore, instead of being a simply killing agency, a ministration of
   death, was in fact, casting molds of life from the first, and
   commanding on, so to speak, unto the great salvation. Christ never
   could have come, in fact, if the law had not been casting patterns for
   him, and getting ready all the great external matters of the world's
   empire. Again--

   4. It is important, at this early point, to notice a distinction which
   will often be recurring in the future stages of the argument; viz., the
   distinction Righteousness and Justice distinguished. between
   righteousness and justice. Thus the righteousness of God is the
   rightness of God, before the eternal, self-existent law of right; and
   the justice of God is the vindicatory firmness of God, in maintaining
   his own instituted law. One is by obedience to a law before God's will;
   the other is by the retributive vindication of a law that is under and
   by God's will itself. One is without option, before immutable,
   unconditioned, everlasting law; the other is what God wills and does,
   in the world of conditions, that is of means and measures. God must be
   righteous; God will be just. That he must be, because it is right; this
   he will be, because he has undertaken to maintain the right and govern
   for it. There is the character from which he rules; here is the reason
   of polity by which he rules. Without that, he could not be himself;
   without this he can not administer a government that will command his
   subjects. Righteousness is necessary to the endowment of his person;
   justice is necessary for a wholly different reason; one for the reason
   of character, the other for the reason of polity Nothing can ever
   dispense with that; this can be tempered only by that which conspires
   with it, working for the same ends. Righteousness in God accordingly is
   satisfied only with righteousness in men; justice is satisfied with
   whatever makes good the dishonors of violated law, working with it, to
   fulfill its end.

   The justice of God is grounded in the wants of his government; being
   that which enforces it, that which creates respect for it, and for the
   ruler, and gives the emphasis of immovable authority to his word and
   will. He must govern by no fast and loose method, surrender nothing to
   chance, or caprice, or the inability to inflict pain. And so he must
   command a character of justice for his government, even as he has a
   character of righteousness for himself, in the everlasting, immovable
   adhesion of his nature to right.

   5. It is another distinction of God's instituted government, that,
   while the law before government is impersonal, Instituted Government is
   personal; virtually a person. this is intensely personal, and finally
   becomes a person, or scarcely different from a person. I have already
   spoken of the fact that, being from the will of God, it takes on, so
   far, a personal character. What I would now say is more; viz., that we
   commonly do not go back of God, when we think of his government--never
   do it, in fact, save when we are occupied reflectively on its grounds
   and reasons--but we practically take God for his government, and his
   government for God. It is now a wholly concrete affair, and no more an
   abstraction. In this manner, it gets vivacity, and a look of
   reciprocity. We do not like, in fact, to call it a government, for that
   is not relational enough to meet our feeling, but we drop the
   institutional conception, taking up the personal, and calling it
   King--God is King, that is government enough; and we prefer to let our
   mind be occupied wholly with his royalties and the homage due to his
   attributes. More intensely, because externally personal, the government
   is still to become; for Christ will be visible Messiah, that is visible
   King, King of Righteousness and so of Peace; whereupon, beholding the
   government now upon his shoulder, we shall crown him gladly with our
   invocation--"Give the King thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness
   unto the King's son." Nor will the glorious kingship be any the less
   personal and tenderly dear, that being withdrawn from sight, he is
   substituted by the Holy Spirit invisible, going through all things, and
   present every where; for he will be the Spirit of Christ shed forth on
   us by Christ, and maintaining, in the very center of our hearts, a
   Kingdom which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

   It is sufficiently obvious, from these specifications, that the
   instituted government of God is a matter of no secondary interest,
   compared with Absolute necessity of instituted government. the law
   before government in which it is grounded. It is the mental habit of
   some, to be specially pleased with that which is back in the field of
   abstractions; and such might think it better to have only the ideal
   law, without any polity of concrete government organized to enforce it.
   In which, under the pretext of depth, they take up, in fact, the most
   superficial judgment possible. They consent, in this, to let go just
   that without which existence itself were of no value; for how soon
   should we cast off the ideal law in some experiment of disobedience,
   and then our moral nature itself is a broken affair, past all power of
   self-recovery. Without redemption existence is valueless, and there is
   no redemption without an instituted government.

   But there comes in here from an opposite direction, or from within the
   fold of the gospel itself, a class of Dangers apprehended from the
   remission of sins without compensation. theological objectors, who
   apprehend a complete sweeping away of God's instituted law and justice,
   by the free remission of sins. I propose no argument just here with
   their objections, I will only state them that they may not seem to be
   overlooked.

   Thus they insist that, if Christ does not bear the penalties of sins
   himself, and yet takes them away from Law becomes only advice. the
   guilty, he thereby also takes away all due enforcements of law, and
   leaves the precept to be mere advice. Where go the laws of God, when
   the penalties of transgression are remitted gratis, by universal
   proclamation, and the promise given to every transgressor that he shall
   even be justified? What could any civil state, or government hope, from
   a law punishing assassination by death, and promulgating, at the same
   time, a free pardon to every criminal suing for it?

   In confirmation of their argument, they also remind us that when
   certain teachers, claiming a more than common illumination, toss all
   such objections aside, extolling it as one of the fine things in
   Christ, that he finds government enough in God's love and paternity,
   and is willing to let go what are called the Jewish rigors, the effects
   are such as to show most convincingly the essential lightness of the
   doctrine. A proper insight of human nature, saying nothing of the
   gospel, ought, they contend, to open our eyes to a discovery of what is
   more competent; for to make a government of mere love and paternity is,
   in fact, to make just no government at all, but is, simply to throw the
   whole matter of duty and character loose upon the chances of a coaxing
   process, where the subject, living in a lower plane, has too little
   care for the goodness shown him, to get any thing out of it, but a
   license of impunity for whatever he likes best. In such doctrine there
   is no ring of conviction. God and religion die out of it, and a certain
   modishness of philanthropy is all that can long remain.

   The objectors also vary their argument, alleging that when God forgives
   sin, without some penal satisfaction, his rectoral honor and character
   are God's rectoral honor surrendered. made equivocal, if not fatally
   diminished. Sin they say, and truly, tramples the honor of God. If then
   he farther consents to let it do so, what becomes of his authority and
   respect as a ruler? To vindicate the integrity of his position by
   punishments duly enforced, would countervail the dishonors of
   transgression. But what becomes of his honor and rectoral authority,
   when his threatenings turn out to be but a mock ammunition, in which
   there is no projectile included? Who will be awed by his will when he
   governs only in terrorem, with the terror, in fact, omitted?

   Again the righteousness of God appears, they say, to be made equivocal,
   in the same manner. He commands His Righteousness made equivocal. what
   is right to be done, because it is right, and because right is an
   everlasting and absolute law in its own nature--necessary to all
   created mind, necessary even to himself. About this grand ideal of
   right he builds the whole fabric of his government; all his laws assert
   and interpret this; all his penalties enforce this; all his judgments
   are the discipline he wields for this. What then does it signify that
   he freely remits all the possible wrongs of wrong-doing, as against his
   great central principle of right, or righteousness? The principle,
   indeed, is none the less right; it is only deserted; that too by Him
   who undertook to be its vindicator and defender. The enforcement is now
   gone, and with it, what was more impressive, the solid majesty of that
   greatness, which itself was built up in the principle of it, and stood
   in sacred awe before the eyes of all creatures, as the unchangeable
   Righteousness.

   It is another variation also of the damage or loss they discover in
   God's rectoral character, that the supposed free-remission is not only
   a discontinuance of his operative justice, but appears to blur the
   evidences of justice, in his character. The power of God's justice
   obliterated. God's attitude, before his subjects will be determined, to
   a great extent, they allege, and truly, by the impression he makes of
   his immovable adhesion to justice. The punishments denounced against
   transgression will themselves have a certain deterring force, as being
   denounced, but a vastly greater force comes into impression, whether in
   the civil state or in the government of God over souls, when justice is
   duly exalted and consecrated, by what may be called the dread sacrifice
   and strange work of punishment: There is such majesty in justice thus
   consecrated, that moral natures feel it all through and tremble
   responsively to it. Punishments have a Certain value, as appeals to
   fear, and as motives addressed to self-interest, but the sense of
   goodness, armed by justice, strikes into the moral nature itself far
   more deeply and by an immediate efficacy. It can not therefore be taken
   away without great apparent loss.

   In arguments like these, showing the probability of damage to the
   integrity and authority of God's government, from a free remission of
   sins, coupled with no penal satisfaction of justice, there is, it must
   be admitted, an appearance of reason. How far it is an appearance
   deduced from political analogies, that will disappear when such
   analogies are duly qualified, will be hereafter seen.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER III.

  THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN JUSTICE AND MERCY.

   CERTAIN points were stated, in the close of the last chapter, where the
   integrity of law and justice appears to be involved in necessary damage
   from the introduction of forgiveness, or a free justification. Under
   the various schemes of judical satisfaction, it is accordingly assumed,
   that Christ, by his suffering life and death, made the compensation
   necessary, and prepared, whether by this method, or by that, what is
   called the ground of justification. In this manner, God has two
   dispensations, one coming after, and the other going before, and
   related to each other as mercy to justice, forgiveness to punishment,
   justification to condemnation. Having begun to govern by mere law,
   enforced by rewards and penalties, and by that having failed to secure
   his proposed ends of character and eternal felicity, he brings in a
   second dispensation, by Christ, to rescue the guilty from the deserved
   penalties of justice; which it does, by means of his suffering offered
   as a satisfaction to justice. And so the law, it is conceived,
   maintains its integrity still, when otherwise it would be quite broken
   down, or even virtually given up.

   Here then is the great contested matter of the Christian salvation, and
   the issue made up at this point, is now to be tried. I am obliged to
   disallow the necessity of any such penal satisfaction, or indeed No
   compensation to justice needed. of any compensation at all to God's
   justice, for the release of transgression; that is, of any compensation
   beyond what is incidental to the vicarious sacrifice and the power it
   obtains by declaring the righteousness of God.

   As regards this question, two kinds of answer may be given that are
   quite distinct and independent of each other; one that turns upon a due
   qualification Two modes of argument. of the antagonism between justice
   and mercy--which will occupy the present chapter; and another which
   considers specifically the several kinds of damage that are supposed to
   follow, when sins are forgiven without compensation--which will occupy
   the next three chapters. The present chapter is not necessary to my
   general argument, but is a kind of interpolation, and is introduced,
   not because it is required by my doctrine, but because a revision of
   our impressions concerning the supposed antagonism, appears to be due
   to the general subject, and even to the honors of divine justice
   itself.

   Undertaking this revision, I put forward two points, where we seem to
   fall into misconceptions, that increase the antagonism between justice
   and mercy, and make it wider and more complete than it really is.

   1. Having much to say about justice, as an exact doing upon wrong of
   what it deserves, we begin to imagine that justice goes by desert, both
   in its rules and measures, and thinks of nothing else. It follows, of
   course, that justice lets go being just, exactly as it Justice in the
   scale of desert misconceived. falls below the scale of desert in its
   executed penalties. We have many scriptures also to cite for authority;
   as when it is declared that God will "render to every man according to
   his deeds," "reward every man according to his works;" or when it is
   declared that every man "shall receive the things done in the body,"
   having them as it were put back upon him for his punishment; or when
   the lex talionis itself is formally appealed to as the rule of God's
   justice--"For with what measure ye meet it shall be measured to you
   again." All these and other like Scripture expressions are taken to
   mean about the same thing, as giving back to wrong just what it gives,
   and we conceive it to be a matter a great deal more definite than it
   is, to say that justice is the making of a transgressor to suffer what
   he deserves.

   In a certain popular sense, this language and all the scripture
   citations referred to are good--nothing could be more forcible or
   impressive--but, when we ask precisely what we mean by it, we shall be
   more at a loss than we expected. Is it any fit conception of God's
   justice, that he will put evil upon a wrong-doer, just because he is
   bad and according to his badness, apart from all uses to the man
   himself, or to others, or to the government he violates? Is it the
   divine justice to fly at evil doing and make it feel just as much evil
   as it practices? Is there no counsel in God's justice, no consideration
   of ends, or uses?

   We can hardly be satisfied, I think, with this. Indeed we could not
   approve ourselves in putting on a wrong doer the evil he deserves to
   suffer, without finding some reason for it besides his desert. And yet
   we could not be satisfied, in reducing God's justice to a mere
   consideration of public ends, or reasons of beneficence. We feel that
   there is, and ought to be something more fiery and fateful in his
   justice than that. What then is the conception that meets our feeling,
   and what, exactly, do we mean, when we say that justice and desert are
   ideas that go thus fitly together?

   We mean, first of all, that there is a deep wrath-principle in God, as
   in all moral natures, that puts him down upon wrong, and girds him in
   The wrath-principle of justice no law to God. avenging majesty for the
   infliction of suffering upon wrong. Just as we speak of our felt
   indignations, and tell how we are made to burn against the person, or
   even the life of the wrong doer, so God has his heavier indignations,
   and burns with his more consuming fire. But this combustion of right
   anger, this wrath-impulse so fearfully moved, is no law to God
   certainly, requiring him to execute just what will exhaust the passion.
   It is only that girding power of justice that puts him on the work of
   redress, and that armature of strength upon his feeling, that enables
   him to inflict pain without shrinking. And then, at just this point,
   comes in another function, equally necessary; viz., wisdom, counsel,
   administrative reason, which directs the aim, tempers the degree, and
   regulates the measures and times, of the pain. Thus it is that we
   ourselves dispense and graduate justice; and then, standing at the
   hither point of our vindicative passion, we say that we have done upon
   the wrong doer just what he deserves. Standing, farther off, at the
   point of counsel, and considering how we have graduated the measure of
   his punishment, we should say, that we have done upon him, only what
   the welfare of society, and the due sanctification of law requires.

   There is, then, no such thing in God, or any other being, as a kind of
   justice which goes by the law of desert, and ceases to be justice when
   ill desert is not exactly matched by suffering. God's ends, and
   objects, and public reasons, have as much to do with his justice as the
   wrath-principle has, which arms and impels his justice. It is no breach
   of justice therefore, and no real fault of proceeding, that God tempers
   justice by mercy, and mercy by justice, whenever he can most advance
   the solid interests of character and society by so doing. There is no
   principle which any human being can state, or even think, that obliges
   him, on pain of losing character, to do by the disobedient exactly as
   they deserve. The rule, taken as a measure, has no moral signification.
   God therefore need not give Himself up to wrath, in order to be just;
   he can have the right of counsel still. Perfect liberty is left him to
   do by the wrong doer better than he deserves, and yet without any fault
   of justice--better that is, considering his own condemning judgment of
   him, and the man's condemning judgment of himself, than he might well
   do, or even ought to do, if the sublime interests of his government
   should require.

   2. It is another misconception, just now stated in the introduction of
   this chapter, that we assume the essential priority of law and justice,
   as related Another misconception as respects the priority of justice.
   to mercy; as if it were another dispensation having a right, in its own
   precedence, to be undisturbed and qualified by no different kind of
   proceeding. Was not every thing put upon the footing of law, and since
   we have broken through the law, how can God bring us into justification
   without overturning the law Himself? Will He mock his law, because we
   have mocked it? and will he give it up, because we have turned away
   from it? What remains then for Him, but to do justice upon us? How can
   he justify, in this view, unless there be some satisfaction, or
   compensation of justice provided?

   There does not after all appear to be any solid merit in this kind of
   argument. It matters not whether we say that we have two dispensations,
   or Justice and mercy co-ordinate and co-operative. one; in some sense
   we have two, viz., justice and mercy; but it does not appear that there
   is any priority of time in one as related to the other, or that both
   are not introduced to work together for one common result. Then,
   whether we understand the mythic tree, or test-tree of the garden, to
   be the law before government, or to be some instituted precept in which
   it is presented more specifically, the sin of the sin is, in either
   case, the casting off of the former; that which carries with it a
   revolution of character down to its deepest principle. And the "death"
   that followed was the moral dying that must come with such a
   revolution--no death of God's infliction, but a declarative death,
   connected with the fall out of principle. Then follows what is called
   the promise, and what is called the curse-the promise first and the
   curse afterward--that as the new hope, this as the new state of wrath
   and penal discipline. And both together, having one and the same
   general aim, are inaugurated, as the right and left hand, so to speak,
   of God's instituted government. They are to have a properly joint
   action; one to work by enforcement, and the other by attraction, or
   moral inspiration; both having it as their end or office, to restore
   and establish the everlasting, impersonal law. God never expected and
   never undertook, calling that his government, to bring his subjects on
   and consummate his purposes regarding them, by statutes and penalties
   of justice. It might as well be imagined that he undertook to govern
   his heavens by the centrifugal force, and added the centripetal
   afterward, to bring the flying bodies back.

   There is a certain antagonism, it is true, in the modes of action
   observed by the law-power of God's statutes and the justifying power of
   Christ; even as there is between the two great forces of nature just
   referred to. But the antagonism is formal, not real; partial, not
   absolute. They are to be co-factors in the operation of a government
   that undertakes, for its object, the reconciliation of fallen men to
   God--a state of beatific worship and complete society. And to this end
   one is set to enforce obligation, stir the conscience, intimidate and
   set back the impetuosity of sin, so to waken right conviction and
   prepare a felt necessity of the other; and then the sensibility taken
   hold of and impressed, softened and melted, in one word drawn by that
   other, is to win a choice, raise that choice into a love, in that love
   become a new revelation, so a salvation. And so much is there in this
   twofold action that without some such grip of law and justice on the
   soul, no grace-power of God could ever win it back; and without the
   grace-power felt in its blessed attractions, no mere law-and-justice
   power could beget any thing closer to God than a compelled obedience,
   or fear that hath torment. There was in fact an antecedent necessity of
   their conjoined working, that, in the due qualifying of each other,
   they may complement what would otherwise be a fault in each.

   Thus by the retributive principle running through all our natural and
   Providential experience, the self-sacrificing, vicarious,
   love-principle is How the two co-operate in redemption itself. so
   tempered as to make our time of grace a thoroughly rugged and stern
   holiday; while by the love-principle, gently interfused, all the
   retributions of our experience are held back and qualified, to be only
   fomentations of thoughtfulness and holy conviction. Indeed we may go
   farther and have it as a fact discovered, that these partially
   contesting agencies only press us yet more effectively, because they
   seem to be in a race for us with each other. The retributive principle
   is propagating disorder, misrule, blindness, obduracy of feeling in our
   sin, closing up, as it were, the gates of receptivity; so that shortly
   nothing shall be left for love and sacrifice to work upon--at which
   point, as far as we can see, justice gets entire possession of us and
   has our everlasting future to itself. Or reversing the example, the
   mercy-principle in Christ's sacrifice gets advantage of the
   retributive, winning the soul to itself and begetting it anew in God's
   liberty--when of course the justice-claim falls off to be a claim gone
   by forever. In this manner they both work together, striving, as it
   were, to outstrip each other, and exert, in that way, only the more
   stringent motive pressure on the life and character. Let no one then
   imagine that they are in a state of real contrariety, because they are
   so far antagonistic in their action. The celestial analogies already
   referred to show that order and static equilibrium are, in fact, the
   resultant of contending forces. Were either one of these to stop its
   endeavor, the condition of wreck would be forthcoming speedily. And
   just so nature, all through, is packed with analogies that correspond.
   Heat and cold, light and darkness, land and sea, central fires and
   weights of rock above, are all doing battle round us in the same way,
   and the result is an accruing order and stability that represents
   eternal beneficence.

   How far then is it conceived by God, in the appointments of justice and
   mercy, that they really infringe upon each other; how far that the
   rugged and rough power of justice is like to be injured and borne down
   by its tender competitor, enough to want some compensation for its
   injuries? The real fact is, that God's instituted law really commands
   through love and sacrifice; for no created mind could possibly be
   thrust straight through into good, by penal enforcements and
   motivities. It never is in good, till it has cast out fear and gone
   forever clear of it, to love the right, or the holy, for its own sake.
   Law has nothing to do with such a result save initially. It even
   supposes a captivating power working with it, to bring out the result,
   and consummate the love in which the law's intentions are fulfilled.

   Or suppose that in the race of contestation just now described, it
   should happen, as one or the other gets exclusive and final dominion of
   the soul, that the excluded party suffers a real infringement. Then, by
   the supposition, justice may have taken away the chances and infringed
   the rights of mercy, as truly as mercy can have violated the rights of
   justice; when if compensations are to be made, the mercy-impulse of
   God's feeling has as good a right to compensation from his justice, as
   that from his mercy. For his mercy is as old as his justice, and began
   as soon, and is a character certainly not less dear or sacred. Justice,
   too, may as fitly groan for the pacification of mercy, as mercy for the
   pacification of justice.

   On this point of infringement and rightful compensation, I have looked
   intently for some declaration of Scripture, and am only surprised that
   I do not find what I should have expected to meet in many examples; for
   nothing is plainer than the distinctness of manner and How the
   Scriptures hold this antagonism. office, in what are called justice and
   mercy. One acts retributively, the other compassionately; one by laws
   of natural consequence, the other by supernatural intervention; one
   goes by desert, the other by self-sacrifice transcending desert; one
   condemns just where the other undertakes to even justify; so that,
   factors though they be in forwarding a common result, we should not be
   surprised to find them set against each other in Scripture terms, and
   described as reconcilable, only in the fact that one pays tribute to
   the other. Still I know not where it is done. God nowhere signifies
   that he has given up the world to the prior right of justice, and that
   mercy shall come in, only as she pays a gate-fee for the right of
   entrance. [18] A reference is frequently made to two passages of
   Scripture as implying one of them, and the other affirming, a
   repugnance between justice and mercy, which only God's wisdom in his
   Son can sufficiently reconcile. Thus, when it is declared, in sovereign
   promise, that "mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and
   peace have kissed each other," [19] the supposition is that by some
   wondrous compensative grace of God, as in Christ, these incompatibles
   are made to coalesce. Whereas nothing is meant, as will be seen by a
   reference to the Psalm itself, but that in the public restoration
   promised, goodness and fidelity, and right and concord, shall return as
   a benignant constellation of graces, to bless and adorn the new
   society. Again it is repeated, how often, that "mercy rejoiceth against
   judgment;" [20] as if that were even the key principle of the gospel
   plan. It very well might be, only taking the two to be merely as
   distinct in their action, as was just now represented. But then it
   would be just as true, that judgment rejoiceth against mercy. The
   passage however has nothing to do with either of these two modes of
   contrariety. By the "mercy" it means simply the man who does mercy, and
   that he rejoiceth against judgment, or over it, in the sense that his
   heart is too strong, his confidence too immovable, to be shaken by any
   sort of condemnation--"he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath
   showed no mercy, and mercy [when it is faithfully done] rejoiceth
   against judgment." "Boldness in the day of judgment" is a promise of
   the same thing.

   It would be difficult, on the other hand, to represent all the figures
   of community and close conjunction held by these words in the
   Scripture. Sometimes it is conceived that God's mercy has its
   opportunity in his justice, and not any obstacle at all. Even as the
   great Hebrew poet, conscious of no dereliction from orthodoxy,
   testifies, "Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for thou renderest
   to every man according to his work." [21] Sometimes the two co-factors
   are strung together, as pearls that are alike, on the same string--"I
   am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness
   in the earth;" [22] "The weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy
   and faith;" [23] "Knowing therefore the goodness and severity of God."
   [24] They sometimes, even cross over into the province one of the
   other, and change offices; "the terror of the Lord persuades," [25]
   even as "the cross lifted up draws;" [26] and "the law slays" [27] even
   as Christ rejected "reproves of sin." [28] Again they both alike
   support the appeal of warning--"behold the judge standeth at the door!"
   [29] "behold the bridegroom cometh!" [30] The rule of judgment is also
   declared to be the same in both, according to even the same
   chapter--"For as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the
   law;" [31] "In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus
   Christ, according to my gospel." [32] The judge, too, is to be at once
   the eternal Lawgiver and, in some equally true sense, to be Christ
   himself. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" [33] "Hath
   given him authority also to execute judgment because he is the Son of
   man." [34]

   We shall find also, both in the old Testament and the New, declarations
   made of God and of his Son that represent both in the same general
   combination The old and new dispensations, how related. of attribute;
   asserting themselves, at once, both in all the rigors of justice, and
   all the tender concern of a forgiving sacrifice and sympathy. Thus we
   have from the Old--"The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long
   suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for
   thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by
   no means clear the guilty, [that is the incorrigible.] [35] And again,
   answering exactly to this we have from the New--"Tribulation and
   anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, [continueth
   incorrigible in it] of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile. But
   glory, honor, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew
   first and also to the Gentile." [36] And what have we, in fact, but a
   complete summing up of all such combinations in these two words--"the
   wrath of the Lamb?"

   Does any one ask what, in this view, becomes of the superior grace, or
   graciousness of the New Testament? I see no room for a superior grace,
   that requires a superior and better kind of God. The two dispensations
   are not two, in the sense of being opposite, but only in the sense of
   being one of them more full and complete than the other at once could
   be. The New Testament is only a new edition of the Old, greatly
   enlarged and improved--yet still accordant faithfully in its radical
   import. They both declare the same God, only in different stages of
   human thought or development; neither of them could be true, if they
   gave us different kinds of God, or of government. Still though God is
   just in both, and merciful in both, the former was likely to be taken
   more legally and felt more as a bondage, because it was a drill of
   outward rites and observances; and the latter to be taken even as a
   deliverance from that bondage, because of the incarnate person who
   could fitly represent to men's feeling the dear charities of God, and
   show the rites fulfilling their idea in his own complete and all
   sufficient sacrifice. No one was obliged to stay fast in the legalities
   of the old religion; multitudes of the glorious fathers and prophet
   teachers and little ones of faith did not; they broke through into the
   faith-world, as God was helping them to do, even by means of their
   rites; but in general they stuck fast in the letter, and the letter was
   death. The new ministration therefore in the incarnate person was life
   in comparison, a ministration of righteousness that doth exceed in
   glory.

   But while the offices of justice and mercy are so plainly in a close
   relationship, and are brought along God dispenses justice in a right of
   discretion. so cordially together in the Scripture, intertwining both
   as forces of good in the government and governmental character of God,
   I most freely admit the necessity that God's justice should be
   maintained in the highest possible degree of emphasis. It is necessary
   to God's administrative character. As regards that character, he can as
   well be perfect in a shortened benevolence, as in a restricted and
   diminished justice. Or if we look only at the defenses of law, and the
   motivities at work for the regaining of souls, it is a matter of the
   highest necessity, that there should be no appearance of slackness in
   God, and that his justice should be kept fast in the loftiest, most
   sovereign pitch of firmness possible. And what is this? Is it the
   truest firmness of justice that it is itself fast bound by the letter,
   having no liberty but to exact precisely the pound of flesh, suffering
   no reduction? Is the weight of God's justice heaviest, when it is
   according to some formally exact standard of measurement conceived for
   it by theologic opinion--a standard it must meet, in order to be itself
   justified? Must He be a precisionist in order to be passed as just? On
   the contrary he seems to me to be most grandly just, when he holds his
   firmness in a certain way of liberty--most grandly merciful too, when
   he dispenses mercy, as one taking counsel of justice. He should seem,
   in his justice, to say that he will suffer no jot or tittle of the law
   to fail; and then to make the saying still more certainly good, he
   should, for the law's sake, add such argument of love and mercy, as
   will restore both jot and tittle and, if possible, the whole broken
   body of the law. Nothing goes highest in God's attributes, when it
   loses out the chance of liberty and discretionary counsel. Not even the
   righteousness of God will be fitly expressed, when his eternal liberty,
   in the principle, is hampered by the letter, in his penal enforcements.

   We shall conceive this subject most worthily, I think, if we revert a
   moment to first principles in the Justice dispensed by natural law.
   universal order. Saying nothing here by of justice, as regarding its
   necessities, or ends, or the vindicatory character, or the vindicatory
   function it discharges in the matter of government, let us look
   directly at the single point of executive certainty and firmness, in
   the way of dispensing justice. And here we shall very soon convince
   ourselves, it appears to me, that God has not undertaken to dispense
   justice by direct infliction, but by a law of natural consequence. He
   has connected thus, with our moral and physical nature, a law of
   reaction, by which any wrong of thought, feeling, disposition, or act,
   provokes a retribution exactly fitted to it and, with qualifications
   already given, to the desert of it. And this law is just like every law
   of natural order inviolable, not subject to suspension, or
   discontinuance, even by miracle itself. And justice is, in this view, a
   fixed principle of order, as truly as the laws of the heavenly bodies.

   This, too, seems to be the prevailing representation of the Scriptures;
   as when they testify that "the wages of sin is death;" "that whatever a
   man soweth, that shall he also reap;" that the rust of gold and silver,
   cankered in the hoards of covetousness, "shall eat the flesh as it were
   fire;" that by the law of the judgment itself, we "shall receive the
   things done in the body"--having them come back as tormentors; that
   talents improved shall be doubled, and talents misimproved "taken
   away;" that wickedness shall "go to its own place;" "go away;"
   "depart;" passing off henceforth to be with itself, and be "filled with
   its own devices." A good many declarations of Scripture appear to speak
   of something more nearly inflictive; but it is better to conceive, in
   such cases, that the language is declarative only of what is coming to
   pass, by the fixed laws and causes of natural retribution,--which laws
   and causes have a self-propagating action without limit; for no
   disorder can issue itself in order.

   And yet, as we have been saying, these same ordinances of justice are
   to go along with mercy and in some possible way of conjunction are to
   The natural law of justice never infringed by mercy. work out, with
   her, even redemption itself. But how is this? where is the possibility
   of this, without even a subverting, by mercy, of the retributive laws
   just described? Do I then subvert the law of gravity, when I lift a
   weight from the ground? or by kindling a fire, cause the smoke to
   ascend in spite of gravity? Or, when I forbid the simples of gunpowder
   to unite in the touch of fire, by throwing a water-bath on them, do I
   therefore overthrow, because I so decisively dominate in, the chemical
   affinities concerned? Were not all these laws and affinities intended
   to be just so far submitted to my will? If then, by my will, acting in
   among them, they are brought to act in serviceable ways, as they
   otherwise would not, or not to act at all, is their nature therefore
   violated, or their law discontinued? [37]

   No more are the ordinances of justice overturned, when mercy comes to
   them and blends her action with Mercy only interacts supernaturally
   with justice. theirs. The executive laws of justice are natural; the
   person of Christ, his character, all the moral power he obtains in
   human feeling by his action, his beautiful life, his death of
   sacrifice, is supernatural. This kind of power too, working in men's
   hearts and dispositions, any one can see does not stop the causative
   forces of retribution working in the same. It only works in with them,
   as a qualifying agency. The same of course will be true, when the Holy
   Spirit takes the things of Christ--the same things--and, showing them
   inwardly, brings them into such highest power as they may exercise.
   Accordingly, when the mercy of the sacrifice, working in thus with and
   among the retributive causes of justice, issues a result which neither
   she nor they could issue alone, it no more follows that the order of
   justice is violated, than that nature's law of gravity, or chemical
   affinity is violated, in the examples just given. Still the justice-law
   goes on, doing exactly what was given it to do, only so far co-working
   or working in with mercy, as it was originally meant to do. Even as
   Christ came to nature in miracle, as a higher first term, doing all his
   mighty works without stopping, or suspending any law, [38] so, much
   more easily may it be true, that his new creating and delivering work
   of mercy, operating only as by moral power, falls in conjunctively
   among the retributive causes of nature, and without any discontinuance
   turns them to a serviceable office, in accomplishing its own great
   designs. Still they work on, subject to the fixed law of justice, which
   is neither subverted nor suspended, and never will be. It even assists
   the conversion of men, by acting strictly in character, as a condemning
   and slaying power.

   Let us turn our thoughts then, for a moment, upon the relative working
   of these two forces, so generally considered to be wholly contrary and
   In their relative working they magnify each other. mutually destructive
   of each other, and see how they both get honor and sublimity together,
   when God has his liberty in them and wields them as in counsel; for he
   does it in a way to confirm and magnify both, never to diminish or
   weaken either. Thus, when we go out into life, the retributive causes
   of nature roll out their heavy caisson with us, and drag it down the
   road, making no stop, and turning never aside more than do the stars;
   and mercy comes out also in her soft gait and tender look of sorrow to
   go with us, in like faithful company. She looks upon the dread machine,
   goes before it, goes behind it, blesses nature's inflexible order in
   it; only putting on the soul itself her secret, supernatural touch, and
   the soft inward baptism of her feeling--even that which she has
   unfolded so powerfully in the facts of the cross--and dewing it thus
   with her tender mitigations, keeps it in the possibility of good; while
   the retributive causes go their way, and do their work, not arrested in
   their action, but only qualified resultantly, by the different kind of
   action blended with them. Finally the subject, quailing often, as in
   guilty dread, under the condemning justice, and drawn by the softening
   ministrations of mercy, comes to that final crisis, where he is either
   born, or never to be born of God.

   If it be the first, then, as he is born of God--partly by the
   quickening power of mercy, and partly by the Conversion by their joint
   action. slaying power of justice--the retributive causes begin to have
   a kind of action qualified by the now sovereign action of mercy.
   Instead of bearing every thing along in their own way, they consent, as
   it were, to roll under, giving now their much needed help to the dear
   co-factor whose triumph they have helped already, by continuing on, to
   do as in discipline, what before they were doing as in penal
   enforcement, and thundering as sublimely still below the horizon, as
   then they did above. The new born disciple is imperfect, and they now
   fall in to have a chastening agency, for the correcting of such
   imperfections. And how dreadful, in severity sometimes, are these
   after-storms of discipline, that cross the track of the justified. It
   is even as if some mighty Nimrod, hunting in the shepherd's field, were
   setting his fierce dogs upon the straying ones, to chase them back to
   his fold.

   Another stage arrives. Made ready for the change, they die and so at
   last go clear both of penalty and Salvation glorifies justice.
   discipline together; only with such a sense, made fast in them, of the
   eminent majesty and immovable worth and truth of God's justice, that
   they would even feel it less profoundly, under the distracting smart of
   its eternal pains themselves. They go home thus to God, to hide as
   lovingly in the bosom of his justice, as is any other of His tenderest
   attributes. And then how much forever does it mean, to chant the honors
   of justice--"even so, Lord God Almighty, just and true are thy
   judgments."

   Go back now to the point of crisis and conceive it to be turned the
   other way,--that the transgressor growing penally hardened under the
   retributive Judgment vindicates mercy. causes of his nature, pushes
   finally bye his day of rescue. Still the mercy clings to him,
   whispering still its "come," to mitigate the natural hardness and
   bitterness of his now incorrigible transgression. In due time comes the
   last change also here. Christ, who was the Saviour, is now the Judge,
   and he makes not the law simply, but the very principle of his cross
   and sacrifice too the standard of his judgment sentence. Every thing is
   included in this--"Ye did it not to me;" did it not, that is, in doing
   acts of mercy to "the least of these" little ones of their Master. And
   so the justice, working in God's causes, becomes itself the lictor and
   everlasting vindicator of mercy--not of legal statutes only, but of all
   Christly possibility and example; piling on additions of penalty, as
   much more severe, as the ill desert of wrong is now become more
   aggravated and appalling. Not that justice now has forever extirpated
   mercy by its judicial ascendancy. Rather is it become the body guard of
   mercy forever--fencing not away any soul from it that will come to it
   for life, but maintaining the inviolable order of that pure society it
   has undertaken to gather. Mercy will never be dead though it may be
   finally displaced; for mercy is a part of God, and God will never be
   thought as having let the cup dry up in his bosom, to indulge himself
   only in the wrathful severities of justice. Still God is love--always
   to be love--only the. retributions of justice will be now so branded
   in, that no one turns himself to the love; holding still fast the
   "congenial horrors" that are so firmly fastened upon him, by his
   everlastingly persistent choices.

   Now if any one imagines that God's eternal justice will be more
   effectually magnified, by running its career of penalty straight
   through, punishing the jot and tittle of wrong, by the jot and tittle
   of penalty, and even exacting the jot and tittle of satisfaction,
   before it can suffer forgiveness itself to forgive; I confess it does
   not so appear to me. I see no honor accruing to God's justice when it
   mortgages his whole nature beside; rather is it greatest, when he
   maintains it in a certain liberty, counseling for it and working his
   great ends of counsel by it. Nay it will be greatest, when it is
   closest in companionship with mercy, thundering strong help in the wars
   of her subduing ministry, and then avenging her rejected goodness at
   the close.

   In just the same way it might be shown, going over the ground again,
   that mercy never bears so grand a Both most honorable when working
   together. look, or moves so majestically, as when she takes counsel of
   justice. No man is ever so magnificently just as he that can be even
   tenderly merciful, no man so truly merciful as one that can hold
   steadily exact the balance of truth and justice. Our highest
   impressions of God's justice are obtained, when we conceive it as the
   partly discretionary dispensation of a mind in the tenderness and
   loving patience of the cross; our highest impressions of his mercy,
   when we conceive it as the wonderful sacrifice to which even his
   justice allows him to bend. Little honor then does any one pay to God's
   judicial majesty, in a scheme of satisfaction that takes away his right
   of discretion, and requires him to stand for his exact equivalent of
   pain, according to the count of arithmetic.

   In this exposition of the antagonism between justice, and mercy, I have
   said nothing of what may even be taken as being, in a certain view,
   their They even coalesce at the root. radical union. It is a little
   remarkable how near many writers will come to this conclusion, when
   treating of the harmony of God's attributes, who will yet, when
   treating of atonement, represent God's justice and mercy in a
   thoroughly grim aspect of collision. Take the following very
   respectable example:--"Wherefore we must so conceive of them as that,
   in all respects, they may be consistent and harmonious; as that his
   wisdom may not clash with his goodness, nor his goodness with his
   wisdom; as that his mercy may not jostle with his justice, nor his
   justice with his mercy; that is we must conceive of him to be as wise
   as he can be with infinite goodness, as good as he can be with infinite
   wisdom, as just as he can be with infinite mercy, as merciful as he can
   be with infinite justice. For to be wise beyond what is good, is craft;
   to be good beyond what is wise, is dotage; to be just beyond what is
   merciful, is rigor; to be merciful beyond what is just, is easiness;
   that is, they are all imperfection, so far as they are beyond what is
   perfect. Wherefore we ought to be very careful not to represent these
   his moral perfections as running a tilt at one another; but to conceive
   them altogether as one entire perfection; which, though it exerts
   itself in different ways, and actions, and operates diversely,
   according to the diversities of its objects, and accordingly admits of
   different names, such as wisdom, goodness, justice, and mercy, yet is
   in itself but one simple and indivisible principle of action." [39] The
   assumption appears to be that all God's attributes, being at one in his
   righteousness, may so far condition each other as to maintain a
   measurely and helpful working with each other. Where then shall we put
   the case of one totally blocking another, and refusing to allow a step
   of movement till it has gotten its complete satisfaction? And if
   justice may block the way of mercy, why may not mercy as properly block
   the way of justice? To say, in such a case, that both "are one simple
   and indivisible principle of action" does not appear to be very
   significant. What we call love does itself require justice to be done,
   in a certain contingency, because it is necessary to the fit
   maintenance of law, and the order and safety of God's kingdom. What we
   call mercy is agreed by all to be the natural behest of love. Justice
   and mercy therefore, both alike, are so far forms of love. Again the
   same is true of righteousness, or right-this requires both justice and
   mercy; for no being can ever think himself righteous, who does not
   exercise mercy where mercy is possible--"faithful and just"
   [righteous,] says an apostle "to forgive us our sins." [40] God will be
   just, retributively, because he is righteous. He will also be merciful
   and forgiving, because he is righteous.

   In our own human judgments, we strike into this conception readily,
   however difficult it may be to find how the two are compatible. A
   distinguished A fact for illustration. English preacher, traveling in
   the country, is stopped by a highwayman demanding his purse. He
   descends composedly from his horse, and falling on his knees, offers a
   prayer for the guilty man, that he may be regained to a better mode of
   life. Rising he says--"Now go home with me and take the place I will
   give you in my family, never to be exposed, always to be cared for,
   there to win a character and be known from this time forth, God helping
   you, as a Christian man." The offer is accepted, the promise fulfilled,
   and the man is known from that time forth, as an example of fidelity
   and true piety towards God; only giving the story himself many years
   after, on the death of his benefactor. Has it ever occurred to any one
   that, in such benefaction, he was not a righteous man? Had he ever a
   scruple himself that he was not? Was he not also a man who, in a
   different case, where no such opportunity of mercy was left, would
   stand firmly by the laws, and the rigid execution of justice? Did he
   ever even think to accuse himself, as being in the fault of laxity
   concerning justice? And yet he appears, when judged by the judicial
   analogies, to have become accessory after the fact, by concealing the
   crime committed; or if not accessory, to have been guilty of
   compounding a felony. What then shall we say of him, but that, being a
   simply righteous man, he thought of something juster than political
   justice; viz., to forgive, recover, and save?

   Practically then, however we may speculate on the subject, we have no
   difficulty in allowing the compatibility Analogy in the correlation of
   forces. of justice and mercy, and regarding them rather as
   complementary than contrary, one to the other. May we not even suspect
   that it is with them, much as it is in what is now called "the
   correlation of forces?" They seem indeed to be, and in fact really are,
   very different one from the other--what can be more unlike in one view,
   than the severities of God's justice, and the benignities of his
   mercy?--and yet, as we are shown that motion is heat or convertible
   into it, and heat into motion, and both into light, and all into
   chemical affinity, and as all these forces, externally viewed so very
   unlike, are even radically one and the same, it should not be difficult
   to allow that the antagonism of these coordinate factors in religion,
   so greatly magnified hitherto, is after all a case of identity
   rather--not of identity in the experience, but of identity in the root
   and causative force in which they spring. Is there not as good reason
   to imagine that motion is hurrying away from light, and light pitching
   into chemical affinity, and this using up the heat of the planet so
   that by and by the stability and habitable order of it will be gone?
   and should we not set ourselves, in the same way, to find how the
   Creator is going to make compensations to the forces, for the losses
   they suffer from each other? And yet behold no single pennyweight is
   lost, for all the forces are one!

   On the whole this matter of a contrived compensation to justice, which
   so many take for a gospel, appears to me to contain about the worst
   reflection Compensation theories issued in mock truths. upon God's
   justice that could be stated, without some great offense against
   reverence; for in whatever manner the compensation, or judical
   satisfaction, is conceived to be made, in the suffering of Christ, we
   shall find every thing pushed off the basis of truth. The justice
   satisfied is satisfied with injustice! the forgiveness prepared is
   forgiveness on the score of pay! the judgment-day award disclaims the
   fact of forgiveness after payment made, and even refuses to be
   satisfied, taking payment again! What meantime has become of the
   penalties threatened, and where is the truth of the law? The penalties
   threatened, as against wrong doers, are not to be executed on them,
   because they have been executed on a right doer! viz., Christ. And it
   is only in some logically formal, or theologically fictitious, sense,
   that they are executed even on him. Many of the best teachers, it is
   true, have maintained that God's threatenings do not amount to a pledge
   of his veracity; [41] and it is very true that no one will complain of
   any lack of veracity, in the fact that they are not executed against
   him, as he might where a promise of good is not fulfilled in his favor.
   Still there is obviously something due to God's dignity in the matter.
   Allowing that, in some given case, he might safely do better by a
   transgressor than to execute the threatened penalty, it is very plain
   that an attempt to rule in the general, by a mere vaporing of penalty,
   or by penalties always to be remitted, would indicate a want of system
   and magistrative firmness, too closely resembled to a want of truth, to
   allow any solid title to respect.

   If it should be objected that as much defect of truth is implied in the
   mitigations of law and justice, under the plan I have sketched, it is
   enough to answer that no mitigations are made which were not implicitly
   understood in the verbal threatenings themselves. These threatenings
   only declared in general what the grand causalities of justice were
   bringing to pass, acting by themselves; and the specific variations to
   be issued by the interactions of mercy show no abandonment of justice,
   and support no charge of discrepancy, as long as the retributive
   causalities continue under their naturally immutable laws. First there
   is a natural order of justice, then there is a supernatural order of
   mercy interacting with it. And the working of the two is so difficult
   to be traced, so complex in its modes and issues, that no judicial
   sanction could be verbally stated, that is more exact or closer to the
   truth of justice, than that which is in fact asserted in the penalties
   denounced. Why then should any fault of truth be felt, when there is no
   vaporing in terrorem, or shuffling in contraries, but only a regular
   going on of justice and mercy--the natural order and the
   supernatural--moving with locked hands, sometimes issuing a
   deliverance, and sometimes a finality of retribution; neither, at all,
   violating the other as an everlasting and fixed ordinance, and both
   even helping each other into a range of dignity and power otherwise
   unattainable. The forgivenesses promised are not emptied of sound
   reality as such, by the fact that they are legally paid for. The perils
   of justice are the real perils of real justice, not of justice
   satisfied. What mercy can do, and what justice will, is clear as the
   nature of both; for both stand fast together, as they have eternally,
   in God's unchangeable righteousness.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [18] This complete silence of the Scripture, concerning a compensation,
   or necessary satisfaction paid to justice, has probably been noticed by
   many. I have only fallen upon a single instance, in the Lectures of Mr.
   Veysie. Admitting the commonly received Scripture ideas of
   reconciliation and propitiation, he considers all that is said of
   satisfaction, as their necessary ground, to be originated wholly by the
   speculations or constructive theories, of men; and he says--"Now the
   sacred writers nowhere, as far as I know, expressly assert any
   satisfaction at all as having been effected by the death of
   Christ.--Veysie's Bampton Lectures.--I.

   [19] Ps. lxxxv. 10.

   [20] Jas. ii. 13.

   [21] Ps. lxii. 12.

   [22] Jer. ix. 24..

   [23] Math. xxiii. 23.

   [24] Rom. xi. 22.

   [25] 2 Cor v. 11.

   [26] John xii. 32.

   [27] Rom. vii. 11.

   [28] John xvi. 8.

   [29] Jas. v. 9.

   [30] Math. xxv. 6.

   [31] Rom. ii. 12.

   [32] Rom. ii. 16.

   [33] Gen. xviii. 25.

   [34] John v. 27.

   [35] Ex. xxxiv. 6-7.

   [36] Rom. ii. 9.

   [37] Vide, Nature and the Supernatural, p. 58, §§.

   [38] Nature and the Supernatural, Chapter IX.

   [39] Scott's Works, Vol. II., p. 204.

   [40] 1 John i. 9.

   [41] Discourses and Treatises by Dr. Park. Introductory Essay, p. 16.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER IV.

  THE LAW PRECEPT DULY SANCTIFIED.

   THE doctrine of the chapter just concluded supersedes, it will be
   observed, all those compensational contrivances for the saving of God's
   justice, which have been the labor of theology under this head of
   atonement; showing how justice and mercy are factors in God's plan
   working safely together, and are complementary in part to each other by
   reason of the antagonism of their functions; showing also how, by this
   same qualified antagonism, the order of God's plan is made sure, and
   his ends of government accomplished. This I believe to be the doctrine
   of scripture and, of course, to be true. Still it is a kind of truth
   that requires time and reflection, and is not likely to approve itself
   generally at once. Having therefore given it forth to work
   suggestively, and finally to approve itself, I consent to waive it, and
   go on with my argument, by another course that is separate and is no
   way dependent on it.

   Holding now in view the same particular apprehensions of damage, from
   the introduction of forgiveness and free justification, that were
   mentioned in the close of the third chapter, I propose, in this and the
   two following chapters, to go over them in order, and show that the
   said grounds of apprehended damage do not exist; or that, if they might
   exist, they are adequately provided against. I do not say that they are
   provided against by any strictly compensative arrangements, though I
   shall bring forward and specify things which others may take as
   compensatory, in respect to law and justice, if they choose.

   We shall be discussing, in these chapters, what many take for the whole
   subject; viz., the ground of forgiveness; but as this, in the view I am
   giving, is no real subject at all, I do not propose the matter to be
   investigated in that form. I propose rather to inquire what is the
   working of forgiveness itself, as accomplished by the Moral Power of
   Christ in his Sacrifice? It appears to be supposed that forgiveness is
   a mere letting go of the guilty, just as a man who has been injured by
   another lets him go, consentingly, without further blame. But there is
   this very immense difference, if we will not be deceived by the most
   superficial notion possible, between our letting go of an adversary and
   God's, that, while our adversary is wholly quit of our impeachment,
   God's is really bound fast in the chains of justice and penal
   causation, and held as fixedly in their fires, after he is let go, as
   before. Merely telling him that he is forgiven signifies nothing, even
   though it be by a voice from heaven. He must be forgiven, the
   forgiveness must be executed, by an inward change that takes him out of
   his bondages, and the hell of penal causations loosed by his sin, and
   brings him forth into the liberties of love and adoption. This will be
   effected by the grace of Christ in his vicarious sacrifice., And then
   the question follows, how the forgiveness, the real deliverance
   accomplished by him, may consist with the precept, and the enforcements
   of law, and the rectoral justice of God? No ground of forgiveness is
   wanted; but only that the forgiveness itself be executed in a way to
   save all the great interests of eternal authority and government.

   The first named ground of apprehension is, that the law precept may
   seem to be loosely held and fall into practical dishonor. Do we then
   make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea we establish the law.

   I turn the question here, as regards the precept of the law, upon the
   particular word honor; partly because it is historical, being a
   favorite word of The sacrifice saves the honors of the law precept.
   Anselm for such uses; and partly because there is no other word so
   appropriate. Sin dishonors the law, breaks it down, tramples it in
   customary contempt, raises a feeling of disrespect in mankind strong
   enough to be itself called the law of this world. Hence the necessity
   of punishment, which is that self-asserting act of God, in its behalf,
   by which he invests it with honor. For it must be remembered here, that
   we are not looking for some scheme of penal substitution, compensation,
   satisfaction, but are, in fact, discussing the great question how it is
   that God forgives; or, what is the same, accomplishes the restoration
   of fallen character? Where it is coming out, that he gets a great part
   of this power, not by his mere love and suffering patience and divine
   sympathy in Christ, but also in part by the invigoration of law and its
   moral impressions. A very small matter it will be in this view, that he
   manages to just save the law by some judicial compensation--he does
   infinitely more, he intensifies and deepens the impression of law, to
   such a degree that it comes out reenacted, as it were, to be fulfilled
   in a higher key of observance.

   To make this very important fact apparent, attention is called to four
   distinct points of view, in which Christ, by his sacrifice, magnifies,
   if I should not rather say glorifies, the precept of the law.

   I. He restores men to the precept. If there were no instituted law,
   none but the law before government, there would be no doubt of this.
   But the instituted Christ restores to the precept. law goes by
   enforcement, and is honored because of the enforcement; how then can it
   be honored in a loss of the same, that is in forgiveness? Because, I
   answer, the subject forgiven is restored to all precept; not to the
   Right or Precept Absolute only, but impliedly to all the statutes of
   God's instituted government, for the application and the enforced
   sanction of that. No matter then if the forgiven soul is taken clean by
   the sanctions, to think only of precept. All the more and not the less
   does he honor it, that he is brought into a love of it, and of God by
   whom it is enforced, such that his obedience becomes an inspiration. We
   may even say that he is released from the law wherein he was held; but
   we only mean that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in him, by
   the free assent of his liberty, outrunning all enforcement, If then
   Christ restores to such a noble conformity, raising the whole stature
   of life and quality of being in them that are restored, how can it be
   said that the precept of the law is made void or put in dishonor? Is it
   any more dishonored, or made void, in the case of such as are not, and
   will not be, restored? Has any remission been extended to them? Just
   contrary to that, they are going to be made responsible in fact and in
   strict justice, for their contempt and rejection, not of the precept
   only but of the great mercy tendered them, to help their recovery into
   it.

   On the whole, there appears to be no single point where any loss of
   honor can be imagined, as far as the precept is concerned. Christ
   beholds it from the first moment onward, doing nothing and wanting
   nothing, in all the immense travail of his incarnate ministry and
   death, but to commend the Righteousness and Beauty of it, and regain
   lost men to that homage which is at once their own blessedness and its
   everlasting honor.

   II. Christ honors the precept, not only in what he does for our sake,
   in restoring us to it and forgiving us in it, but quite as much in what
   he does Christ reasserts and establishes the law itself. for its sake,
   to restore and save it also. For how shall he so magnify the law, as by
   setting it on high, enthroning it in love, organizing in it a kingdom
   worthy of its breadth, beneficence, dignity, and all-encompassing
   order? We often magnify Christ's work as being a work of salvation for
   men, because it is in this view that it makes an appeal so persuasive
   to human feeling; but there is nothing he would spurn himself, with a
   more total disallowance, than the thought of a salvation gotten up for
   men, one side of the grand, everlasting law, in which God's empire
   stands. We greatly mistake, if we think that Christ is doing every
   thing here, as prosecuting a suit before human feeling, and to bring
   human souls out of trouble; he wants to bring them into righteousness;
   and that again, not for their sakes only, but a great deal more for
   righteousness' sake; to heal the elemental war, and settle everlasting
   order, in that good law which is the inherent principle of order.

   What meaning there may be in this ought, henceforth, to be never a
   secret to our American people. In our four years of dreadful civil war,
   what immense sacrifices of blood and treasure have we made; refusing to
   be weakened by sorrow, or shaken by discouragement, or even to be
   slackened by unexpected years of delay. Failure was prophesied on every
   hand; compositions were proposed without number. Yet nothing could meet
   our feeling but to save the integrity of our institutions, and forever
   establish the broken order of the law. All the stress of our gigantic
   effort hinged on this and this alone. No composition could be endured,
   or even thought of, that did not settle us in obedience, and pacify us
   in the sovereignty of law; and, to the more rational of us, nothing
   appeared to lay a sufficiently firm basis of order, but the clearance
   somehow of that which has been the mockery of our principles. and the
   ferment even, from the first, of our discord. The victory we sighed
   for, and the salvation we sought, were summed up in the victory and
   salvation of law. Failing in this every thing would be lost. Succeeding
   in this all sacrifice was cheap, even that of our first-born.

   What now do we see in the sacrifice of Christ, but that he, only in a
   vastly higher and more grandly heroic devotion of his life, is doing
   all for the violated honor and broken sovereignty of law. He proposes,
   indeed, to be a Saviour to men; but the gist of the salvation, both to
   us and to him, is that heaven's original order is to be restored in us,
   and made solid and glorious, in the crowning of God's instituted
   government forever. Every thing that we see therefore, in the incarnate
   life and suffering death, is God magnifying the honors of his law by
   the stress of his own stupendous sacrifice. Such an amount of feeling,
   put into the governmental order, commends it to our feeling; and also
   turns our feeling into awe before it. The law is raised as precept, in
   this manner, to a new pitch of honor, and the power of impression given
   to it, by the vicarious sacrifice and more than mortal heroism of
   Jesus, is the principal cause of that immense progress in moral
   sensibility and opinion, that distinguishes the Christian populations
   of the world. What they so much feel and have coming in upon their
   moral sensibility, in ways so piercing, is the law of duty, glorified
   by suffering and the visibly divine sacrifice of the cross.

   III. Christ adds authority and honor to the law-precept, as being, in
   his own person, the incarnation of it. In itself, what we call law is
   impersonal, He is himself the incarnation of the precept. a cold
   mandatory of abstraction. Its authority, as such, is the conviction it
   is able to produce of its own imperative right. An additional honor and
   authority is given it also, when God reaffirms it, and from the point
   of his invisible majesty, assumes the maintenance of it. A certain
   authority is gained for it also by impressive circumstance, when it is
   delivered from the thundering and smoking mountain top. By the cold
   intimidation of such a pronouncement, it even becomes appalling; it
   makes the people quake and shiver. Still the coldness and the stern
   decretive majesty partly benumb conviction. To have its full authority
   felt, it must be brought nigh in its true geniality and warmth, as a
   gift to the higher nature of souls; exactly as it is, when it is
   incarnated and made personal in Christ, addressing human conviction by
   his human voice. For Christ is not, as many seem to fancy, a mere
   half-character of God incarnate, a kind of incarnate weakness in the
   figure of a love-principle, separated from every thing else in God's
   greatness, necessary to the tonic vigor of love. Being the incarnation
   of God, the full round character of God as he is must be
   included--authority, justice, purity, truth, forgiveness, gentleness,
   suffering love, all excellence. All these, in fact, belong to God's
   character, and they are here brought nigh, brought into concrete
   expression, thus to be entered, by Christ, as a complete moral power,
   into souls, They work all together, in his charities, in his miracles,
   in his doctrine, in his death, resurgent with him, as it were, when he
   rises and goes up on high, there to assume the kingdom with him and to
   judge the worlds. Hence the remarkable authority that is felt to be
   somehow embodied in him, even from the first. There is really more of
   authority for the precept of law, in the fifth chapter of Matthew, than
   there is in the whole five books of Moses; nay, there is more in his
   simple beatitudes themselves. For moral ideas and the claims of duty
   under God, are brought specially nigh, when spoken thus, out of human
   feeling, to the living sensibility. and conscious want of human hearts.
   Scarcely necessary was it for him to add, that no jot or tittle of the
   law should fail; still less, when the mysterious authority of his
   manner and person were always enforcing the same impression. He spake
   with authority, they said, and not as the Scribes; "never man spake
   like this man." His simple definition, or summation of law--"Thou shalt
   love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
   with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the
   second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
   thyself"--seemed, to the captious scribe, a kind of second giving of
   the law, so divinely impressive was the manner, and he durst not
   question farther. Nothing could be more natural; for, in his person,
   not the love only, but the law, nay, the instituted government of God
   itself is incarnated and become a person, It is seen when he is looked
   upon, heard when he speaks. What then shall be so felt as the authority
   of his manner? How else shall law, too, get a presence so majestic in
   the world, as when it thus becomes the good, great King of
   promise--Immanuel--Messiah? But these are all inferior and scarcely
   more than accessory arguments; the principal remains to be added which
   is this--

   IV. The almost inconceivable honor Christ confers on the law precept,
   in the fact that his incarnation, life, and death upon the cross--all
   that I have His life and death are his obedience to law. included in
   his vicarious sacrifice--are the fruit of his own free homage and
   eternally acknowledged obligation to the law; in one word his deific
   obedience.

   I have spoken of the law before government, the eternal absolute law of
   right. Under it, and by it, as existing in logical order before God's
   perfections, even they, as we found reason to believe, have their
   spring. It was not necessary here to go into any very elaborate
   argument; for it can not escape the discovery of any one, that if God
   has moral perfections of any kind, they must have a standard law, and
   obtain their quality of merit, by their fulfillment of that law. Of
   course there is no precedence of time in the law, as compared with the
   date of God's perfections, but there must be a precedence of order, and
   the law must be obligatory in that precedence. But we come now to a
   matter which, to most minds, will be more remote and more difficult;
   viz., to the fact, that God has not only a character ever lastingly
   perfected in right, but that, by the same law, he is held to a
   suffering goodness for his enemies, even to that particular work in
   time, which we call the vicarious sacrifice of Christ. Christ was, in
   this view, under obligation to be the redeemer he was; and fulfilling
   that obligation, he conferred an honor on the law fulfilled, such as
   could not be conferred by any stringency of justice laid upon the race
   itself. A point so remote from many, and yet of so great consequence,
   requires to be more carefully established.

   Consider and make due account then, of the fact, that the eternal law
   of right, which we can not well deny is the basis of God's perfections,
   and of all The Law is Love and Love is Vicarious Sacrifice. law human
   and divine, is only another conception of the law of love; and that, as
   the righteousness of God fulfills the Right, so it is declared that
   "God is Love," as being another equally valid conception of his eternal
   perfections. The two principles, right and love, appear to exactly
   measure each other. One is the law absolute, or ideal, commanding the
   soul, even if it were to exist in solitude; the other is the law
   relational, grounded on the sense of relationship to other beings, who
   may be socially affected by our acts. Thus every one who will be and do
   right, in the large and complete sense of the principle, will as
   certainly love all beings, whether God or men, whether friends or
   enemies, whether deserving or unworthy, with whom he finds himself in
   relation. The law of love appears to be, in some sense, a law of.
   revelation, as the law of right is not. And yet the law of love is just
   as truly grounded in nature, commands the assent of natural conviction
   just as invincibly, when it is once stated. The only reason why it is
   not propounded universally as a principle of natural morality, is that
   the close relationality of it is cross to our humanly selfish habit. We
   can talk of being right, and are willing to think of that as a duty,
   because we can put a lower, merely conventional, and market sense on
   the word, that accommodates our self-approbation; but we shrink from
   the law of love, and do not propose it in our schemes of ethics,
   because we do not consciously recognize and practically own the
   brotherhood of other beings. In a certain philanthropic and romantic
   way, we do it, but to have the law drawn close enough to put us under
   bonds of concern for them, and even of suffering and sacrifice for
   their sake, is not a kind of standard that we naturally propose. Very
   admirable and truly great is the example, when it is fulfilled; we are
   even quite melted in the tenderness it excites; but the goodness is too
   nearly superlative, the standard too high, and we look for some other
   in some lower key.

   But this will not be the manner of God. Love to him is Right and Right
   to him is Love. And, as certainly as he is in this law of love, he
   Christ fulfills eternal obligation. will suffer the pains of love, he
   will go beyond all terms of mere justice or desert, yield up
   resentments, pass by wrongs already suffered, put himself in a way to
   receive the wrongs and bear the violence even of personal enemies, if
   he can hope to do them good with no counterbalancing injury. In a word,
   he will so insert himself into the miseries, and even into the guilt of
   their state, as to have them as a burden on his feeling, contriving, by
   whatever method, at whatever expense, to bring them relief. All this in
   eternal obligation. We do not commonly speak of God as a being under
   obligation, because, being transgressors ourselves, we associate some
   idea of constraint and even fear with obligation; yet what are God's
   moral perfections, but his mind's free homage to binding principles?
   And if the principles are not good enough to bind, what is the merit of
   their observance? God is of course amenable to no law, as prescribed by
   a superior--enough that he is freely, gloriously, amenable to law, in
   its own self-asserting majesty; that which, like himself, is eternal,
   that which he "possessed in the beginning of his way, before his works
   of old." Perhaps it is better not to say that he is under law, lest we
   associate some constraint, or limitation, but that he is in it, has it
   for the spring of his character and counsel, and so of his beatitude
   for ever. Even as Hooker eloquently says--"that law which hath been of
   God and with God everlastingly"--"it is laid up in the bosom of God."

   God then does not make the law of love, or impose it upon us by his own
   mere will. It is with him as an eternal, necessary, immutable, law,
   existing in logical order before his will, and commanding, in the right
   of its own excellence, his will and life. This being given, all his
   plans, decrees, creations, and executory statutes are built to it, as
   the heavens by the eternal laws of geometry. And so, all government
   being cast in this mold, God is united to creatures, creatures to God
   and to each other, by this one common term, which interprets and
   unifies all. Were there any being, whether Creator, or creature, who
   had a different kind of law, prescribing a different kind of virtue, he
   would be unintelligible to the others, and practically unrelated to
   them. And his virtue, call it by what ever epithets of distinction,
   could not even pass the audit of a common respect and praise.

   In this manner we are prepared for the conclusion and even brought down
   close upon it, that Christ came into the world, as the incarnate Word
   The cross not optional but obligatory. and Saviour of sinners, just
   because the eternal, necessary law of love made it obligatory in him to
   be such a Saviour. It is with him even as the apostle represents, when
   he says--"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of
   Christ." It is not commandment that he speaks of, but it is law, that
   same which rested on the divine nature and which Christ fulfilled in
   his sacrifice; that same in which he gave himself, for love's sake,
   even to death for malefactors and enemies. The essentially vicarious
   action of the love-principle and the manner in which it makes the want,
   or woe, or even sin, of others its own personal concern, I have
   sufficiently shown already, [42] but I find the point so finely
   conceived by Edwards, that I am tempted here to cite his language; only
   wishing that he could have seen the reach of what he is saying, as
   affording the only good and right solution of the substitution of
   Christ, or of the scripture expressions The substitutional action of
   love perceived by Edwards. concerning it. "A strong exercise of love
   excites a lively idea of the objects beloved. And a strong exercise of
   pity excites a lively idea of the misery under which he pities them.
   Christ's love and pity fixed the idea of them in his mind, as if he had
   been really they, and fixed their calamity in his mind as though it had
   been really his. A very strong and lively love and pity towards the
   miserable tends to make their case ours; as, in other respects so in
   this, in particular, as it doth, in an idea, place us in their stead,
   under their misery, with a most lively, feeling sense of that misery;
   as it were feeling it for them, actually suffering it in their stead by
   strong sympathy." [43] Thus it was that Christ bore his burden as being
   under the eternal law of love, and so fulfilled it as to make it, in
   some really impressive sense, his law--"the law of Christ."

   There was no constraint in the obligation, it is true; the more
   wonderful therefore is the grace of the obedience that is yielded so
   freely. And of course the obligation, when we thus speak, is not any
   obligation due to us. We had no claims to lay upon him, any more than
   our enemy has a claim upon us, that we shall sacrifice our peace, or
   life, to his benefit. It was simply obligation to the grand,
   everlasting, essentially vicarious principle of love, an obligation to
   be gracious, and do by his disobedient subjects, since he could well do
   it, better than they deserve; which if he could not consent to, he must
   be quite another and less approvable character before the standards of
   his own perfect mind. There is nothing optional, as many conceive in
   his sacrifice. He could renounce it, only as he could the honors of his
   own perfect character. In it he is just as good as he is in obligation
   to be. If better, then either he is better than he should be, or the
   law less good than it ought to be. Whereas it is the exact merit, the
   glory of both, that they punctually meet in the utmost limit of good.

   The conception of some such obligation, or obedience to obligation, in
   the work and sacrifice of Christ, has been more or less nearly
   approached Anselm and Bellamy. by many. Thus Anselm, while conceiving
   that Christ undertakes the work at his option, still imagines a kind of
   obligation post requiring it of God himself. "Does not the reason why
   God ought to do the things we speak of seem absolute enough, when we
   consider that the human race, that work of his so very precious, was
   wholly ruined, and that it was not seemly that the purpose which God
   had in man should fall to the ground?" [44] Bellamy also conceives that
   God, in requiring perfect obedience of man as the condition of his well
   being, even carefully squared his own action by the golden rule, in a
   way of volunteer allegiance to it, saying, "I did as well by mankind,
   as I should desire to have been done by myself, had I been in their
   case and they in mine; for when my Son, who is as myself, came to stand
   in their place, I required the same of him." [45]

   But there is another version of the obedience of Christ--the same which
   is indicated in these last words--which requires our attention. Thus
   The obedience of Christ to the Father, his obedience to law. many,
   giving to certain words of scripture a meaning favored by their most
   superficial acceptation, look upon it never as the obedience of God
   himself to the eternal, necessary law, but as being that of a certain
   second person, who is somehow other and not God, contributed by him to
   God for sinners. Obtaining thus a peculiar merit by his suffering
   obedience, the second person, they conceive, is able to pay the first
   for the letting go of their punishment. And they quote, as authority
   for this, all the texts that speak of Christ as being sent, or
   commanded by the Father, as doing his will, as obedient unto death, for
   the Father's reward. As if one person of the Trinity, putting another
   under command, and sending him into the world to suffer and die for
   sin, were any permissible account either of the Trinity, or of the
   suffering. Why must we take hold of words in this manner, without
   considering at all the conditions of the subject matter? The Father is
   above, representing the eternal government; the Son is a man below,
   acting, so far, under and obeying that government. But in another,
   wholly consistent view, he is, in his human person, the express image
   and outward type of what is most intense and deepest in the character
   and action of God himself; representing, in what is called his
   obedience to the Father, the everlasting obedience of the whole divine
   nature to the ideal, fundamental law. Thus when he testifies--"I came
   not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me"--"as the
   Father gave me commandment so I do," he is to be understood just as he
   is when he says--"the Father is greater than I;" that is, not as
   declaring his literal inferiority, and his subjection as the eternal
   Son, or second person, to the Father's mandates, but as speaking for
   the human state he is in, and refusing to be made an idol of in his
   human figure. He is only saying, do not stop at me, and localize God
   quantitively in me, when he is only in me, as being expressed by me.
   Let your thought begin at me, and then, counting me one with the
   Father, in what you have discovered by me, let it travel up and crown
   itself in him. Having gotten out of me the feeling and character of the
   God invisible, count that having seen me "ye have seen the Father that
   sent me;" that, in what I have called my obedience to Him, ye have seen
   that everlasting obedience to law, which is the essence and soul of his
   perfections. Let your homage therefore be to Him, as the God above
   limitation, discovered to your love in and by limitation.

   In this manner, Christ is always contriving to carry men's thoughts
   above, or up through, his humanity, and forbid their coming to a period
   of stunted measurement in his human person. He takes the subject state,
   doing and showing every thing in and by that state, and then, referring
   it back to that unseen sovereign state of which it is the
   representation. Any other conception of the matter, such as puts the
   Son literally under the tutelage and authority of the Father, is a
   superstition put for doctrine, and not any rational belief. God is
   three in no such sense that he is not one; least of all is he three, in
   any such sense, that he has relations of authority and subjection in
   his threeness. The obedience of Christ, then, represents just that
   which we have seen to be included in God's moral perfection, or
   righteousness; viz., the everlasting obedience of his nature to the law
   of right, or of love. Nay, if we will let our plummet down to the
   bottom of this great sea, the cross of Jesus represents and reveals the
   tremendous cross that is hid in the bosom of God's love and life from
   eternity.

   It is obvious enough that, in such a way of obedience, Christ makes a
   contribution of honor to the law he obeys, that will do more to
   enthrone The immense honor paid to the Law by Christ's obedience. it in
   our reverence, than all the desecrations of sin have done to pluck it
   down--more too, than all conceivable punishments, to make it felt and
   keep it in respect. The grand evil of sin is that it tramples law and
   brings it into contempt. Many, too, apprehend danger from the full
   remission of sin, lest it should leave the law trampled and without
   vindication, and reveal a kind of indifference to it in God, that will
   be fatal to all due impressions of its authority and sanctity. Here
   then, over against all such damages and apprehended mischiefs of
   laxity, we now place the momentous, grandly impressive, fact of
   Christ's obedience--his obedience unto death--taken as an exhibition of
   God's eternal homage to law, and of the cross of sacrifice by which his
   feeling and will are everlastingly bowed to the burdens of pity and
   suffering. Even as Christ himself conceives the representative nature
   of his whole life, when he says--"I have glorified thee on the earth."

   Now I do not undertake to show, be it observed, that Christ came into
   the world, in a plan to set his obedience over against the damages and
   Compensation enough were compensation wanted. debts of sins; or that he
   came to fill out any scheme of satisfaction, or compensation. If any
   thing is wanting to compensate the loss of punishment, it will be
   enough that the very things suffered and done to make the forgiveness
   an executed fact, give back greater honors to the law than are lost by
   the loss of punishment. No, Christ came just because the law he had
   been in from eternity sent him, and his incarnate appearing was but the
   necessary outcoming in time of God's eternal Love. He descended to the
   lot of men just because he had them in his heart. His object was only
   to minister. His compassions, even before he came, were tinged all
   through with sorrowing tenderness. His emotional nature was stung and
   wounded every day, after he came, by the scenes of wrong and cruelty he
   was compelled to look upon, the sicknesses, and pains, and deaths, and
   torments of spiritual disorder to which he ministered. The storms of
   the world's madness gathered round him in his work, and the inward
   storms of mental agony rolled heavily over him sometimes in his private
   hours. But his effort was to simply fulfill such a ministry to lost men
   as would gain them back to God and eternal life. He strove, in
   particular, by his teachings, healings, sympathies, and the impressions
   of his personal suffering, to inaugurate a new and more adequate moral
   power by his ministry; so to get hold of their moral convictions, so to
   work on their guiltiness, by the due manifestation of God, and his
   love, as to even regenerate their character. And doing all this, going
   even to the cross for love's sake, in a perfectly simple devotion, what
   will more certainly follow than that even the law thus gloriously
   fulfilled in his ministry, is itself raised into power by the honor he
   confers upon it? Every thing gets a moral power that he touches, or
   looks upon--the Jordan, that he went down into it; Nazareth, that it
   saw his childhood; Capernaum, that it heard his first sermon; the
   waters of Gennessaret, that they floated his boat and settled into
   peace under his word. Nay, if we could find it, even the rock of the
   mountain that supported his head in the sleep of his solitary night,
   would have itself a sacred power from his person. Why not then the law,
   that which he had with him before the world was, that which he taught
   so convincingly, that which he fulfilled by so many exhaustive labors,
   and by sorrowing even unto death?

   Grant that here is no contrived compensation to law, is it any the less
   truly compensated, any the less sacred, and honorable, and powerful on
   a lost world's feeling, that he has glorified it forever in their sight
   by his simple obedience? Whatever we may say or think of the matter of
   judicial compensation, as a purpose to be answered by his death, he
   could not be ignorant that the highest possible honor would be imparted
   to the law by his obedience to it; still it does not appear that even
   this was any principal end of his engagement. His principal end was in
   the sacrifice itself; viz., in the fulfilling and bringing forth of
   God's love to men, and the organizing of God's kingdom among them, by
   his glorious, world-transforming power. In this he did not fail, and it
   is only affirming a very subordinate matter, to say that his power,
   which came out of the law, came back also upon it, and made it a
   greater power than either the obedience, or the punishment of all past
   ages could.

   As regards the degree of honor thus conferred by his obedience on the
   law, two points need especially to be observed. First, that the law
   fulfilled The very law dishonored organizes the redemption. by his
   vicarious love and ministry, was exactly the same that our sin had cast
   off and desecrated--this it was that put the lost world upon his
   feeling, proved its goodness in his goodness, shaped the beauty of his
   beauty, travailed for us in his agony, and held him to the obedience
   even unto death. So the violated law comes back upon us to overwhelm
   us, by showing us, in Christ, just what goodness was in it. Secondly
   that, in this suffering and sacrifice of Jesus, there was nothing new,
   but only a new revelation of that which was old as the perfections of
   God. As a new waking up of feeling in deity, always before impassible,
   it would be a fact too violent for belief. Contrary to this, it is but
   the letting out of God's feeling, that could get no such sufficient
   vent of evidence before. This same agony and passion heaved in the
   breast of God's virtue, even from before the world's foundations. God
   was suffering in feeling for the ages to be, even before the evil was.
   In his counsel of creation he could not think of wrong, and disorder,
   and pain breaking loose, without being exercised for it according to
   its nature. There was a losing side of pain, in his goodness, just
   because it was good; only the loss was never a true loss, because it
   was eternally repaid by the willingness to lose for love's sake. The
   Gethsemane of his compassions kept company with his joys, and the
   conscious goodness of one was high enough to exalt the conscious bliss
   of the other. All this now appears, in the specially human facts of
   Christ and his passion. The law that was being thus sublimely
   fulfilled, in God's suffering love from eternity, is only now fulfilled
   to human view, by the suffering ministry of Jesus. No such revelation
   was made, or could be, in the field of nature before. Scantily and
   feebly was it made, so as to just glimmer and nothing more, in the word
   of the ancient prophets, and the guesses of the ancient saints. Now it
   is out in the full, revealed in time--God is in the world in love,
   fulfilling his eternal law Himself, for the saving of its rejectors.

   But there are two objections to be noticed. The first is that which is
   actually, yet accidentally, stated by Mr Burge, without any conception
   of its Objected that the obedience was nothing new. applicability to
   the case here occurring. He says [46] --"In his divine nature,
   therefore, he could not have rendered precisely that obedience which
   man failed to render. Neither can it be supposed that in his divine
   nature, when he was incarnate, he obeyed the divine law, in any sense
   different from that in which God obeyed it from eternity. It is not
   seen, therefore, how Christ's obedience to the law could manifest God's
   regard for holiness, on account of his union of the divine and human
   natures, any more than if no such union had existed." Most true it is
   that he did not obey the law in any sense different from that in which
   God had obeyed it from eternity. But the inference that nothing is
   shown by his obedience, more than was shown by the eternal obedience,
   is just as good as it would be to argue that, manifesting nothing of
   God's love in his death, more than was in God's love before, it is
   therefore nugatory. The glory of his incarnate mission is precisely
   this, and in this is the gain of it, that he unbosoms, in time, what
   love and obedience to law were hid in God's unseen majesty, or but
   dimly and feebly shown before.

   The second objection referred to is that in such use of the obedience
   of Christ, conceived to be a simple fulfillment of his obligation, we
   get no surplus merit to be our righteousness. By a very strange, almost
   incredible mock refinement, the sacrifice of Christ is dissected by the
   prominent satisfaction theories, just between Objected that, in such
   use of the obedience, no surplus merit is left for us. the passive and
   the active, the suffering and the obedience; the suffering being put to
   our account with justice and called our atonement, and the obedience
   taken as a positive fulfillment of the law, and assigned to us for a
   righteousness. I can hardly trust myself to speak of this wretched
   imposture of science, falsely so called, as it deserves. It is a
   halving, as it were, of Christ and his sacrifice, that makes both
   halves alike of non effect. Of what worth is the suffering, taken as
   mere suffering, with no obedience or moral quality in it? Of what
   worth, too, is the obedience, considered as having suffered nothing,
   proved itself by nothing, and even missed the prime attribute of
   reality? Is God a being who wants suffering by itself, and will have it
   from no matter whom? Is he a being who can make a righteousness for us
   quantitatively out of another's obedience, and be himself pleased with
   the impossible fiction? O how different a matter is the sublime
   obedience of Jesus--obedience unto death, death as the seal of
   obedience--covering the law thus with its original honor and breathing
   God's everlasting love into out fallen desecrated nature! This is
   gospel--possible truth, and good enough and great enough to be true.
   Whoever turns it, therefore, into wood and hay may be ingenious, but he
   will have scarcely less to answer for in his doctrine, I seriously
   fear, than others have in their sin.

   Reviewing now the ground over which we have passed, I think it will be
   seen that Christ has set the law precept in a position of great honor
   and power, enduing it with such life and majesty, in men's convictions,
   as it otherwise never could have had. (1.) He proposes, we have seen,
   no remission of sins which does not include a full recovery to the law.
   (2.) All that he does and suffers in his sacrifice, he as truly does
   for the resanctification of the law as for-our recovery. (3.) In his
   incarnation, he incarnates the same, and brings it nigh to men's
   feelings and convictions, by the personal footing he gains for it in
   humanity. (4.) He honors it again by his obedience, which is, in fact,
   a revelation of God's own everlasting obedience, before the eyes of
   mankind; the grandest fact of human knowledge. With great confidence
   then I state the conclusion, that the law precept is safe, established
   in power, crowned with invincible honor. Whatever may be thought, or
   apprehended, in respect to the possible damage accruing to God's law,
   as regards the matter of enforcement, when the remission of penalty is
   proclaimed, there can be no misgiving, in respect to the integrity and
   sanctity of the requirement. Whether there is any proper ground of
   concern for the loss of the penal enforcements, will be considered in
   the next chapter.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [42] Part I., Chapter I.

   [43] Edwards' Miscellaneous Observations, p. 5.

   [44] Cur Deus Homo, Lib. 1., Cap. iv.

   [45] Vol. I., p. 259.

   [46] Discourses and Treatises by Dr. Park, p. 475.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER V.

  LEGAL ENFORCEMENTS NOT DIMINISHED.

   THE common assumption, that law is absurd or impossible without penal
   enforcements, is not quite true, Legal penal enforcements necessary for
   bad minds. or is only true in a given case or condition. God himself
   acknowledges law even from eternity, though it has to Him no sanction
   over and above its own excellence. All upright beings do the same.
   Indeed a law propounded with a penalty, to a realm in perfect holiness,
   would even be an impropriety, or blamable offense to their feeling. Not
   so, when propounded to minds no longer capable of being swayed by the
   authority of beauty and excellence in their own right. For it is the
   misery and shame of bad minds under sin, that excellence and beauty,
   powerful as they still are over the sentiments of their higher nature
   not yet extirpated, are no longer sufficient, by themselves, to recover
   and restore the broken homage of their fall. They move on a point, too
   far above the plane of motivity occupied by sin, to control and subdue
   it. They are likely indeed, when embodied in Christ, to be felt more as
   a disturbance, than as an attraction. What is wanted therefore, in
   connection with his new salvation, is some John the Baptist going
   before, to prepare his way. The new moral power wants a force-power to
   precede; something which meets the selfishness of sin in its own plane,
   making the appeal, at first, to interest or precautionary prudence, by
   intimidations and appeals to fear. To have approving sentiments raised
   for law in the bosom of transgression, and so to have it kept in
   reverence, is highly important, or even necessary, but there is wanted,
   beside, a more rugged sort of argument, that of strong penal
   enforcements; such as may cut off delays, stop the idle debates of the
   head, and raise a point-blank issue with pride and willfulness that,
   being an issue of peril, can not be parried.

   To be more exact, we have proposed for us, at this point, two distinct
   schemes of motivity, neither of which is properly and fully Christian;
   first the scheme that makes nothing of fear, and the lower motives
   addressed to prudence, counting wholly on such as lie in the ideal
   goodness and beauty of holiness itself; and secondly the scheme which,
   finding natural causes arranged for the penal chastisement of wrong,
   counts the arrangement a complete moral government in itself, beside
   which no other is wanted, or in fact exists.

   The former scheme assumes that goodness and right are their own
   argument, able to rule by their own simple excellence. What is good for
   False assumption that goodness is government enough. angels in their
   height of virtue, is declared to be good also for men in their sin. At
   any rate, as the argument goes, nothing less, or lower, is permissible
   any where; for what kind of excellence, or virtue is that, which is
   goaded by the impulsions of fear and threatened force? If any such
   thing is thought of, in this scheme, as conversion, the assumption is
   that evil will let go evil, and turn itself to good, simply for
   goodness' sake, without any thought or motive met in its own plane to
   dislodge it. Christ is more practical, and just as much more rational.
   He does not look on the world as being in a' state to be converted
   romantically, as by the mere attractions of goodness and beauty. A
   beginning is to be made, he clearly sees, with sin, at its own level;
   the level of guilty apprehension, fear, selfishly interested forecast
   of the future. His first thought is to block the way of transgression,
   by warnings and appeals of terror. Setting the gate of God's mercy and
   truth wide open, he does not expect the transgressors to enter, just
   because he sits there, in the lovely charms of goodness. He expects
   them to come in, only as he compels them to come in; sending out the
   rugged sheriffalty of law and penal enforcement, to grapple them, as it
   were, by the shoulder. It is nothing to him that the first motives
   felt, in such a case, are too low for any state of virtue. Enough that,
   by guiltiness, want, fear, interested feeling, struggling with the
   dreadful and appalling problems of life, he is able to get them
   arrested in evil, and that, when the arrest is made, consideration
   begun, willfulness broken, the nobler motives of admiring
   sentiment--love, beauty, sacrifice--may come into play, and work their
   captivating spells of goodness on the heart's devotion. No delicate
   philosophy detains him; if the lower motives appealed to are not fine
   enough for goodness, they are, at least, coarse enough for
   badness--just the fit evils to put in the way of evil, just the
   arguments it is able to feel, when it can be reached by nothing else.
   And so, by this very practical regimen, he is able to balk the progress
   of transgression, turn back the soul on thoughtfulness, so on
   repentance, so on the love of goodness and excellence for their own
   sake. And this to him more emphatically than to any other teacher of
   the world, is the only real state of virtue--dear to him specially in
   the fact, that, in being perfected as love, it casteth out the fear, in
   whose guilty intimidations it found the opportunity and date of its own
   beginning.

   Thus it is that Christ, recognizing the fears as an original and
   profoundly rational function of souls, makes no scruple of appeal to
   them, even when his object is to consummate a character wholly superior
   to their active sway. He believes, we shall see, in strong penal
   enforcements, and puts them forward, clear of all delicate misgiving,
   to be the advance guard of his mercies.

   The second scheme referred to holds a humbler key; it is wholly in the
   plane of prudence and natural retribution; delighting in the discovery
   that, False assumption that retribution is government enough. according
   to the original outfit of life, the moral law, or law of responsible
   conduct, has a whole system or economy of causes put in company with
   it, to be its avengers and redress its violations. And this, it is
   conceived, is the complete account, or whole, of God's moral
   government. What we call punishment is the natural correction of our
   evils. Every sin, they say, is sure to be overtaken by its penalty; no
   trial, or judge, or judgment-seat, is wanted, the culprit carries his
   own hells of punishment with him, and every transgression kindles its
   own fires. And so it is conceived that motives of fear, prudence, and
   actual suffering, are the only arguments of virtue; which, of course
   never rises above the control of such, and really wants no other.
   Salvation itself, if we are to use the term, consists in simply backing
   out of our wrongs, because we are scorched by justice, or will be, in
   them. Saying nothing of the very ignoble and mean quality of such
   virtue, it is plain as it need be, that such kind of enforcement by
   natural causes, taken by itself, and not as a base for the working of
   higher motives, makes inevitably the most hopeless, helpless, least
   enforced, scheme of duty that can be conceived. The result of such a
   scheme is not any state of virtue, but a state of natural punition that
   is, without a peradventure, endless. For the penal causations take
   away, at once, the powers so to speak of obedience. When the soul
   breaks into sin, the laws of retribution begin forthwith to punish it,
   by throes of internal disorder, which no power of the will can stop. It
   is shaken out of equilibrium, out of the full natural possession of
   itself, out of its constitutional harmony, by the terrible recoil of
   its transgression. The passions, fears, convictions, sentiments,
   imaginations, are all set loose in a quarrel with each other, and the
   will can neither recompose the state of harmony, nor the mind itself
   accurately conceive the internal readjustments necessary to such
   harmony. The transgressor could as easily regather his money sown upon
   the Gulf Stream, as gather himself back out of the penal causations in
   which he is sweltering. The penal disorders and breakages will
   propagate, indirectly, other disorders and breakages, and the motions
   of life itself will be only "the motions of sins," propagating more
   sins. Even as a broken engine can not mend itself by running, but will
   only thresh itself into a more complete wreck. Setting his will to
   obey, as being now corrected by suffering--and he can do nothing
   more--his will can as little tame the soul's wild turbulences, or quiet
   the mob of its internal commotions, as it could the public anarchy of
   an empire. The exact difficulty now is, in fact, that the natural
   retributions are stronger as disabilities, than as motives, and are
   therefore no enforcement at all.

   Now it is the merit, I conceive, of Christianity, that, of these two
   schemes of motivity, it holds exactly neither; or perhaps I should
   rather say Christ combines both kinds of motivity. that it comprises
   both together; viz., a standard of divine excellence and beauty,
   drawing men to goodness by the moral attractions of goodness itself;
   and a grand economy of penal causations in nature, by which evil done
   is confronted with evil to be suffered, and is thus forced back, on the
   consideration of that blessed authority which ought to be loved for its
   own excellence Only it is a matter of the highest consequence to add
   that, in comprising these two elements, Christianity holds them both
   with important additions, or variations, necessary to their
   effectiveness.

   First, that the moral power of good, as expressed by the law, is to get
   an accession of moral power, in Christ, beyond that which naturally
   belongs to First, by his moral power, he re-enforces the law. it as
   impersonal precept; for it is to be glorified and raised in power, by
   the miracle of the incarnation, and the sacrifice and supernatural
   ministry of Jesus. The moral power it gets in this way is to be itself
   a kind of supernatural person, invested with such life and feeling, by
   the methods of the cross, that, entering into natures disordered and
   broken by the penal retributions of sin, it may recompose them in
   heaven's order and harmony; so to be a true redemption. For it will
   redeem, in this manner, from the natural laws and causations arranged
   to serve as enforcements, and prevent these enforcements from issuing
   in results of eternal disability; as they otherwise would, in the
   manner just now stated. They were never intended, as retributions, to
   maintain a mere scheme of obedience by force--which is no obedience at
   all--but to work in with and toward this other and higher power, that
   is relatively supernatural, and brings the soul up finally out of their
   compulsions into a complete liberty in good.

   Secondly, this being true, Christianity is able to press the
   enforcements on that side, with the greatest emphasis, and even to
   increase the responsibilities enforced. Taken as a scheme of
   retributive causations in nature, they sleep, as it were, in silence,
   to be discovered only as they are provoked. But Christianity brings
   them all out, in the bold announcement of And so is able to enforce it
   by stronger penalties. them by a doctrine. And to make them felt, it
   puts them forward in the shape of positive enactments, to be executed
   against the transgressors, by a positive judicial sentence. Furthermore
   it makes the rejection of Christ, and the supernatural grace prepared
   by him, a great part of the sin to be answered for--just as it must be,
   in fact, regarding natural causes as the sole agents of retribution;
   for the greater advantages, and helps, and revelations of goodness and
   beauty, sin rejects, the greater will be its criminality and the deeper
   hold of it the fires of natural retribution will, of course, take. In
   this manner Christianity presses enforcements up to their limit,
   placing its own great mercies and captivating charms of good always
   along side of them, and allowing itself never to be detained by any
   delicate misgivings of philanthropy.

   For there is no hardship now in severity; the hardest and sorest defect
   is really in the want of it. Taken by themselves, the penal sanctions
   of nature would be only a ministry of condemnation; they would kill and
   nothing more; now they condemn and slay to make ready for life; lifting
   their ominous flag of warning on the shoals of future wreck, to beckon
   the transgressor back on a revised consideration of his courses. Would
   it be a kindness if this flag were taken down?

   It has been convenient, thus far, to speak of penal enforcements simply
   as compelling motives, or as warnings and intimidations addressed to
   prudential The immense moral power of judicial severities.
   consideration. But they have a much deeper and more nearly basal
   office, which is commonly not observed. They have even a certain moral
   power in themselves, which is of a wholly different cast from that of
   Christ in the sacrifice, but which he contrives to unite with his own,
   by the sturdy severities of his doctrine. In our discussions, for
   example, of punishments in the civil state, and particularly of capital
   punishments, it appears to be taken for granted, that these two, the
   intimidation of crime, and the reclamation of the criminals themselves,
   are the only objects of penalty. Whereas the grandest, and most real,
   and deep-working office of punishment is the fearfully sharp sense it
   wakens of crime itself, by such tremendous severities or thunderclaps
   of extermination--wherein even the good, protective law can so utter
   itself and must, against the deeds of wrong that shake society. The
   moral conviction roused is the main benefit--that sensibility to order,
   and law, and right, that runs quivering through the bosom of all
   citizens, when the almost sacrilegious violence of justice turns upon
   the felon's life, commanding the scaffold and the rope to stop his
   breath! And precisely in the same way it is to be conceived, that
   strong and terrible retributions, not only serve as motive powers of
   interest in the government of souls, but have another and weightier
   office, in creating moral sensibility, or setting in moral conviction,
   as regards the sanctity of law and the dreadful criminality of sin.
   Without this, no visitation of mere gentleness and suffering sacrifice
   will make a salvation that has the true efficacy. The very subsoil of
   guilt requires to be stirred by God's terrors. They must not simply
   skim the surfaces of fear, but strike through into the deep underwork
   of moral conviction itself. All the better too, if we behold the
   terrible thunder-strokes of Providential severity falling on the head
   of whole communities, or nations, or specially on the head of the most
   deserving peoples; because it visibly is now, not sins, but sin, not
   any special crimes, but the comprehensive criminality of a state
   unrelational with God, that requires or instigates so great severity.
   Hence, the great common woes that fall on whole peoples, in what are
   called the severities of nature--the storms, fires, earthquakes,
   pestilences, famines, wrecks, orphanages of the world--the unspeakably
   appalling facts are known, and they have no other solution that is
   either satisfactory or tolerably sufficient. The language of Christ,
   applying all such things to the common guilt of mankind, shows in what
   manner they were understood by him. "Suppose ye that these Galileeans
   were sinners above all the Galileeans, because they suffer such things?
   or those eighteen, upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them,
   think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?
   I tell you nay, but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish."

   It appears then that Christ, coming to us in his sacrifice, to unbosom
   the love of God, and publish the free forgiveness of sins, is fully
   awake, nevertheless, to the sacred necessity of maintaining law by
   Christ therefore denounces eternal punishment and assumes the judgment
   of the world. adequate enforcements, and ploughing up moral conviction
   by great Providential and judicial severities. Only the more fit
   subject of wonder is it, therefore, that so many teachers are disturbed
   by their very unnecessary concern for what they call the law; imagining
   that a free remission may somehow kill the law and contriving even
   schemes of punition for the Son of God himself, that they may save it!
   As if the supernatural grace he brings, to rescue from the penal
   retributions of God, were quite taking away the enforcements; which it,
   in fact, only makes effective. Most strange it is that, when they are
   going every way to bring counsel from afar for the saving of law, they
   can yet see nothing in two such facts as these--continually reiterated
   by Christ himself--facts almost as new and distinctive even as the
   forgiveness of sins by his cross; (1.) eternal punishment; (2.) the
   judgment of the world by himself. Publishing announcements like these,
   and making even love to thunder, in motives so appalling, is it to be
   feared that Christ is letting down authority, and obliterating the
   fixed lines of duty, by some unguarded license of mercy? Why the law
   never before got itself really uttered, and the grand awards of the
   future life never showed their true figure of majesty, till they were
   revealed in this fearful way of emphasis by Christ himself.
   Accordingly, to these two very remarkable points in the public teaching
   of Christ, considered as related to the enforcement of law, I now
   invite the reader's particular attention. And--

   I. To the specially Christian declaration of future punishment,
   sometimes called eternal, or endless punishment.

   I am well aware of the disappointment I may inflict on certain
   progressives, or disciples of the new gospel, that, in so free a
   handling of what is held by authority, I still give in to a doctrine of
   the future punishment that is so revolting to reason, and, as they will
   say, to thoughtful minds already so nearly outgrown. If they can allow
   any reason for the fact that does not imply a subserviency to
   prudential motives, let it be that I am thoroughly fixed in the
   purpose, and that on grounds of reason, never to make a gospel--either
   to have no gospel at all, or else to accept the gospel that is given
   me. I have been through all the questions, taken all the turns of
   doubt, suffered all the struggles of feeling in respect to this
   confessedly hard looking doctrine of future punishment; I have even
   learned, in these struggles, to pity the meagerness of any soul that
   has encountered no troubles and painful misgivings concerning it.
   Neither is this pity at all diminished but increased, rather, by the
   fact, that I am brought back finally to acquiesce in it myself, and
   even to look upon it as being probably a necessary factor of the
   Christian salvation. What else can we infer, when we find, as we shall
   by a little search, that our merciful Christ, he that comes in love,
   and saves by the sacrifice of his life, is the first distinctly
   responsible promulgator of it himself?

   But, before proceeding to show this fact, let us attend to some
   considerations in which the doctrine may be duly qualified and cleared
   of the severities, by which it is made unnecessarily shocking to many.

   We could well enough allow that the epithet "eternal" [aionios] need
   not mean eternal, in the exact, The word "eternal" not very decisive.
   speculative sense. It is of no great consequence, that we insist on it
   as a term of duration logically infinite. Enough that we receive it
   practically, as giving that finality to thought, beyond which there is,
   for us, nothing to be meditated farther. It is very true that the same
   epithet is used respecting the duration both of punishment and of
   blessedness--"These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the
   righteous into life eternal"--but it is surmised by some, without any
   great violence, that as we get only the slenderest impressions any way
   of the state of suffering called eternal, the intent of Christ may only
   be to shove our thought over on that sea, and let us get the measures
   of it by our long, long voyage afterward; that the punishment is called
   eternal as the life, because it is the punishment of the eternal state,
   and is best apprehended here, when taken as a practical finality for
   the mind.

   I make this concession, partly because I have no care to press the
   matter so far as to make a bad eternity hang on the form of a word, and
   partly because it is sometimes argued, in the same way, that as the
   capacity and blessedness of the life are to be forever amplified by
   exercise, so also are the capacity and woe of the punishment. And this
   latter is almost certainly not true. It may even be argued, with a
   considerable show of evidence, that the immortality of the soul does
   not belong to its mere nature, but depends rather on the eternally
   imperishable nature of that on which it feeds--God, truth, duty,
   self-sacrifice, holiness--and that when it only knows and goes after
   the phantoms of condition, or of mere conventional and temporal good,
   it must finally die out, for the poverty of that soul-food which it
   takes for its life. What is sometimes called the doctrine of the
   annihilation, or literal destruction, of the wicked, is the same more
   coarsely conceived. A good many passages of Scripture, too, are cited
   for it, without any great show of violence; and a good many others,
   with only that common kind of violence which consists in taking
   literally what is figuratively given.

   Rejecting, however, this annihilation theory as, plainly enough, not
   being the doctrine of Scripture, we still do observe, as a matter of
   fact, The certain reduction of the soul by sin. in this present life,
   that souls under sin are not amplified by their experience in it, as
   they are by their experience in good. Gaining vigor, it may be, for a
   little while, they finally begin to shrink in quantity, losing out
   capacity for both character and the higher kinds of suffering; a fact
   in which the scheme of purgatorial restorationism loses all show of
   evidence, or we may almost say of possibility. Every thing we see of
   sin, in the world of fact, shows it to be a desolating, extirpating
   power in souls; killing out, by degrees, even the faculties and
   possibilities of religion, and reducing, in that way, all the hopes and
   chances of restoration, down to the very last edge of life. Almost any
   thing, therefore, can be more easily believed, than that, dropping off
   that edge, with but half a nature left, transgressors are there to be
   converted and finally restored, by the mere smart of their pains--that
   which would distract their love-impulse if they had it, and can not do
   much to restore it if they have it not.

   But while this diminution of quantity in souls under sin is fatal, as
   it certainly is, to any hope of purgatorial The higher powers
   extinguished, but not the soul. recovery, it does not go the length of
   proving their extinction, but gives exactly the point of view that
   yields the least exaggerated and truest impression of the Scripture
   view of punishment. Thus we observe that, for a little while, the human
   faculties appear to be invigorated by the struggles of passion, or
   selfish ambition; but that shortly they begin to be inevitably wasted
   in quantity, narrowed in volume and capacity, so as finally to produce
   the impression, that their intensity--as in cunning, hatred, envy,
   policy, and avarice--is getting to be a kind of intensified littleness;
   a fire still hot, but running low in fuel, and sure to be as much less
   considerable in its energy, as the substantive quantities of the soul
   are more diminished. So the wasting goes on doubtless hereafter as
   here, and the penal wear of bitterness and wrong continues. But it does
   not follow that the waste will operate a cessation of being, because
   there are faculties and powers not wasted. The memory is as faithful a
   recorder of what is bad, as it could be of what is good. The
   conscience, with its law of right, is not extirpated any more than the
   sense of time or space. The will is even confirmed by habit in a state
   of unsubduable capacity, and the will is the grand centralizing element
   of personality itself. The affinities for what is bad are as durable as
   they would be in good. The progressive diminution, therefore, is never
   to end in cessation, but may well be figured by the asymptote curve,
   which, as the mathematicians will even demonstrate, has the remarkable
   distinction of forever approaching a straight line even by a fixed law,
   yet never making coincidence with it. So, probably enough, it may be,
   and we may even take it as the true conception, that souls which have
   become only hacks of punishment, will forever continue in being,
   spinning along their lengths of mediocrity, intensified in points but
   not enlarged, and having their eternity as the protracted opportunity
   of their moral insignificance and hopelessness. Under the grand organic
   law, that faculties not used, or badly misused, are finally extirpated,
   their religious nature is likely to be nearly, or quite gone by. All
   the Godward summits of being and thought--aspiration, susceptibility
   for good, the sense of moral beauty, the power of realization by
   faith--are demolished, and a coarse, hard nature only remains, graveled
   by low animosities, without great sentiments, and rising never into any
   look of altitude, save when it is raised by the vehemence of its
   passions. Even the suffering that is left is that of a nature tapering
   down to a diminished grade of feeling, or abject continuity of
   consciousness, that is only the more desolate that it can not utterly
   die.

   Holding this conception, we go clear, it will be seen, of that very
   shocking extravagance, which maintains Infinite punishment denied. the
   infinity of future punishment. Mere infinity of duration does not make
   the quantity infinite, as many so hastily assume; for, if there be a
   diminution of degree as there is an extension of time, the quantity
   will never exceed a given amount. So too, if the continuance be
   endless, not on the score of old sins long ago committed--the sins of
   the previous lifetime--but as being ordered to match, and measure, and
   punish, the continuance of new sins, freely committed and persistently
   adhered to, the eternal punishment so-called, may be only a stream of
   temporal retributions, appointed to match the stream of eternally
   recurring transgressions. As regards this matter of amount, or
   quantity, we can really have no very definite conceptions; for though
   the state of punishment be endless, we have no gauges of intensity that
   we can apply, and do not even know how far the continuance rests on the
   continuance of transgression.

   At the same time, we do perfectly know, that the arguments often used
   to show that the punishment of sin ought to be, and therefore must be,
   infinite, are groundless--carried by a practice on words that plays
   them into inferences not contained in their meaning. Thus it is argued
   that the law of God has infinite value, and that sin therefore, being a
   violation of it, must be an infinite evil, worthy of an infinite
   punishment. The constitution of our government, I reply, has very great
   value, but it does not follow that any particular man's treason,
   however bold, is in exactly the same measure of consequence. The
   physical universe is infinite, but it does not follow that any man's
   infringement of its laws is an infinite infringement. Sometimes the
   argument is, that every sin heads a train of consequences that is
   endless, and is therefore infinite, requiring an infinite punishment.
   So does every most common, or trivial act, bring on after it an endless
   train of consequences that otherwise would not have happened; no man
   goes to his breakfast without this result, but it does not follow that
   his breakfast was infinite. Sometimes the argument is, that since the
   law of God is the best law possible, he ought, in true justice, to make
   the strongest expression of attachment to it that is possible;
   therefore that he ought to inflict the strongest possible punishment
   for the breach of it. But that strongest possible may be only a finite,
   carefully moderated punishment; for if God were to lay his omnipotence
   into the severity of it, he would only shock the sensibility of the
   public world addressed, by a cruelty visibly monstrous, and the
   suffering inflicted would have no expression at all that belongs to
   punishment.

   The sober and rational fact, then, as regards the matter of endless
   punishment, is, that it is a finite retribution, The retribution finite
   but naturally endless. laid upon the head of finite sin, and graduated
   in a general way by the demerit of it. The suffering state which it
   produces is described in figures that raise an impression of great
   severity; and there is no reason to believe that, take them as we may,
   we shall, at all, exceed the just realization of their degree. They
   will profoundly shock us, indeed, if we take them literally, and yet,
   so very slow are we to imagine a condition of unseen spiritual
   suffering, that we shall not, even then, raise a conception of the real
   misery that is at all adequate. All the greater and more reasonably
   conceived misery will it be, if we make no doubt that God is ready, at
   any future point in the run of it, to embrace, in everlasting
   reconciliation, any truly repenting soul. I say not any regretful soul,
   but any soul that is heartily turned to a new and eternally righteous
   life. For this will be the keen, all-devouring misery, that, with so
   many regrets, there is so little repentance, or even power of it; that
   the nature, now but half a nature, halting, as it were, on its clumsy
   and paralytic members, finds not how to rise any more forever. Strong
   enough to suffer, and wicked enough to sin, the tendrils of adhesion to
   God are dead, and it can not fasten itself practically to his
   friendship. Goodness it remembers but can not sufficiently feel. All
   its struggles are but heavings of the lower nature--pains of defeat
   that are only proving, by experiment, their own perpetuity.

   Assuming all these qualifications of measure and degree, there is
   nothing left in the matter of endless punishment, by which we can fitly
   be disturbed, except that it does not bring out the kingdom of God, in
   that one state of realized unity, and complete order, which we most
   naturally desire, and think to be worthiest of his greatness and
   sovereignty. It certainly would be more agreeable, if we could have
   this hope; and many are resolved to have it without Christ's
   permission, if they can not have it with. They even make it a point of
   merit, to seize this honor bravely for God, on their own
   responsibility, and for it, if they must, defy the Scripture. I think
   otherwise, and could even count it a much braver thing, to willingly be
   less brave, and despite of our natural longings for some issue of God's
   plan that is different, follow still the lead of the Master.

   We come back now from this rather long excursion, where we have been
   trying to settle our conceptions of the nature of the future
   punishment, and of the qualifications that may save it from a look of
   excess, to consider the relation Christ assumes towards it, in his
   vicarious sacrifice, and the free justification of sins. Observe then--

   1. That while he undertakes, in this manner, a universal remission of
   sin, or even to freely justify every penitent transgressor before God,
   he has never yet thought, as far as we can discover, that he is putting
   God's law and justice in jeopardy, or raising any kind of theologic
   objection, such as now disturbs the concern of many. He does not even
   appear to think that he is here on any exclusively merciful errand; for
   Christ does not even imagine that by mercy he is weakening law. though
   it is a signal distinction of his incarnate ministry, that he reveals
   the heart of God, and the dear cross hid in his love from eternity, he
   does not spare to reveal, as faithfully, His truth, and justice, and
   authority, and righteousness, and all that is required to fill out the
   majestic proportions of His character and government. He begins, thus,
   with the declaration that no jot, or tittle of the law shall fail; that
   no righteousness of scribe or pharisee shall be enough; and can not
   close his first sermon, without promulgating, several times over, the
   appalling doctrine of future punishment. This doctrine is quite as
   distinctively Christian as the forgiveness of sins. I do not, of
   course, imagine that the fact is new, but the doctrine is. The fact was
   in the law of natural retribution from the first, just as gravity was
   in the world before it was declared by science; for the penal
   disorders, once begun, are not reducible by us, and the trains of
   retributive causes started by transgression make up a series of
   propagations naturally endless. Besides, as we just now saw, the total
   disuse of the religious nature must, in a short time, extirpate all the
   higher powers and possibilities of religion. And when that is done,
   when the feasibility of the soul to good is gone by, what is left but a
   state of incapacity that is final?

   Christ, then, brought forth into bold assertion, for the first time,
   the doctrine of eternal punishment; not as creating the fact, but only
   as declaring that which lies in the simply natural causalities of
   retribution. Under the old dispensation the published Christ the first
   teacher of eternal punishment. sanctions of law were temporal, or, if
   they were such as must naturally run over the border of this life into
   the next, they were not so conceived or represented, and never, in
   fact, got their motive power in being so recognized. Indeed, the future
   life itself is not distinctly conceived as a fact in the early
   Scriptures. We can see it irresistibly asserted ourselves, in such
   facts as the translation of Enoch and Elijah, less distinctly in the
   visitations of angels, visibly felt but unspoken in the longings of
   good men; but the holiest and best of patriarchs and wisest of teachers
   still said nothing of it, drew no motives from it. Farther on,
   expressions begin to be dropped, that show the fact struggling into
   formal recognition. And yet we find the question still on hand, between
   the Pharisees and the Sadducees, at the time of Christ's coming,
   whether there is any such fact of a second existence beyond this
   life--so completely temporal had been the cast of God's moral
   government, practically, down to this time. And here it is that Christ,
   announced by John as coming to lay the axe to the root, and thoroughly
   purge his floor, and burn up all the chaffy hypocrisies of a mere
   lifetime sanctity, with unquenchable fire, breaks on the world in his
   distinct, unflinching, never qualified, oft repeated, variously
   conceived, proclamation of eternal punishment. His most common way of
   phrasing the doctrine is derived, perhaps, from the destruction of
   unclean things by fire in the valley of Hinnom; or perhaps from the
   combustion of bodies there, as represented in the last chapter and
   verse of Isaiah. Under this figure, and others variously related, he
   describes again and again the outcast state of souls. Sometimes the
   tokens of pain that are added to waken apprehension, though of course
   not literal, are such as produce a heavy recoil in our sensibility. All
   the punishments of the Old Testament, even the curses of Ebal, are as
   dew in comparison. If he had come into the world to be himself the
   Nemesis of transgression, he could not have spoken words more
   appalling. The enforcement power was never before carried so far, and
   could not, even, in thought, be carried farther. There is no scruple in
   driving the pressure of interested motive to its last limit. Fear could
   quiver in the dread of no greater loss. And this, it will be noted,
   from Jesus, the Saviour of the world! he that is incarnated into the
   world's curse, and dies in his suffering ministry for it! Observe
   also--

   2. That Christ, in these declarations of eternal punishment, never
   betrays one symptom of doubt, or delicacy, Has no apparent scruple in
   the doctrine. as if there might be some injustice, or over severity in
   them, such as needs to be carefully qualified. He plainly enough has no
   such struggles of mind on the subject, as we have. His most delicate,
   tenderly sensitive humanity gives no single token of being, either
   offended, or tried, by the fact of so great severities. It can not be
   that he is untroubled by questions on this subject because he is less
   tender of man's lot, or of God's honor, than we are, or because he is
   not far enough on in the world's progress, to have had our great
   theologic problems occur to him. Perhaps we shall not be able to solve
   this strangely unquestioning manner of his, but I strongly suspect that
   the secret of it lies in the fact, that he has a way of conceiving the
   matter and manner of eternal punishment, such as leaves our modern
   questions out of sight, and does not even allow them to occur. Perhaps
   he only thinks of the bad man as going on to eternity in his badness,
   and the laws of retribution, as going along with him, to keep his
   voluntary bad deeds company, much as they do here; regarding the
   malefactor as a malefactor still, and suffering, at any given moment,
   for being just what he is at that moment--that and nothing more. God
   has, in fact, put nothing of his pain upon him; he only takes it on
   himself, and there is really no more reason to be troubled about the
   severity of his lot than there is here in the retributions of this
   life.

   He uses, it must be admitted, the most appalling figures--"outer
   darkness," "great gulf fixed," His appalling figures. "thirst,"
   "torment," "wailing," "weeping," "a worm that dieth not," "a fire that
   is not figures. quenched"--but he has no misgiving; probably because
   words of any kind are so impotent, in giving the due impression of any
   state unrealized, and need to be even violently overdrawn to answer
   their object. However this may be, it is quite evident that the tough
   questions of our modern philanthropism have either not arrived, or are
   quite gone by, and that notwithstanding his wonderfully intense love
   for mankind, his feeling still goes with the punitive order of God's
   retributions, adding even heavier emphasis from his own personal
   indignations. Again

   3. It is a remarkable fact that one of the strongest evidences of the
   strictly superhuman character of Who is he, that he is endured in such
   teachings. Christ is contributed, or experimentally brought out, by the
   singular command he has over such, even now, as passionately abjure his
   doctrine. I make no assumption here that goes beyond the fact of their
   abjuration itself and the manner of it. They will deny that he asserted
   any such doctrine of punishment. But they will also admit that he
   testified, again and again, in all most varied and most pungent words
   of warning, to what sounds very much like it, and which being
   qualified. by no process of interpretation, are the very ipsissima
   verba of the doctrine; that he was the first decisive teacher in this
   strain; that he insisted much on the point and often recurred to it;
   and, whatever else may be true, is the practical promulgator and first
   founder, in that sense, of a something which has gotten footing as the
   doctrine, or has come to be the doctrine, of eternal punishment;
   Suppose now that I who write this treatise--a man in my common human
   figure--had done exactly the same thing, in the same way of precedence,
   and that, making many speeches on religious subjects, I sprinkle them,
   all through, as the four gospels are sprinkled, with these fiery
   denunciations of punishment; how many living men of the whole world, if
   I were to lead off in such a doctrine, would hear me for one moment
   with patience? They would not stop to find whether, by some elaborate
   and careful practice on my words, they could sift the offensive
   doctrine out of them. Such efforts at interpretation would themselves
   be an offense. Nothing but contempt, downright, instant, unhesitating
   contempt, is the due, they would say, of such a teacher. He is a man
   behind the age; a dark-minded fanatic, without feeling, or justice, or
   reason, representing God by the low severities of his own morbid
   nature. And yet what reverence is there to Jesus, in the promulgation
   of such doctrine! They that deny it most confidently will even strain
   themselves, to find words of honor and eulogy, in which fitly to
   applaud his virtues and embody their sense of his perfections. Meantime
   they go into careful examinations of what seem to be his manifold
   utterances of the doctrine of eternal punishment, and by laboriously
   ingenious constructions, which he could easily have made unnecessary,
   but never once remembered to make, they get the bad meaning wholly out
   of them. Having proved him thus to be, in fact, about the faultiest,
   loosest, teacher, in a matter of mere fact, that ever undertook to lead
   the world, they acquiesce in him perfectly; their reverence is
   complete!

   They do not perceive, that they have done the difficult thing, and
   rejected the easy. How much easier, when they were detained by a
   reverence so profound for the manifestly superhuman character of
   Christ, treating him as they could no other being uttering such
   declarations, to believe that he was good enough and Admitted still to
   be great, why not also to be true. great enough to see the truth of
   them; too good, too great, as already proved to their feeling, to allow
   them any hope of improving his doctrine by the screws they put upon his
   words. The case is one where the text--"For my thoughts are not your
   thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord"--ought to
   suggest the query whether, possibly, God is not good enough, or good in
   a sense that is deep enough, to levy these fearful punishments, just
   because of his goodness; maintaining them as mysteries of beneficent
   rule whose scope and contents are to us inscrutable. Again--

   4. A true Christian inquirer, struggling with a burdened feeling, under
   the huge difficulties of this question, Where eternal punishment is
   denied, shown to be a moral want. will be very apt to meet with such
   kind of results, or effects, falling under his notice, in the case of
   those who deny the fact of eternal punishment, as to start a certain
   spiritual revulsion in him and persuade him that Christ had some
   sufficient, profoundly deep and true reason for his doctrine, whether
   we can find it or not. There is plainly enough no object in preaching
   this kind of salvation (which is no salvation, because there can be no
   destruction,) but to find a place of impunity in sin, or at least to
   loosen the yoke of obligation and make it comfortable. And that, when
   it is a fact, is about the most contemptible, lowest occupation a
   mortal can be in. And the fruit will correspond with the effort; for
   the followers of such a leading, it will be observed, range themselves,
   always and every where, on the side of laxity, or the side opposite to
   justice and punishment. They will refer all sin to circumstances, and
   take the blame away. Society is cruel, they will perceive, but wrong,
   never. But when they come to speak, or be spoken with, in regard to the
   great spiritual realities of the spiritual life and consciousness, they
   will scarcely fail to make a demonstration that is simply revolting. To
   converse successively, with only two or three persons, brought up in
   this denial of future punishment, and have the conversation turned upon
   loving God, I have more than once felt would suffice to cure any
   earnest, living Christian of his misgivings of future punishment, or
   push him by his most rugged and resolute doubts, whether he can solve
   them or not. Instead of conceiving of the divine love in that deep,
   tender way of sacrifice and justifying mercy, that belongs to the
   cross, they will rattle upon the words in a way so loose and light as
   to be even shocking. "Do I love God? How could I help loving him? God
   has never done any thing bad to me, and never wants to do any thing,
   but to make me happy, Yes, and if there were not so many people praying
   and supplicating dolefully, as if they were afraid of something, or God
   a being to be afraid of, I think we should all be happy." Under this
   gospel of impunity, there grows up a religion which is itself a kind of
   sauciness to God, as little relieved, as possible, by any subduing
   property. Beautiful charity! love that bearest all men's burdens! love
   that believest, hopest, endurest all things! love that can suffer an
   enemy! love that in Jesus suffered for a world of enemies! love that is
   born of God supernaturally in souls under evil! love that is fed and
   fuelled supernaturally, by Christ and his dear passion, inwardly
   revealed! what hast thou to do with this unchastened, brassy, dinning
   confidence, which asserts a religion without fear, lays a claim to
   happiness apart from all condition of repentance, and magnifies a God
   who, without maintaining any good of principle, consents to be only the
   convenience of all!

   I draw this picture not for any purpose of odium, but simply because it
   suggests and so nearly justifies the Punishment an intrinsic element of
   the gospel. suspicion, that Christ had a reason for his doctrine of
   eternal punishment, in the necessary and, to him, perceived wants of
   character itself. We can see, at a glance, that if there were no such
   future peril, and God were such a being that no fact of destruction
   were possible under him, then there could, of course, be no salvation,
   or Saviour. So far it was a point, intrinsically, of Christianity, to
   assert the doctrine of future punishment; for upon that basis only it
   stands, as a real salvation. But there seems to have been a deeper and
   more subtle reason, both for the fact of such punishment originally
   instituted, and for the assertion of it by Christ; viz., that, by these
   tremendous severities alone of God, could men be made to feel the
   cutting edge of principle enough to have it really get into their love,
   and makes it a principled love. Otherwise it would have no moral
   quality at all, but like that we have just described, would be only a
   brazen forwardness, in approving such a God as meets their liking; a
   God with. out terrors, concerned to get them into happiness, either
   with, or without, principles.

   However this may be, it is not difficult to see how far the success and
   saving power of the gospel of Christ depend on these appeals to fear,
   and these cogent motivities of interest, by which he so unsparingly
   presses the world; for by these it is, and only by these, that he takes
   men at the point where they have any sufficient sensibility. By this
   appalling law-work he breaks their security, startles their negligence,
   rouses their guiltiness into a ferment, and calls out the question,
   what shall we do? Never, it is very true, does any one of these
   motivities enter into the staple of piety--they are spent when piety
   begins, or at least passed by accordingly as it advances. And yet these
   terrible severities--not too terrible, or appalling for the sturdy
   composure and hardness of sin--are just that fire in the rear, by
   which, as a more rugged constraint upon nature, the guilty are gathered
   to the spiritual drawing, or all-constraining loveliness and love, of
   the cross.

   But Christ also adds enforcement, as we have said, to the law--

   II. In the fact that he declares himself to be the final judge of the
   world. Having shown the divine nature travailing in sacrifice and
   suffering love for the world, and having proclaimed a universal end of
   God's penalties, to such as are joined to the law-precept, by receiving
   it in the embrace of his person, he must needs He will vindicate law by
   the judgment of the world. fortify his attitude, by some correspondent
   assertion of his divine eminence and authority; which he does by openly
   asserting his personal prerogative, as the final judge of the world. As
   he is the Saviour of mankind, so he is to be Judge of mankind--and
   Judge, because he is Saviour. For he distinctly intimates himself that
   he takes this necessary point of self-assertion, to restrain the
   presumption otherwise likely to be raised, in the coarse, blind feeling
   of men, by his great condescensions--"For the Father judgeth no man,
   but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor
   the Son even as they honor the Father." Again also, when he says--"And
   hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the
   Son of Man." In other words, the very fact that he was become the Son
   of Man, humbled to the weakness of humanity, was itself a reason why
   his equilibrium of dignity should be saved, by the counter-weight of
   this tremendous office--an office all the more fit to such a purpose,
   that judges, in the civil state, are conceived to have no right of
   leniency, or mercy, being set for nothing but the exact application of
   law to the exact merits of causes; which having done, whether in the
   sentence of life, or of death, their official function ceases. And so
   Christ, having bowed himself to all humblest conditions of suffering
   and sorrow, that he might ransom guilty souls from their deserved
   penalties, ceases fully and finally from a relationship that would make
   him possibly no better, at last, than a convenience for men's sins, and
   takes his attitude of judgeship over them; waiving henceforth all the
   inclinings and soft connivings and tender flexibilities of his mercy,
   that he may be forever known as the arbiter and king of the worlds.

   I do not undertake to settle, in this connection, precisely what is
   meant by the judgment of the world; whether it is to be literally a
   trial had The judgment made necessary by the supernatural salvation. in
   public assembly, or before the grand convocation of the worlds, or
   whether such representations given are only figures impressively drawn,
   to give, in the general, or by means of one general scene, what is
   passing and to pass in the innumerable and particular cases of souls,
   when they arrive, or come in to receive their personal awards and enter
   on their everlasting state. This, however, will be obvious that, if
   there were no work of grace or mercy on foot, no supernatural
   salvation, there would scarcely need to be any judge of the world. The
   transgressors would go to their exact lot of punishment just as stones
   under gravity fall to the ground. The grand penal order of nature would
   be at once judge and executioner, and they would sink to their true
   level, by inevitable laws, that find them out as exactly even, as God
   himself can know them.

   But the judgment of the world under Christianity is made necessary, by
   the fact that, in a mixed experience under law and grace, where the
   penal order of nature is restricted, tempered, mitigated, by the
   supernatural interactions of grace, no punishment takes place in the
   exact manner and degree that it would under natural retribution, pure
   and simple. The laws of natural retribution continue, in one view, as
   at the first, and their operation continues, and yet their action has
   been so far modified hitherto by the interactions of a supernatural
   mercy--engaged all our life long to rescue us from them--also by the
   fact that a new matter of responsibility has come into their
   jurisdiction to increase, henceforward, the guilt of sin, and to
   intensify proportionally its desolating penal effects, that a
   supernatural judgment-seat is wanted, to settle the account of justice
   and distribute the allotments of souls. When so many diverse and mixed
   qualities of character are generated under the contesting powers of
   penalty and mercy, so many variously appearing, yet really similar, so
   many similarly appearing, yet really various, kinds of product, some
   tribunal of judgment appears to be wanted, to make the necessary
   discrimination of desert and order. It is a matter of no great
   consequence to know what is the exact grade of any man's demerit--let
   the laws of retribution settle that--but it is a matter of consequence
   where some are so bold in their conceit, and some are so dejected in
   their modesty and conscious lack of goodness, to have the great
   life-question of order and kind settled, by a solemn act of recognition
   or rejection.

   The Christian gospel requires, in this manner, a judgment-seat, and in
   this office Christ himself asserts the authority that is given him. The
   subject is adverted to in a great many of his parables, and expressly
   set forth in many of his public discourses. In the twenty-fifth chapter
   of Matthew he photographs The dies irae of Christ and his followers.
   the transaction in a scene of judgment formally conceived as universal.
   He comes, the Son of Man, to sit upon the throne of his glory. All
   nations are gathered before him, not to be graduated, but separated in
   kind, one from another, as sheep from goats. These he recognizes and
   calls, these he disowns and repels, all under the simple question,
   whether they are with him personally in his cause and with him in his
   sacrifice or not. Some who were too modest and poor in spirit, to have
   any feeling of confidence, are surprised by his welcome--"ye did it
   unto me"--asking, "when ministered we to thee?" And others who have
   always been assuming to maintain his cause, and half expecting him to
   acknowledge his great obligations to them, are as much surprised by his
   terrible sentence of rejection, "ye did it not to me." Thus before
   Christ's bar, as he himself conceives, the tremendous issues of life
   are to be finally determined--"These shall go away into everlasting
   punishment, the righteous into life eternal."

   Furthermore how entirely compatible his love and suffering patience
   are, with all severest rigors of justice, will be seen in the
   impressions of his judgment office and day that are held by his
   followers. They call it the dies irae, the great day of his wrath, not
   refusing to magnify the day as a day of great majesty and revelation,
   even "the revelation of the righteous judgment of God." They have
   plainly enough no such thought as that the justice of God, or the
   divine orge has been satisfied and forever evened in its demands, by
   the sufferings of Christ. Nor have they taken up, it is equally plain,
   any such impressions of the merciful Jesus, the dear Christ of God, as
   makes it incompatible for him to be invested, some time, in these awful
   rigors of judgment. That righteous orge, that deep instinct of justice,
   which dwells in every bosom of love, and without which love could never
   rise into the majesty of holiness, that wrath which had sometimes
   kindled so terrible a fire of animosity in the loving ministry of their
   Master, they expect to be revealed in his judgment proceedings, and
   they even appear to look upon him in it, with a dread the more
   appalling, that, as being the natural and necessary counterpart in
   character of so great sensibility and self-sacrifice, it should
   therefore be in correspondent measures. Hence the sharp and dreadful
   paradox they bolt upon us--in a form of words having such vindictive
   energy that there is nothing, as far as I know, in all human language
   to match it--"the wrath of the Lamb."

   It is certainly most remarkable, considering how Christ himself is the
   first promulgator of eternal punishment, and is to be himself the judge
   of the world--revealing the terrible wrath-power of his kingdom, in so
   many ways and terms so appalling--that he should be conceived to have
   almost overturned God's law by his terms of mercy, and only not to have
   done it, by consenting to be an offering before the offended wrath of
   the law! So he compensated the law by the contribution of his
   sufferings, and satisfied the dues of justice. Why does it never occur
   to such as are taken by this kind of theologic contrivance, that after
   Christ has made due satisfaction to the wrath-principle of God's
   justice, there is still wanted, above all, some more tremendous
   sacrifice, to satisfy the wrath of the Lamb? Never before was the
   vindicatory principle in government so fearfully asserted as by him.
   When therefore he has made an end of pacification by his cross, what is
   to be provided that shall pacify him? Shall he satisfy his own wrath?
   Or is it possible that he should somehow justify without any
   satisfaction? And if that is possible, is not the whole scheme of
   satisfaction exploded, and the wrath-principle found to be itself
   compatible with mercy?

   I assume it then, with confidence, to be a conclusion firmly
   established, that Christ, in preparing the free remission of sins, has
   not taken from God's The enforcements then are all kept good without a
   satisfaction. law, or at all weakened, its necessary enforcements.
   Author himself and first adequate promulgator of the doctrine of
   eternal punishment, invested with all the honors and authoritative
   rights of the Supreme Judge of men; armed, in such capacity, with
   indignations equal to the lamb-like patience of his sacrifice--it is
   not by him, that men have the pressure of God's penal enforcements
   taken off. On the contrary, when before had the law such a pressure of
   enforcement in the plane of interest, as it has under Christ himself?
   When before were such thunderbolts dropped in the path of the fears?
   When had the misgivings of guilty conviction such earthquakes to feel
   heaving under ground? When were delay and neglectfulness cut short, by
   such hidden perils waiting for the spring? Why, it is even a full half
   the peculiar force of Christianity, that it brings the law of God into
   a pressure on the soul so nearly irresistible! It had before no motive
   in comparison. Christ preaches to the fears and the self-interested
   calculations of deliberative prudence, in a way so positive as to
   suggest no sense of scruple in him, and permit no evasion of doubt in
   us. He begins low down, at the underwork, we may almost say, of nature,
   and expects to regenerate, in the supernatural life of faith, only them
   whom he has first arrested and concluded in sin. The letter that
   killeth is his, as truly as the Spirit that giveth life.

   No, if there be any thing in the gospel of Christ least of all to be
   apprehended, it is a discontinuance, or weakening of law. The law-power
   not only remains uninjured, to do its work of enforcement in souls, but
   it is brought closer to them and is made weightier and more imminent in
   its pressure, than ever before. Not only temporal motives but all the
   powers, in fact, of the world to come, are now crowded into its
   sanctions. And so little apprehension is there accordingly, in the New
   Testament, of any possible damage to God's law, or justice, that the
   immense theologic concern for it, which puts us to a strain of
   contrivance so pressing, is even most innocently overlooked. I do not
   even recall any single mention, by the New Testament writers, of the
   fact that Christ, in his death, was laying a necessary "ground" of
   forgiveness, or justification, without which it would not be safe, as a
   matter of law and sound government, to forgive. He comes to work out
   forgiveness, or rather to work it in--this is abundantly declared--but
   there is no syllable of reference to the fact that he is doing so much,
   or contributing so great suffering, to make forgiveness possible. There
   appears to be no suspicion as yet that this kind of meaning has only
   been foisted upon the word, and does not belong to it, but the
   discovery must ere long arrive. And yet, if the case were different, if
   there must be a loss to the law from the dispensation of forgiveness,
   and a compensation must be made to the law, what grander, more
   indisputable, compensation could be offered by Christ, than his new
   doctrine of eternal punishment, set home by the tremendous emphasis he
   gives it in the declaration, that he will be the Judge himself!

   But there is a possible objection that requires to be noticed. Thus if
   natural causes, or causes in the scheme of nature, have been so
   arranged as to chastise and duly punish all sin, and Retributive causes
   not abolished by deliverance from them. then Christ intervenes by a
   movement supernatural, to work a release from these causes in the
   redemption of souls, and does actually deliver them, it appears, after
   all, that the enforcement of law is so far, at least, given up, or put
   bye. To this I answer, first, that the enforcement is no more given up
   than the law of gravity is given up when I sustain, by my will, a body
   that would otherwise fall to the ground; for in such a case, the law of
   gravity continues as truly as if it were left to its own way. And,
   secondly, that the force-power of nature was originally set, to work
   enforcement for the law of duty, just because and by means of a
   grace-power, supernaturally working with it and complementary to it.
   There is no greater mistake than to assume, as many do, that the law
   was put forward first to be maintained by enforcement, and then that
   the grace-power comes in afterward to displace it. The scheme of moral
   government was to be a double acting and essentially restorative scheme
   from the first, and the two great factors were to be coordinate, always
   going along by a correspondent development, and assisting each the
   other. And exactly this is what we find even in the facts of the New
   Testament; the side of retribution appears, according to our human
   judgment, to be intensified in about the same ratio as the side of
   grace. Neither is any thing more clear, than that the enforcement side
   depends on the gracious, quite as much as this on the other. For the
   retributive causes of nature, once beginning to run, and wholly left to
   themselves, put the subject down, at once, under a doom of complete
   disability, and cease to have any value as enforcements at all. No
   longer motives, they are simply manacles. But the moment a supernatural
   grace is felt coming in, as it did at the first, to bring hope and
   liberating help, the retributive causes become enforcements, just as
   they were meant to be. The doctrine of endless punishment, taken as put
   into words, was never any thing but a version of the fact, that
   retributive causes are naturally endless in their propagations; but the
   understanding was, and always has been, that a supernatural grace,
   going side by side, should even keep them in power, as they give power
   to it, and that so the grand joint product of justice and grace should
   be always preparing. The very last thing to be apprehended is that the
   forgiving side is going to prostrate the law side. The law could do
   nothing but create disability, in that it was weak, without the other.
   If there had been a law given which could have given righteousness,
   verily righteousness should have been by the law. But now the law is a
   schoolmaster for grace, and righteousness a free gift for the law. So
   between both there is salvation.

   Besides the personal moral power of Christ, that which he obtains by
   his suffering ministry of love and sacrifice, gets a tonic efficacy how
   majestic, by the tremendous moral emphasis of his denouncements, and
   the energy he shows in being able to use force enough for his purposes;
   even as every great general gets the moral power to carry his will by a
   word, in the fact that he has been able to carry it by his previous
   championship of force, in fields more impressive than words.

   In advancing this doctrine of punishment, I am well aware that some
   will call it the doctrine of Radamanthus, and that perhaps without
   concern This rugged, unphilantropizing gospel will stand. to settle the
   question, whether Christ had any better title to respect than he. They
   have had a thought of God's beneficence, they will say, and they dare
   to believe in it. They believe that his Creatorship and counsel will be
   vindicated, as they only can, by results of universal order and
   happiness, such as he has put it in our hearts to desire. Perhaps I am
   as much exercised by the desire as they, but I can not take that desire
   as a proof. Our existence has been mixed with discord from the first,
   and, for aught we any of us know, this rough element belongs inherently
   to the highest attainable state of good. That their gospel of
   speculative philanthropism is carrying just now the vote of the world,
   more and more largely, is quite probable. But I have thought much, in
   comparison, of the older, more rugged, rougher gospel, and I feel
   obliged to say, that it looks most real, and capable, and great. There
   is nerve in this, and there is none in the other. Christ here takes
   hold of human nature as if he knew it, and had something great to do
   for it. He bears a look of mystery, greatness in counsel, and efficient
   rule, such as the God of the world visibly bears himself--He that has
   thunders, and tempests, and earthquakes, and wild waters, and
   death-dealing causes, hovering in silence, or ravening in terror,
   through all his works. The Christ, so carefully separated from his own
   reiterated fact of future punishment, has no grand governmental
   strategy, and bears no hand of mighty working any where. No man need
   ever be warned lest he "be offended in him;" for we find him offering
   only sweets for motivities, and bathing in soft odors and oily promises
   the obstinacy of sin. No I the Christ of the old gospel, he of eternal
   punishment, he of the judgment-day--the more I think of him, and of
   man, and the kind of Saviour man re quires to get hold of him, and
   rouse him out of his death-torpor in sin, the more clear it is that he,
   the terrible Christ, is the Christ we want. The other, I strongly
   suspect is a conceit of human opinion, representing only a phase or
   fashion of the time, that will be very soon gone by; while the real
   Immanuel, coming in much mystery, and raising many hard questions, and
   fitly called Wonderful, will be proving, in all time, his great power
   and beneficence, only the more sublimely; having quantities in him that
   are not from men, or in men's measures; breaking out visibly in great
   victories all down the ages, and reigning, as will finally be
   acknowledged, in a kingdom that shall have no end.

   So far we accept the unquestionable future of revelation. As regards
   that ideal kosmos, in which our philanthropic friends propose to confer
   so much greater honor upon God, I will simply suggest, that they might
   less dishonor him, if they could allow that our present state is, in
   some true sense, a kosmos. God never made any state that was not.
   Inasmuch, therefore, as his future kosmos must, like the present, make
   room for the fact of liberty, who can be sure that there will not be in
   it jars and thunders of dissent, impossible to be excluded--shocks that
   will stir the tragic movement in feeling, and keep off the tameness of
   any such total elysium, or general Peace-Society state, as our
   speculative seers are wont to promise--even as the kosmos of matter
   rests in the perilous equilibrium and lively play of antagonistic
   forces?
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER VI.

  GOD'S RECTORAL HONOR EFFECTIVELY MAINTAINED.

   TO maintain the precept and enforce the sanctions of law, are not the
   only matters of concern to be provided for, in the promulgation of
   forgiveness; a third matter, much insisted on, is that the magistrate
   himself keep good his Rectoral Honor and the Legal Justice of his
   magistracy. Regarded as the administrator of instituted government, he
   is practically the government himself, and is looked upon as being the
   government. Hence if it should happen that, in the introduction of a
   free justification, God's magisterial character--his Rectoral Honor and
   Justice--is let down, or loses the necessary impressiveness, the damage
   incurred will be fatal. And this, it will be remembered, was one of the
   alleged forms of detriment, or damage, to be apprehended, unless some
   kind of satisfaction is made to God's justice. All the compensation
   theories have a principal respect to this supposed necessity. For how
   shall God be just, and have respect in the character of justice, unless
   he executes justice? or unless he somehow has his justice satisfied, by
   volunteer pains contributed for that purpose?

   Hence the many, variously turned contrivances of substitution, by which
   this point is supposed to be carried, and a ground of justification
   prepared that saves the justice and public honor of God, in a release
   of his penalties. These various schemes or theories are made up in the
   terms, official substitution, penal suffering, expiation, judicial
   satisfaction, ransom, purchase, bearing the curse, payment of the debt,
   and the like; used sometimes interchangeably as being, to some extent,
   equivalents, or more commonly set up, each by itself, as the idol
   figure of some peculiar doctrine dominated by it.

   Our New England teachers, for nearly a century past, have commonly
   taken a form of representation that has not as yet obtained general
   currency, The New England scheme of substitution. any where else.
   Pressed by the difficulty of any scheme that supposes a literal
   satisfaction of God's justice, or the release of the guilty obtained by
   the penal suffering of the innocent--because it so profoundly shocks
   the most immovable, and most nearly innate convictions of our moral
   nature--also by the new-sprung inference of universal salvation that
   inevitably follows; viz., that, if Christ has borne the punishment of
   the world, no principle of justice in God will allow him to inflict
   that punishment again upon the transgressors themselves--pressed by
   these difficulties they began to conceive that Christ, in his cross,
   maintained the righteousness of God without punishment, by what was
   expressed, to the same effect as in punishment, of God's abhorrence to
   sin. Christ, they conceived, has simply shown, by his death, the same
   abhorrence to sin that would have been shown by the punishment of the
   guilty. The righteousness of God therefore stands erect and fair, even
   though punishment is released.

   Of this latter and later mode of doctrine I will speak first and
   briefly, recurring afterwards to the older, which turns on the penal
   suffering of Christ, and the maintenance and satisfaction thereby of
   God's justice.

   There is no room for scruple in affirming, that every thing done by
   Christ gets its value, under laws of expression, No fault that it turns
   on what is expressed. or, as in modern phrase, under terms of esthetic
   representation; christianity as a power on the world, is expression.
   Nay, the incarnation itself is what is expressed, and not what is
   contained, or suffered quantitatively as a compensation to justice, in
   the incarnate person. Punishment itself, apart from the matter of penal
   enforcement, considered in the last previous chapter, has besides a
   most sacred and noble efficacy in what it expresses of God--the
   determination of his will, his righteousness, in a word his rectoral
   fidelity to the law. This expression, too, is wanted as being the
   equivalent of a like impression; for nothing is expressed to us, save
   as it is impressed in us, in the same degree. And in just this way the
   gospel itself is resolvable into expression, because it is wanted in a
   way of impression; which is the real effect and mode of its value.

   Thus far we have no difficulty; but the question still remains whether
   a fit compensation is really made for the release of punishment, by
   what is expressed of abhorrence to sin, in the sufferings of Christ?
   That no compensation is wanted--justice and forgiveness being
   co-factors, working together in the instituted government of God, and
   the justice-factor being even confirmed in its vigor, by the revelation
   of future punishment and the inauguration of Christ as the judge of the
   world--was abundantly shown in the last chapter, But consenting, for
   the present, to waive this advantage, we accept the question, whether
   any expression made of abhorrence to sin is a proper and sufficient
   substitute for punishment?

   And here it occurs to us, at the outset, as a very obvious fact, that
   abhorrence to sin expresses almost nothing that would be expressed by
   punishment. Abhorrence to sin no fit equivalent of justice. Abhorrence
   is a word of recoil simply and not a word of majesty. There is no
   enforcement, no judicial vigor in it. I may abhor what I am only too
   weak, or too much in the way of false pity, to handle with the due
   severity. It does not even require a perfect being to abhor sin,
   especially in the wicked forms of it--that is to draw back from it, as
   being disgusted and shocked by it. But there is no such drawing back in
   justice. Justice moves on in the positive vigor of the wrath-principle,
   girded with inflexible majesty, for the doing upon wrong of what wrong
   deserves. To put forward an expression therefore of God's abhorrence to
   sin, as a substitute for justice, is to give it the weakest possible
   substitute. If the abhorrence could be shown keeping company with
   justice and justice with it, there would be no deficiency, but to make
   a governmental sanction out of abhorrence by itself, and publish a free
   forgiveness to sin, on the ground of it,: is to make forgiveness safe
   by a much less positive and weaker way of handling than forgiveness
   itself. All doubt on this point ought to be forever ended, by simply
   asking what kind of figure, as regards efficiency, any government of
   the world would make, dropping off its punishments and substituting
   abhorrences?

   But this abhorrence theory encounters another objection equally fatal,
   in the fact that really no abhorrence No abhorrence expressed in
   Christ's death. at all to sin is expressed in the suffering death of
   Christ. All manifestations of goodness and purity are implicit
   evidences of such abhorrence, but beyond that we discover no evidence
   more direct. To what in the transaction of the cross can God's
   abhorrence, by any possibility, fasten itself? Does God abhor the
   person of Jesus? No. His character? No. His redeeming office? No. The
   sins of the world that are upon him? They are not upon him, save in a
   figure, as the burden that his love so divinely assumes. His standing
   in the place of transgressors? He stands not in that place at all, as
   having their moral desert upon him--only in their place as a good man
   stands in the place of his enemy, to bear his wrongs and make his own
   violated feeling the argument of pity and patience with him. Where then
   does the abhorrence of God take hold of Christ or of his death at all?
   What does it find in him, or about him, or on him, or under him, that
   can be any wise abhorrent? If it should be said that God really abhors
   nothing in him, but only lays severity upon him, to be taken by us as
   the sign of his abhorrence, then how does it appear that the severity
   laid upon him has any moral significance at all, if it is not penal
   suffering? If he is put in our place to suffer the penalty of our sins,
   then we can easily see abhorrence to our sins expressed in his
   suffering. But mere severities and pains laid upon him, even though God
   violated his own deep sympathies and loving approbations to do it, can
   only show the fact of something very abhorrent somewhere, and is much
   more likely to raise abhorrence in us, than to signify God's abhorrence
   to us.

   It will be found accordingly, if the language of those who take up this
   abhorrence theory is carefully watched, that they have a latent
   reference back Latent resumption still of the penal suffering. always
   to Christ, as being in some penal condition, without which our sin is
   no way concerned with his suffering, or his suffering with it. The
   object was to get away from the very repulsive idea of a penal
   character in Christ's suffering, and so from the appalling objections
   that seemed to be incurred by it; but when the point of difficulty is
   once turned by the softer word "abhorrence," we look back and find the
   penal suffering held mentally in reserve, in order to get the Divine
   Sufferer into an attitude, where God's abhorrences can be imagined to
   adhere to him, or find expression through him. Thus it will be said
   continually, that "God's abhorrence to sin was laid upon his
   Son"--which means, if it means any thing, that God's judicial
   indignations were laid upon him; that God withdraws from the Son in the
   agony and upon the cross, to signify his displeasure, that is, his
   judicial displeasure; nay, the doctrine will sometimes be even doubled
   round again so as to say that God's "justice is satisfied" in his
   death; only to be doubled back, of course, when the objections incurred
   by the scheme of penalty are to be met; for then it will be answered
   that Christ does not suffer penally, but only in a way to let God's
   abhorrence to sin be expressed through his suffering.

   I conclude, on the whole, that this New England expedient of conceiving
   the substitution of Christ, as being only God's way of showing his
   repugnances to sin by the suffering of Christ, instead of doing it by
   the punishment of the guilty, has in fact, no base of reality, even to
   those who resort to it, save as it reverts to the older scheme of penal
   suffering and resumes all the methods of that scheme. Indeed it will
   even be found, that Dr. Edwards, having taken the ground [47] that "the
   death of Christ manifests God's hatred of sin, in the same sense as the
   damnation of the wicked," still carries out his reasonings, under the
   very scheme of penal suffering that has been renounced, to a point of
   excess in that scheme that is abundantly shocking; viz., to the
   conclusion that "the sufferings of Christ were agreeable to God." "If,
   by mere pain," he says, [48] "be meant pain abstracted from the
   obedience of Christ, I can not see why it may not be agreeable to God.
   It certainly is in the damned; and, for the same reason might have
   been, and doubtless was in the case of our Lord."

   To pursue this particular scheme or doctrine farther appears to be
   unnecessary, after we have found it lapsing always in the older
   doctrine it undertook to qualify, or displace. To this older doctrine
   we accordingly return.

   Here it is conceived that God, as a ruler, must execute justice because
   he is just--if not upon the guilty, then upon Christ their substitute.
   Justice Immutable Justice only not sufficiently just. he must have, the
   inexorable, everlasting wrath [orge] of his judicial nature must be
   satisfied; and as it was to be satisfied by the penal suffering of
   transgressors, so it can only be satisfied, in case of their release,
   by a full compensation of penal suffering offered by their deliverer.
   Now if it were simply conceived that God, by a necessary, everlasting
   charge upon his moral nature, is fated to be the absolute Nemesis of
   wrong,--unable therefore to avert himself, or be averted, till every
   iota and least speck of it has gotten its full desert--there would, at
   least, be a certain sublimity in the conception. But there is no such
   thought as that; the inexorable justice [wrath] wants only suffering it
   is conceived for its satisfaction, and the suffering of innocence will
   be just as good as the suffering of guilt, if only there is enough of
   it; which is about the same thing as to say that God's justice is so
   immovably set on having its due of pains and penalties, that it will be
   just as well satisfied in having them, apart from all relations of
   justice. There was never a doctrine that more obviously broke itself
   down by its own simple statement. Nor is it any wise relieved, when it
   is added that the pains and penalties which justice obtains for
   satisfaction are not exacted, but yielded by consent; for then we have
   a kind of justice under all most sounding epithets of majesty,
   immutable, necessary, sovereign, which is yet willing to get its pains
   and penalties by contract!

   I ought perhaps to say that, under the general phraseology of this
   doctrine, there appears to be some variety Softened or varied forms of
   the doctrine. of impression indicated by a softening, or modified
   definition of terms. Many do not understand by God's justice any
   vindictive attribute or instinct that must have satisfaction, but only
   a character of public justice, or general justice, that is necessary to
   be maintained, by a firm and exact distribution of penalty, in order to
   keep the instituted government in respect and authority. These only
   want the character of public justice made good, by some other
   expression--commonly by that of abhorrence--when that which is made by
   punishment is taken away. Some can not satisfy themselves in what
   manner the needed compensative expression is made, and not finding how
   to explain the difficulties met, take refuge at last in mystery--not
   observing that where confessedly nothing is known, there can be nothing
   expressed. These lower, softer kinds of commutation however do not
   satisfy, at all, the more logical, firmly dogmatic natures, and the
   tendency has been, more and more distinctly of late, to settle into
   what are called the deeper grounds of the subject, and plant the
   doctrine in the soil of first principle; viz., in what is conceived to
   be the eternal, necessary attribute of divine justice itself.

   I could hardly trust myself to state the argument, or vindication, by
   which this more adequate and deeper doctrine is supposed to be
   maintained; and therefore I am constrained to cite the language of two
   late writers of distinction, that they may accurately represent
   themselves and their view of the subject. I do it for no purpose of
   controversy, but only to obtain, for the great matter in question, the
   easiest and surest mode of settlement.

   Thus it is formally argued by a teacher in great authority, [49]
   that--"A being determined by considerations outside of Himself
   [considerations of Absolute Justice how to be conceived. public effect
   for example] can not be God. It is essential to the very nature of God
   that he be independent and omniscient; but with these attributes a
   determination ab extra [as where God is conceived, in the death of his
   son, to be actuated by considerations of public law and authority, and
   results of salvation gained, or to be gained, by his sacrifice] is
   utterly and forever irreconcilable. * * * Were theologians to receive
   this first truth and couple it with that noble utterance with which the
   Shorter Catechism opens--Man's chief end, etc.,' they would never be
   found framing theories, which would strip God of his justice and set
   the universe [i. e., the benefit of it] above the throne of their
   Creator. * * * God is himself the highest end for which he could act."

   Now it is very true that, in one view, there is and can be nothing out
   of God, and that, in the same, he can act for nothing out of Himself.
   It is also true that his acts and purposes are not for things, or
   creatures taken up as ends, after their creation; but these things and
   creatures, present eternally to God's thought as possibilities, in
   Himself, were as truly his ends, before they began to exist externally,
   as they could be afterward. They were, in fact, as truly other and not
   himself, as they came to be afterward. For them and their benefit
   accordingly he has eternally acted. To say otherwise, denying that he
   can have ends out of himself, under the supposed Calvinistic pretext of
   doing honor to his sovereignty, is to make him Allah and not God. He is
   even radically unchristianized in his God is not Allah nevertheless..
   perfections. For it is the glory of God, the summit even of his glory,
   that, being sovereign, he knows, not justice only, but self-sacrifice,
   and is so sublimely given to ends out of Himself, that he can even be a
   suffering God in his feeling, for the recovery and salvation of his
   enemies. Doubtless he does all things, in' a sense, for his own glory;
   which is only saying, if we speak with intelligence, that he does all
   things to make the luster of his greatness and moral perfections
   visible; in other words to radiate abroad his love and goodness, in a
   way of imparting himself; which is to all created minds their only hope
   of perfection and complete beatitude. We are brought round thus, in
   fact, upon the noble conclusion that he does every thing for ends ab
   extra, not for Himself. The argument, therefore, that God must have the
   everlasting anger of his justice satisfied, because he is acting wholly
   for Himself, appears to be about as repulsive, in every way, as any
   thing well call be. It even makes the grim orge or vindictive
   attribute, to be itself the summit of God's perfections. Insisting that
   he must do every thing for himself, nothing for any public ends of
   benefit and blessing to creatures, it seems even to say, what certainly
   can not be meant, that his very perfection is, to stand, first of all,
   for the satisfaction of his wrath, and kindle his glory at the point of
   his resentments!

   Another attempt has also been made, in quite another quarter, to
   maintain what is virtually the same ground, only it is done by a more
   ingenious Another conception of Absolute Justice. and plausible way of
   argument. Consenting virtually to the principle, as every intelligent
   thinker must, that we can properly conceive God only by drawing on
   material included in our own human consciousness, the writer finds, in
   all "ethical natures," whether it be the nature of God, or of man, a
   certain prime element that he calls "Justice," and which is
   instinctively arrayed, roused to vindictive energy, against all wrong,
   or transgression. This judicial nature, called "justice," he also
   conceives to be the point absolute in moral character. This must stand,
   and nothing else which will not stand with it. Thus he says-- [50]

   "A fundamental attribute of Deity is justice. This comes first into
   view and continues in sight to the very last, in all inquiries into the
   Divine Nature. No attribute can be conceived that is more ultimate and
   central than this one. This is proved by the fact that the operation of
   all the other divine attributes, love not excepted, is conditioned and
   limited by justice. For whatever else God may be, or may not be, he
   must be just. It is not optional with him to exercise this attribute,
   or not to exercise it, as it is in the exercise of that class of
   attributes which are antithetic to it. We can say--God may be merciful,
   or not, as he pleases,' but we can not say, God may be just or not as
   he pleases.' It can not be asserted that God is inexorably obligated to
   show pity; but it can be categorically affirmed that God is inexorably
   obligated to do justly."

   His all-conditioning, first attribute of justice therefore must have
   "plenary satisfaction" he maintains, else there can be no deliverance.
   The conditionated grace of love must wait on the unconditionated,
   absolute impulse of justice, and drink the cup of its indignations dry.
   Thus it is conceived that, "In the incarnate Son, God voluntarily
   endures the weight of his own judicial displeasure, in order that the
   real criminal may be spared. The Divine compassion itself bears the
   infliction of the Divine indignation, in the place of the transgressor.
   The propitiation is no oblation ab extra, it is wholly ab intra, a
   self-oblation upon the part of Deity itself, by which to satisfy those
   immanent and eternal imperatives of the Divine Nature, which, without
   it, must find their satisfaction in the punishment of the
   transgressor." "Side by side in the Godhead, there dwell the impulse to
   punish and the desire to pardon; but the desire to pardon is realized,
   in act, by carrying out the impulse to punish; not indeed upon the
   person of the criminal, but upon that of his substitute. And the
   substitute is the Punisher Himself."

   I have stated thus at large and carefully this newly elaborated scheme
   of satisfaction, partly because it has a certain point of merit, and
   partly because it is a failure where a sufficiently strong failure was
   wanted. The point of merit is that it has the ingenuousness to put
   entirely by the doubling, battledooring art commonly practiced in
   discussions of this subject; it does not make Christ other than God,
   that he may offer something to God's justice; and then a divine person
   [God] that he may be able to offer what is sufficient; and then again
   human that the divine may not suffer; but it takes the ground and
   faithfully adheres to it, that the satisfaction made is wholly ab
   intra, or within the divine nature itself. The point of failure is
   equally important, because it brings the doctrine of penal suffering
   and judicial satisfaction, to just that issue, where its failure is
   likely to be final and conclusive.

   First of all, the ingenuous admission, here made, that the justice of
   God is satisfied from within Himself, or by punishment dispensed upon
   Himself, A very weak justice that God exacts of himself. is even
   admirably fatal. What kind of power any Ruler must hold, in the
   impressions of his subjects who, to make sure of justice, takes all his
   punishments out of himself, it is not difficult to see. There plainly
   could not be a weaker figure in the name of government.

   Besides the justice gotten, in this manner, must be as insipid to Him,
   as it is useless for the purposes of government. Justice wants what is
   just if And the justice is not just beside. it wants any thing, and
   here it is found feeding itself out of that which is exactly not
   just--what vestige of justice can there be in any punishment which a
   righteous God gets out of Himself? Is it so then, after all, that this
   inexorable, undivertible, Nemesis of God's ethical nature, this
   judicial sentiment which must be satisfied first and before every thing
   else, will be just as well satisfied with a punishment not just, as
   with one that is?

   There also appears to be a remarkable oversight here, in the scheme of
   satisfaction proposed, as regards the God suffers--not his compassions.
   penal suffering itself. "The Divine compassion itself bears the
   infliction of the Divine indignation in the place of the transgressor."
   Why the divine compassion, more than the divine justice? Does the
   justice punish the compassion? For aught that appears there is no
   suffering in the compassion more than in the justice. By supposition,
   the truth is, merely, that there is a conflict between the two contrary
   impulses, justice and compassion, and the divine nature--not specially
   the compassion, not specially the justice--suffers. These words justice
   and compassion do not as having each distinct sensibilities make up the
   deity; they inhere in a Being, and that being, as being, suffers, by
   their conflict. Does it then satisfy justice, that the being in whom it
   inheres, suffers partly on account of it?

   Besides, if it were conceivable that the being took so much suffering
   wholly on his love, or on account of his love, did it never occur to
   the writer that Withheld from suffering would have suffered more. if He
   had refused, for love's sake, to encounter so much suffering he would
   certainly have suffered infinitely more? Nay, that such a refusal would
   even have turned the Divine bosom itself into a hell of suffering
   forever? Given the fact of God's Infinite Love, he suffers
   demonstrably, not more, but less, in consenting to be the deliverer of
   men--by suffering however great.

   But the scheme breaks down most fatally of all in the confusion of
   meaning, or the covering up of a double meaning, in the word justice. A
   The Justice conceived is ambiguous. sufficient discrimination here
   would have shown that the absolute justice pertaining to ethical
   natures is a fiction, without any shadow of reality. It is almost
   incredible, that a really intelligent writer should throw himself upon
   the axiom, "God must be just," "God is inexorably obligated to do
   justly," without perceiving that we assent to it for no other reason
   than that the words "just" and "justly" mean "righteous" and
   "righteously." God can not of course do any thing unrighteous, or, in
   that sense, unjust; that is God must keep his integrity. Is that the
   same thing as to say that God has no option left, but to stand by
   retributive justice and do by all men exactly as they do to others?
   Calling "the impulse to punish" justice, has he no liberty left, but to
   follow that impulse, just as far as it must go to be exhausted? If that
   should possibly be true, it will require something more to establish it
   than simply to propound it as an axiom. Interpose, at this point, two
   very simple distinctions and the supposed infallible argument vanishes.

   First, the distinction between righteousness and justice;
   righteousness, being a character grounded in the Righteousness and
   Justice, Wrath and Justice. absolute, unconditioned law of right
   existing before government; and justice, being a rectoral,
   politico-judicial character, maintained by the firm vindication of
   government; conditioned of course by the wants of government. Second,
   the distinction between the wrath-principle and justice; the
   wrath-principle being only that moral sensibility, or passion, that
   impels a moral nature to the infliction of evil in redress of wrong,
   and steels it against the restraints of false pity; and justice being,
   in the administration, a due infliction of such evil, according to the
   ill desert of the wrong. By the first distinction, righteousness is
   seen to be absolute, and justice to be a matter only of means to ends,
   and so of deliberative counsel. By the second, the wrath principle is
   seen to be no law at all, but only an impulse to be regulated by
   counsel; which, when it is, makes justice; when it falls short, laxity;
   when it runs to excess, revenge and cruelty. I have the same kind of
   ethical nature as God, and it is even a praise in me, nay, an
   obligation upon me, to do by my enemy better than he deserves--to
   forget my injuries and even to suffer for his good. Is it then a fault
   in God that he does the same? It is very true that I administer no
   government over my enemy, and so far there is a difference. But this
   difference leaves it optional with God to do by his enemy still better
   than he deserves, when-, ever he can do it, without injury to the
   public interest of government. And if that is agreed, where is the
   absolute, all-conditioning, unconditioned justice-element of his
   nature--the wrath that is to bridle and bestride everlastingly his will
   and counsel? Ceasing ii this manner to call righteousness justice, and
   justice wrath, the claim that wrath is God's first attribute, and must
   be satisfied, is seen to be quite groundless. And the supposed
   adamantine cup, that requires to be kept exactly full of blood, to let
   forgiveness into the world, is happily found to be only an ambiguous
   term in speech and nothing more!

   It will occur to almost any one, that this very huge mistake respecting
   the absolute nature of justice, originates in a confounding of
   righteousness and justice. That is absolute, unconditioned,
   unconditional, a law to all moral natures and even to God; a law, as we
   have seen, [51] before God undertakes to so much as organize a
   government for it. For this law absolute, the government Righteousness
   absolute, not justice. of God including his justice only maintains
   guard, just as guillotines do for statutes; but guillotines are not
   statutes themselves, neither is justice the same as the everlasting law
   of right whose wrongs it avenges. It was not the thunderings, and the
   lightnings, and the smoke, and the sound of a trumpet that were
   engraved in stones, but it was the law. Law is the principal and
   absolute matter, the variable and conditional is what counsel arranges
   and does to vindicate law. [52] or executive counsel, as truly as the
   fire that fell on Sodom, or the destruction of the golden calf. Or if
   we use the epithet as a word of character, the character is not
   original and absolute in God, but is obtained by doing justice. Which
   again requires to be done, only because, and just so far as, it is
   means to ends in a way of maintaining government; not because God's
   nature contains a wrath-principle absolute, that must be exactly
   satisfied. And still it is, with many, a question how far, or whether
   in fact ever, it can be relaxed? also whether, if relaxed by
   forgiveness, it must not be somehow compensated? And they even go so
   far as to be sensitively concerned for God's law, if he is conceived to
   let go any sin, without some exact equivalent obtained. To proclaim a
   free remission, without some such equivalent, they do not hesitate to
   say would quite break down his government; he might be a good adviser
   still, they will say, but nothing more--no real governor at all.

   And yet we can easily see that any such kind of concern is theologic
   with us, and not practical. We do not practically feel, after all, that
   in After all, have no such concern for God's justice. the universal
   free remission published by Christ, God's rectoral authority is at all
   weakened, or requires any new buttress of support to be added. And the
   probable reason is that the immense reinforcement of eternal obligation
   by Christ's doctrine of future punishment, and of the future judgment
   by himself, puts all thought of concern for God's authority so far
   away, that it can not even occur to us. We find ourselves quivering for
   dread, under even mercy itself. The necessity of some compensation made
   to God's justice occurs to no man, save in a way of theory.

   Passing now into another field, let us consider, in a way more
   positive, what Christ has really done that affects, or may be seen to
   affect, the interests of justice. The remainder of the chapter will be
   occupied with matter that I could well enough put forward as a way of
   compensation; suffering no doubt whatever that it would be more
   satisfactory, closer to the problem of compensation itself, and more
   genuine than the others of which I have been speaking. But I shall
   offer it, instead, simply as proof, how closely God adheres to law and
   justice still in the very matter of vicarious sacrifice. And I let go,
   in this way, what might be a considerable relief, or commendation to
   many, just because I have too little respect for the compensations, to
   be accessory, in any way, to this kind of wrong against the simplicity
   of the gospel. These compensations have a too contrived look, and
   suggest too easily the ingenious littleness and tumid poverty of man's
   invention. I would rather have the gospel in God's way of dignity
   without them, than to have it in a guise so artificial and meager
   without the dignity.

   It lies in the very conception of vicarious suffering, I am giving in
   this treatise, that Christ is entered practically into the condition of
   evil and made Christ is incarnated into the curse. subject to it. This
   condition, too, of evil, we shall find is, in some very important
   sense, a penal condition. It is what is called, in one of the epistles,
   "the curse;" an epithet which has reference, I suppose, indirectly, if
   not formally, to the expulsion from paradise set forth in the third
   chapter of Genesis. Not that the sentence there passed on the guilty
   pair, and on the world for their sake, was any positive infliction. The
   scriptures very commonly represent what occurs retributively under
   fixed laws of nature in that way; because the true moral idea of God's
   dealings with evil is best conceived in that way, by minds in the
   earlier stages of development. But to us the effects of sin are its
   curse, and the laws of retribution, set in deep and firm in the economy
   of nature itself, are God's appointed ministers of justice. In this
   manner we conceive that every thing up to the stars--the whole realm of
   causes--is arranged to be, in some sense, the executive organ of God's
   moral retributions.

   Accordingly, the moment any sin breaks out, all the causes set against
   it fall to being curses upon it. As the sin itself must be against the
   will of God, and every thing created centers in that will, a shock of
   discord runs through the general frame-work of life and experience.
   Order itself utters a groan of disorder. The crystalline whole of
   things is shattered, as it were by some hard blow, and the fragments
   begin to grind heavily upon each other. The soul itself, lacerated by
   its own wrong, winces for pain, like an eye that has extinguished sight
   by gazing at the sun. The passions, appetites, fears, aspirations are
   pitched into a general quarrel with each other, and especially with the
   reason and the conscience; and the will, trying to usurp control of
   all, when it can not sufficiently master any thing, falls off its
   throne, as a tyrant plucked down by revolt. The body suffers a like
   shock of disorder, and true health vanishes before the secret crowd of
   infections, twinges, and immedicable combustions, that steal into the
   flesh, and traverse the bones, and go burning along the nerves. Evil
   becomes a kind of organic power in society, in the same way; a kingdom
   of darkness, a conspiracy of bad opinions and powers usurped for
   oppression, under which truth and goodness and right and religion
   itself are, either badly perverted, or cruelly persecuted. The very
   world, made subject to vanity, groans and travails every where, waiting
   for some redemption that can redeem it from itself.

   Now this state of corporate evil is what the scriptures call the curse;
   and it is directly into this that Suffers the corporate evil with us.
   Christ is entered by his incarnation. In this taking of the flesh, he
   becomes a true member of the race, subject to all the corporate
   liabilities of his bad relationship. The world is now to him just what
   it is to us; save that the retributive causations reach him only in a
   public way, and never as a sufferer on his own account. He is even
   depravated or damaged in his human constitution just so far as that
   constitution is humanly derivative. For he was the Son, not of an
   immaculate, but of a maculate motherhood; otherwise the humanity
   assumed were only a dainty, and merely ideal embodiment, such as rather
   mocks our sympathy than draws it. Besides, he would be tempted in all
   points like as we are, and give us to see how he bears himself in our
   lot. Therefore we believe him to have entered himself into our
   humanity, just as it is--into the curse itself, under which it lies.
   Joining himself to us, in a participation so real and deep, his birth,
   we half imagine, coming with a shock, and hear strange wail break out
   in the child's first cry. Or if this be fancy only and not fact, we
   can, at least, see for ourselves that, when he comes to go into his
   great ministry, in the bonds of the curse, and be joined to all the
   corporate woes and judicial disorders of the curse, he recoils with a
   shudder, falls off into a sharp long contest of fasting and temptation,
   finally to emerge as from a fight with demons. [53] In this struggle
   and victory his ministry begins, only the victory does not annihilate,
   or more than simply master his dreadful repugnances. We can see, at
   points all the way on, where the pressure of his labor does not occupy
   and respite his feeling, that his soul wrestles heavily through storms
   of revulsion, or incipient agony. To calm such storms he continues all
   night in prayer. He is "grieved," he "groans in spirit," he "has a
   baptism to be baptized with" and he is "straitened" by the dreadful
   pressure of it, till it be accomplished. He is "troubled in spirit," he
   cries "now is my soul troubled," and finally, when all his work is
   ended, and there is no longer any active ministry to divert or occupy
   his attention, he sinks, at once, into a dreadful superhuman agony and
   horror of darkness, moaning heavily--"My soul is exceeding sorrowful
   even unto death!" Now in all these incipient agonies, and finally in
   the last great agony of all, his trouble is mainly mental, as we can
   see for ourselves. [54]

   It is even so upon the cross, where he dies, physically speaking,
   before his time, because of the more dreadful moral suffering or
   revulsion that was on him, in his felt contact with the curse and the
   judicial horrors of evil. [55] Partly, it is the concern he feels for
   his enemies, invoking the curse of his blood upon themselves and their
   children; and partly it is the baleful shadow that is upon every
   thing--the hour of darkness and judicial madness that is on his
   crucifiers, the black flag hung over the sun, and the geologic
   under-world shuddering horribly for their crime.

   Thus it was that he came into the curse and bore it for us. Not that he
   endures so much of suffering as having it penally upon him--he has no
   such thought--and yet he is in it, as being under all the corporate
   liabilities of the race. He had never undertaken to bear God's
   punishments for us, but had come down simply as in love, to the great
   river of retributive causes where we were drowning, to pluck us out;
   and instead of asking the river to stop for him, he bids it still flow
   on, descending directly into the elemental rage and tumult, to bring us
   away.

   Let us not fail now to observe the deliberate respect he pays to God's
   instituted government and law in this matter. First, that having all
   miraculous Observe what honor he pays to justice. power, and using that
   power continually for the removing of diseases, and sometimes even for
   the quickening of the dead, he steadily refuses to use it for the
   rescue of his person when arrested; or the confounding of his
   adversaries, when arraigned; or even to so much as hurl aside the cross
   and his crucifiers. "No, let sin be just as evil and wild as it will;
   society just as cruel to all that are in it, me included; just as
   visibly accursed, as the retributive order of God's causes requires it
   to be." And again, secondly, observe that, when he has all power to
   stop the retributive causes, and strip away the whole instituted order
   of justice, he will not do it--will not annihilate, or suspend, or in
   the least infringe, any single attribute of causation, arranged for the
   moral discipline of transgression. As he will not discontinue any law
   of nature by his miracles, he will not do it for the deliverance of a
   soul, which in fact is much less than a miracle. He is a being strictly
   supernatural, and his work in the deliverance of transgressors is also
   supernatural; but in coming to them, in their thraldom, to lift them
   out by his divine love and sympathy, he only masters the bad causes,
   but does not stop them. It could as well be imagined that a strong
   magnet, lifting its iron weight into the air, discontinues, or
   annihilates the law of gravity. Nothing in short is so conspicuous, in
   the vicarious suffering and death of Christ, as the solemn deference he
   pays to God's instituted justice in the world, and even to the causes
   from which he comes to redeem.

   Whoever then is pressed with the necessity, that some ground of
   forgiveness should be prepared by Compensations enough, were
   compensations wanted. Christ, in order to make forgiveness safe--some
   compensation made to law and justice for the loss they must suffer, in
   the release of their penalties--has not far to go to find the matter of
   a compensation that is more than sufficient. Let him remember, first,
   the tremendous artillery sanctions. added by Christ, in his two really
   new doctrines, that of eternal punishment and that of his coming in
   glory to judge the world; and then again let him consider Christ in his
   whole lifetime, wrestling with God's retributions upon the world, him.
   self included under them, and finally drinking dry upon his cross the
   cup of judicial madness these retributions mix in the hearts of his
   enemies; and then, once more, let them note how he carefully refuses to
   subvert the retributive causalities of God's judicial order in souls,
   even though it be to accomplish their deliverance--let him bring
   together these most weighty tributes of honor, added by Christ to the
   majesty of law, and whether he shall call them compensations or not
   (for it makes very little difference by what name he calls them) he
   will certainly not be concerned any more, lest God, in the forgiveness
   of sins, may have sacrificed the honors of his authority, or the
   majesty of his justice. All this too, without any fiction of abhorrence
   expressed, justice satisfied, official transfer made of guilt, official
   substitution suffered in the matter of punishment. There is no
   theologic shuffle, in which persons, and characters, and sentiments of
   right, and dues of wrong, are confounded, but every thing is left just
   as it stands, in the facts of the history; making its own impressions,
   mocked by no subtleties, weakened by no moonshine of scholastic
   science.

   As I have made much, in this treatise, of the suffering element in
   Christ's sacrifice, regarding mainly his moral suffering, and that as
   an expression of the suffering sensibility of God towards his enemies;
   and as I have just now magnified, in like manner, the suffering of
   Christ under the retributive and corporate evils of the curse, I ought
   perhaps to make some reference to a scheme of substitution, or
   compensation, different from the others of which I have spoken. For it
   is a somewhat curious fact, that we have a late treatise of our
   own--much commended and really more deserving than any modern treatise
   I have seen--which describes a mode of compensation, executed in
   Christ, where the suffering of God in the punishment of the wicked, is
   made up, or substituted, by His equal suffering in the cross of Jesus.
   It does not appear to be observed that the treatise of Mr. Burge has
   this peculiarity; but he states very distinctly the fact, that Burge's
   new theory of compensation by divine suffering. God, in his
   punishments, evinces his respect for his law, by the amount of evil he
   is seen to endure in those punishments; and then proceeds--"By God's
   submitting to an evil, is meant his consenting that a thing should take
   place, which must be, in its own nature, disagreeable to his benevolent
   heart, if received independently of all other things. The misery of
   mankind, which would have been the effect of the execution of the law,
   would have been such an evil. * * * If then the sufferings of Christ
   were really an evil in the sight of God, and he submitted to them on
   account of his law, it must be evident that they are sufficient to show
   respect for his law. These sufferings must have been an evil of very
   great magnitude. Hence, for God to submit to such an evil on account of
   his law, must be a manifestation of respect to it exceedingly great."
   [56]

   We seem to be coming out here upon a scheme of compensation, which, at
   least, involves no offense to our. natural sentiments of right; but the
   prospect vanishes too sow to allow us any space for congratulation. The
   little clause "on account of his law," will be observed in the language
   cited; and the implication is that Christ must needs suffer, on account
   of the law, in order that God's suffering for him and with him should
   go to the same account with the suffering He would undergo in
   punishment. And then, regarding the suffering of Christ as being
   somehow on account of the law, the argument goes off upon the revealing
   of God's "opposition to sin," and his "displeasure against sinners,"
   ending virtually, after all, in a way of compensation by abhorrence as
   it is commonly held. If Mr. Burge, perceiving the full import and merit
   of the conception he began with, could have had the firmness not to be
   swerved from his point by deference to existing opinions, his new base
   of compensation, by which one kind of moral suffering in God is
   substituted by another, would have allowed him to erect a complete
   superstructure of his own, and one that should be nowise revolting to
   right. But he seems to have not conceived the fine possibility it gave
   him.

   In the general view I have thus given of the compensations, and
   especially in taking the position that God's law and justice are
   sufficiently vindicated in Christ, saying nothing of compensations at
   all, I anticipate two objections--

   1st Obj. That the christian world is unanimous in the belief that
   Christ has offered a compensation to the Christian world unanimous for
   compensation. justice of God, and that such compensation is necessary,
   as a ground for the forgiveness of sins. There is some truth in this,
   and I have no pleasure in a raising a conflict with any so generally
   accepted faith or opinion. But I have (1.) made up as large an account
   of compensations as any one can desire, if a compensation must be
   provided; and (2.) I have it to say, that whatever agreement there may
   be in respect to the need of a compensation, there is no agreement as
   to the mode; and (3.) that, for the first thousand years of the church,
   there was nothing said of any compensation at all, except that the
   suffering death of Christ was a compensation paid to the devil; and
   (4.) that Anselm, at whom this notion of a compensation to God begins,
   only makes up an argument in which God's violated honor is compensated
   by the obedience unto death of his incarnate Son, conceiving the fact
   of no compensation at all to God's justice or the want of any--much as,
   in the previous chapter, I have shown what honor God has put upon the
   law-precept, by Christ's obedience, and here upon the penalty, by his
   incarnate submission to the curse or the natural retributions of God.
   How much is left of the objection after a specification like this, I am
   not anxious to inquire.

   2d Obj. That the view here advanced will not satisfy the strong
   substitutional, or imputational phrases applied to Christ in the
   scripture. Exactly contrary to this, I am clear in the conviction, that
   it has the particular merit of giving to all such forms of scripture
   expression, their most easy and genuinely Substitutional phrases of
   scripture not met. natural meaning, and that, without doing any offense
   to the standards of our moral nature. There is a kind of legerdemain,
   or word-shuffle practice, in such phrases; by which Christ is shown to
   be set in the very condition, or it will even be said in the very guilt
   of sinners, having their sins really put upon him, to be answered for
   by him in suffering before God's justice, and to satisfy that justice.
   If it were necessary to reason with attempts that are themselves even
   shocking violations of reason, it should be enough to say, that Christ
   is either really in the lot of ill desert, or else he is not. If he is
   there, then he ought to suffer; and if he is not, then it is the
   greatest wrong and irreverence to pretend that he suffers justly. I
   have dared to say that he is not there, and suffers nothing as justly
   due to himself. He only comes into the corporate evil of sin, as being
   incarnated into humanity, and, working there to recover men away, both
   from sin and punishment, he, for so long a time, encounters and suffers
   the curse they are justly under. This he does, not to satisfy God's
   justice, but in a way of coming at their consciences and hearts;
   whereupon it results that they, being released or recovered, by so
   great expense of suffering and sacrifice, give him their testimony of
   thanks, in the most natural way possible, by telling how he "was made a
   curse for them," "bore their sins in his own body," "gave himself for
   them," "was made sin for them," "gave himself to be their ransom,"
   "died for them," "suffered the just for the unjust."

   The case is one we can not parallel, but suppose--no matter if the like
   was never heard of--that some state, An illustration of the
   substitutive language. the Roman for example, has contrived a prison
   for the punishment of public malefactors, on the plan of an ordeal by
   Providence. The prison is placed in the region of some deadly miasma,
   that we will say of the campagna; the design being to let every convict
   go free, after some given numbers of years are passed; on the ground
   that, being still alive, he must have learned to govern himself for so
   long a time, and is also marked for life and liberty by the acceptance
   of Providence. The fell poison of the atmosphere decimates, of course,
   the number of the prisoners, almost every week. Finally it comes to the
   knowledge of a certain good monk of the city, who has learned to follow
   his Master, that a notable prisoner who, a long time ago, was his
   bitter private enemy,. begins to show the working of the poison, and is
   giving way to the incipient burnings of the fever. Whereupon the godly
   servant says "this man was my enemy, and for Christ's sake I must go to
   him, trying, if I can, to save him." Becoming thus the prisoner's
   faithful nurse and attendant, he is recovered and goes free, and the
   benefactor takes the infection and dies. And now the rescued man throws
   out his soul on words, trying vainly to express the inexpressible
   tenderness of his obligation. He writes, and talks, and sings, nothing
   but gratitude, all his life long; telling how the Christly man saved
   him, by what poor figures he can raise. "O he bore my
   punishment"--"became the criminal for me"--"gave his life for
   mine"--"died that I might live"--"stood in my lot of guilt"--"suffered
   all my suffering." It will not be strange, if he should even go beyond
   scripture and testify in the fervors of his homage to so great
   kindness--"he took my debt of justice"--"satisfied the claims of
   justice for me;" for he will mean, by that, nothing more than he has
   meant by all he has been saying before. Then, after a time, when he and
   his benefactor are gone, some one, we will imagine, undertakes to write
   their story; and the dull, blind-hearted literalizer takes up all these
   fervors of expression, in the letters and reported words of the rescued
   felon, showing most conclusively from them, that the good monk actually
   got the other's crime imputed to him, took the guilt of it, suffered
   the punishment, died in his place, and satisfied the justice of the law
   that he might be released! Why the malefactor himself would even have
   shuddered, at the thought of a construction so revolting, hereafter to
   be put upon his words! The honors won for Christian theology, by this
   kind of interpretation put upon the free words of scripture, make a
   very sad figure, and are better to be lost than preserved. I do not, to
   speak frankly, know a passage of scripture, that can with any fairness
   be turned to signify a legal or judicial substitution of Christ, in the
   place of transgressors--none that, taken with only a proper Christian
   intelligence, can be understood as affirming, either the fact, or the
   necessity, of a compensation made to God's justice, for the release of
   sin.

   If now we take the material of this and the two previous chapters,
   apart from any thought or proposed These law factors necessary, in the
   moral-power construction of the gospel. scheme of compensation for the
   release of punishment, we can not fail to see the immense importance
   and absolute integral necessity of it, in a gospel that proposes to
   quicken and spiritually restore the world. Not even the transcendent
   moral power over mankind, which Christ has obtained by his incarnate
   life and sacrifice, can have any sufficient sway, save as it is
   complemented, authenticated, and sharpened into cogency, by the sturdy
   law-work of these three chapters.

   It is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of christian
   doctrine, that what the critical historians call the "moral view" of
   the atonement, in distinction from the expiatory, has been so
   persistently attempted, and so uniformly unsuccessful. The
   discouragements of failure appear to signify nothing; still the attempt
   is renewed, age after age, as if pushed on by some sublime fatality
   that can not be resisted. And what shall we see in this sublime
   fatality, but the felt pressure of truth, thrusting on attempts to
   issue the truth in some right form? What also shall we see in so great
   persistency under failure, but a pledge of final success? And we are
   the more confident of this, in the revision of these three chapters,
   that we are able so clearly to see, why the attempts at a moral
   construction of the sacrifice, such as have heretofore been made,
   should have failed. They have keen partial, they have not included
   matter enough to make any complete gospel, or to maintain any permanent
   hold, as a power, in men's convictions. They begin to wane as they
   begin to live, and shortly die for want of any complete apparatus of
   life. One proposes Christ as an example. Another imagines that his work
   is exhausted in correcting the superstition, or false opinion, that God
   will not forgive sin; and so allowing God's paternity to be accepted.
   Another shows him to be the teacher of a divine morality that must
   needs restore the world. Another beholds, in his life and death, the
   manifested love of God. Others follow in varieties that combine some,
   or all, of the proposed modes of benefit, and fill out, as they
   conceive, the more complete account of his moral efficacy. The inherent
   weakness of all such versions of the gospel is, that they look to see
   it operate by mere benignities--something is either to be shown or
   done, that is good enough to win the world.

   The one fatal defect that vitiates all such conceptions and puts them
   under a doom of failure is that they make up a gospel which has no law
   side of authority, penal enforcement, rectoral justice; nothing to take
   hold of an evil mind at the point of its indifference or averseness to
   good, nothing to impress conviction, or shake the confidence, or stop
   the boldness of transgression. Doubtless it is something great, a
   wonderful and chief element, that Christ unbosoms the Suffering Love of
   God, and obtains a name and power, in that manner, so transcendent; and
   yet not even he himself appears to put this captivating figure first in
   order, in the working plan, or economy of his gospel. On the contrary,
   we may distinctly see, when he comes to the end of his ministry, that
   he expects the dispensation of the Spirit now to begin, as he retires,
   in a cogent, piercing, fearfully appalling work, that is far as
   possible from any thing captivating or benignant. And yet even this
   will be, in a sense, by him and by his cross. "And when he is come he
   shall reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to
   come." How of sin? "because they believe not on me." How of
   righteousness? "because I go to the Father and ye see me no more." How
   of judgment? "because the prince of this world is judged." In these
   thunders he will be revealed, and by these mighty shocks of inward
   convulsion, he will open a passage for his love and beauty to enter.
   For what honor is there on the precept of God's law, when Jesus
   personates it in his life! and how dreadfully, visibly, base is the
   sin, that can attack that life and do a deed of murder on it! Well
   might the poor maddened multitude, overwhelmed by unutterable
   convictions of wrong in what they have done, go home smiting on their
   breasts! And the righteousness of God--what opinion shall they have,
   now, either of it, or of themselves, when they conceive him ascending
   to the Father? He came out from the righteousness of God, verily he
   lived it in the world, and now he has gone up clad in its honors to
   reign. And the justice of God--what is now so visible, as that the
   cross itself is God's mightiest deed of judgment? for here goes down,
   as by a thunderstroke, the prince of this world--all the organically
   dominating powers of evil; its fashions, its pride, its pomps of
   condition, its tremendous codes of false opinion, all its lies, all its
   usurpations. These overgrown tyrannies upon souls are hurled, like
   Dagon, to the ground; and Pilate and the priests, and the senators, and
   the mob, and the soldiers, are all seen choking in dumb silence, before
   the cross and the judgment-day quaking and blackness of the scene. Poor
   sinning mortals! how weak do they look! how like to culprits judged!

   In all which we have, according to the conception of Christ himself,
   what exactly corresponds to the matter of these three rugged chapters
   of government. Expecting, as he does, to draw all men, by the
   captivating love and grace of his sacrifice, he has no such thought as
   that the moral power of his life will do any thing by itself. There
   must be law, conviction, judgment, fear, taking hold of natures dead to
   love, and by this necessary first effect, preparing a way for love. No
   effective and firm hold of the world as world, does he even hope to
   get, save as he breaks the shell of the world's audacity and blunted
   feeling, by these piercing rigors of conviction--doing visibly and
   suffering all that he does and suffers, in a way to honor the precept,
   enforce the penalty, and sanctify the justice of law; the precept as
   right, the penalty as righteous, the justice as the fit vindication of
   the righteousness of God. No moral-view account of his gospel,
   separated from this, can be any thing but a feeble abortion. In this
   firm conjunction, his wonderful life and the name he has obtained,
   which is above every name, become the power of God unto salvation--thus
   and not otherwise.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [47] Discourses on Atonement, Park's edition, p. 31.

   [48] Page 35.

   [49] Biblical Repertory, A. D. 1859, pp. 474-5.

   [50] Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1859. Art. II --The Atonement a
   Satisfaction for the Ethical Nature of both God and Man.

   [51] For the distinction between righteousness and justice, See Chap.
   I., Part II.

   [52] The Hebrew scriptures have a way of putting these two ideas
   righteousness and justice together that is instructive. They make use
   of two distinct sets of words, one that is morally significant, the
   other forensically; and it is remarkable how firmly these two sets of
   words, occurring almost constantly in a kind of twin relationship, keep
   themselves to their places; scarcely ever, or quite never crossing over
   to uses that confuse their meaning. Thus we have--"righteousness and
   judgment"--"righteous judgment"--"justice [i. e., righteousness] and
   judgment"--"just [i. e., righteous] judgment"--"judgment and justice"
   [i.e., righteousness]--with a great variety of similar combinations;
   where it will be observed, in the last three cases, that our English
   translation, putting justice and just in the place of righteousness and
   righteous, makes a considerable look of confusion; owing to the fact
   that the words just and justice are so often used, in English, in the
   judicial and vindicatory sense. It would have been very much better if
   the translation had excluded this ambiguity, by steadily representing
   the steadiness of the original, in a use only of the words righteous
   and righteousness, and reserving the terms just, justice, judgment and
   the like, for the other class of uses, the vindicatory, in the manner
   observed by the scripture. Nobody in that case would ever have begun to
   imagine that retributive justice was an original, everlasting,
   unconditioned, first principle in the moral nature of God. That is true
   of righteousness only, never of justice.

   [53] Christ and his Salvation, pp. 94-111.

   [54] This fact has been observed by others, who yet have not regarded
   his mental suffering as proceeding simply from his love vicariously
   burdened for the world's evils, and have not taken his redemption as
   accomplished by his moral power on the world. Thus Dr. John Pye Smith
   has the insight to perceive, that--"The fact of natural death, the mere
   ceasing to live, was the smallest part of those sufferings; it was
   their termination and relief. The sorrow which he endured ineffably
   transcended all corporal agony. It was death in the soul. Our moral
   feelings sin has made slow and torpid; so that we can form none but
   very faint conceptions of the load of distress and horror which passed
   on that soul, whose unsullied innocence and perfection of sensibility
   were without an equal in all human nature. He suffered all that a
   perfectly holy man could suffer, but the highest intensity of his
   anguish lay in that which was mental." (Testimony to the Messiah, Vol.
   II, p. 343.)

   [55] Christ and his Salvation, pp. 225-275.

   [56] The Atonement, Discourses and Treatises, by Prof. Park, pp 158-60.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER VII.

  JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.

   AND yet the great Moral Power obtained by Christ for the reconciliation
   of men to God, fortified and buttressed by these vigorous law-factors
   of which I have been speaking, is obviously still no absolute or
   complete power, as regards the result proposed. No moral power ever
   goes to its mark in that way. The force or fiat-power of God strikes
   directly through, by its own cogency, but his moral power works only by
   inducement; that is, by impressions, or attractions that may be
   resisted; for it is not one of the possibilities, Moral power supposes
   the consent of faith. that character should be struck out, by any
   exterior action that does not act through choice or faith, in the
   subject. That would be not only a miracle, but a morally absurd
   miracle. Moral power therefore, acting by itself, always falls
   inevitably short of the result proposed, appearing thus, in one view,
   to be scarcely any real power at all. The grandest, most ineffable kind
   of power--in Christ a glory most visibly divine or deific--it still
   bears a look of insufficiency, whenever it moves on a moral nature that
   will not suffer it to be sufficient. But where it wins consent, or
   faith, it is not so; there it is visibly, consciously power, bearing
   some of the highest attributes of sovereignty; even transforming the
   subject all through, in the deepest secrets of impulse; creating, as it
   were, new possibilities of character, new springs of liberty in good.
   Beginning in the plane of inducement, or attraction, it no sooner wins
   consent, or faith, than it becomes inspiration; bearing the soul up out
   of its thraldom and weak self-endeavor, to be a man newborn, ranging in
   God's freedom, and consciously glorious sonship.

   And this, if I am right, is the very greatest thing done below the
   stars, evincing the greatest power. The subject is reconnected herein
   with the divine nature, atoned, reconciled with God, transformed by the
   inward touch of God's feeling and character. This, if any thing, is
   power, the power of God unto salvation. Only it is by the supposition a
   salvation by faith. Winning faith, it works by the faith it wins; and
   so, being trusted in, it makes the trust a new footing of life and
   character.

   Now it is this new footing of faith, or salvation by faith, which the
   New Testament Scriptures call Justification by Faith. Not that men
   Justification by faith is the result proposed. were never justified by
   faith before--they were never justified in any other way, never saved
   on any other footing. The Old Testament saints, and as truly the
   outside saints, of whom I believe there have been many besides Jethro
   and Job and Cornelius, were all justified by faith. They were such as,
   not knowing Christ, trusted themselves practically to God as their
   Helper and Keeper; or not knowing God, trusted themselves implicitly to
   some supernatural Helper felt to be near, and accepted as their Unknown
   Friend. We only speak of justification by faith in Christ, as a new
   footing of salvation, because there is such a power obtained for God,
   by the human life and death of Christ, and the new enforcements of his
   doctrine, as begets a new sense of sin, provokes the sense of spiritual
   want, and, when trust is engaged, creates a new element of advantage
   and help, to bring the soul up into victory over itself and seal it as
   the heir of God. And thus it is, or in a sense thus qualified, that we
   speak of justification by faith, as the grand result of Christ's work,
   and the all-inclusive grace of his salvation.

   Holding this view of Christ and his gospel, we can see beforehand, that
   justification by faith will even be a principal matter of Christianity;
   and Practical faith and church opinion may not wholly coincide. then it
   will not be strange, if some should glorify it more as an idol of
   dogmatic opinion, and others more as a footing of grace and divine
   liberty. It will be dear to many, living in their heads and supervising
   the gospel as thinkers, because it is the articulus stantis vel
   cadentis ecclesiae; but a great deal more dear, to a much greater
   number, as the point where Jesus practically meets their want, and
   becomes a new celestial confidence in their faith. What however it
   means, may not be very exactly understood or agreed, between those who
   prize it as a church article, and those who value it as the new footing
   and spring of their spiritual liberty--the justification of life. Nay,
   it will not be strange, if some whose souls are most kindled by the
   grace of it, should nevertheless make a church article of it that is
   quite inconsistent, or even revolting. In my present chapter,
   therefore, I shall endeavor to gather in what light I can from the
   previous chapters, upon this truly principal matter of the Christian
   salvation.

   The single text of Scripture at which the doctrine begins, and in
   which, we may almost say that it ends, The principal text discussed.
   though hundreds of other passages bring in their consenting evidence,
   is the much debated testimony of Paul [57] --"Whom God hath set forth
   to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his
   righteousness in the remission of sins that are past, through the
   forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness,
   that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in
   Jesus."

   The first clause of the passage, relating to propitiation, will be
   considered more properly in another chapter. At present, our concern is
   to settle the true meaning of the remaining part, relating to the
   righteousness of God, and the dispensation of his justifying mercy.

   The mere English reader will not know, that the three words here
   occurring, righteousness, just, and justifier of--The three words all
   of one family.noun, adjective, and participle--are all words of the
   same root in the original, and, of course, are as closely related in
   meaning, as they can be in so many different parts of speech, that are
   grammatical offshoots of the same root. Informed of this, he will ask,
   at once, why the three words are not translated so as to preserve the
   impression of their kinship?--thus to read, either "the righteousness
   of God," "that he may be righteous and make righteous," or else, the
   "justice of God, that he may be just and the justifier of"--so to
   reflect the apostle's meaning, in the exact one color he gave it, by
   his three co-relative words in the Greek? I hardly know what answer to
   make to this question, unless it be that the text had been already
   warped, by a dogmatic construction, before the translation was made.
   This, however, is not quite certain; for the latter class of words from
   the Latin --justice, just and justify--are commonly used in the
   translation in precisely the same meaning as the former class from the
   Saxon--righteousness, righteous and make righteous. I say "commonly
   used," but they are not always so used; for the Romans had two senses,
   very distinct from each other, when they spoke of justice. They were a
   very intensely legal people, and they sometimes meant by justice,
   justice under political analogies--vindicatory and forensic
   justice--and sometimes justice in the moral sense; that is,
   righteousness. The Greek word or class of words, never means justice
   and just under political analogies, but always moral justice; that is
   uprightness, or rightness of principle. Hence the mixing of both
   classes of words in the translation of this text, so as to read
   "righteousness" and "just" and "the justifier of," wears a suspicious
   look, and is, to say the least, unfortunate, because of the ambiguity
   it creates.

   Still no very great detriment will be suffered, if due care is taken
   always to understand the words just and justify as having, like the
   word righteousness that precedes them, a purely moral
   significance--that God is just, as being righteous, and justifies,
   simply as communicating his own character and becoming a righteousness
   upon us. Unhappily this caution is not observed by theologians, and
   these two words are construed very commonly by them, under the judicial
   analogies; as if there were a fixed attribute in God called his
   justice, which is immutably set for the vindication of right, and the
   redress of wrong, by deserved punishments. "That he might be just"
   therefore "and the justifier," is taken as if there were some
   adversative relation between the clauses, or as if it read "just and
   yet the justifier" &c.--Christ having so exactly satisfied the
   immutable justice, by his sufferings, that God appears to be just as
   ever, even though he justifies, or passes judgment in favor of, those
   who deserve nothing but punishment.

   It will be seen accordingly that a right view of Christian
   justification will depend, to a great extent, on a proper and true
   understanding of the three staple words referred to. I propose
   therefore at the outset, and before offering any construction of the
   passage in question, to pause on the words themselves, and show, by a
   sufficiently careful investigation, what is their true meaning.

   The Old Testament has two words, one a moral and spiritual, and the
   other a judicial, which, as was noted in the last chapter, [58] are
   very commonly used in conjunction, yet never appear to cross, or get
   confused, in their meaning. Our present concern is with the first. It
   means originally straight just as our Saxon word right and the Latin
   word rectus denote, in their symbol, a straight line; that being
   nature's type of moral rightness, or rectitude. Now this moral word of
   the Old Testament is translated, taking noun, adjective, and verb,
   either righteousness, righteous, and being right; or justice, just, and
   being just. The noun is How the three words stand in the Old Testament.
   translated righteousness more times than can well be numbered, and
   justice in the moral sense of righteousness at least twenty-five
   times--never, that I have been able to discover, in any judicial, or
   vindicatory sense. The adjective is translated righteous still more
   frequently, and just, in the sense of morally upright, or righteous,
   about fifty times--never as just, in the retributive and judicial
   sense. The verb, which is here the principal matter of debate, is
   translated to be upright, holy, true, honest, innocent--all words of
   moral significance--also finally to justify. Here only does it take on
   even a semblance of judicial character; and the semblance is, to say
   the least, extremely doubtful here. The Hebrew grammar, it may be
   necessary to observe, has a causative mood for the verb, which is
   called the Hiphil. Thus the Indicative he is right, becomes in the
   Hiphil, he causes to be right, makes right, or righteous. We have three
   terminations that give a Hiphil power in English, ize [harmon-ize] from
   the Greek, fy [sancti-fy] from the Latin, and en [hard-en] from the
   Saxon. But our English verb to be right had never taken a Hiphil form,
   or power, and for this reason, perhaps, the translators passed over, in
   many instances, to the Latin word justify, adopting that; though they
   sometimes manufacture a phrase that carries the causative meaning.
   Thus, instead of saying in Daniel, "they that justify many," they say
   "they that turn many to righteousness." [59] And yet when they come to
   Isaiah they read--"by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify
   many; [60] when the meaning is exactly as before--"turn many to
   righteousness." Plainly enough, in both these cases, there is no
   thought of the many being made even with God's law, or judicially
   acquitted, but only of their being made righteous. It is as if the very
   un-English expression were used--"shall right-en," or "shall be the
   righteousser of, many."

   It may readily be seen that, out of this causative or Hiphil use, there
   will be a sliding naturally into the idea of passing as righteous;
   because, in that, we only make righteous to ourselves; and then this
   passing as righteous will have a certain look of justifying judicially,
   in the sense of acquittal. "He is near that justifieth me, who will
   contend with me?" [61] -- where the idea is, neither that God makes
   right, nor that he acquits and absolves, but simply that he passes, or
   approves as right. Hence the pertinence of the question --"who will
   contend with me?" or show me to be wrong? In two other cases [62] we
   encounter the expression "justify the righteous;" where, of course,
   there is no righteoussing of such as are not, neither is there any more
   a justifying in the sense of acquitting or absolving; but there is
   simply a passing of the righteous as righteous. In three other cases
   [63] we find the expression--"justify the wicked" where the very point
   of the charge is that the wicked are taken to favor, passed as
   righteous, and so that moral distinctions, not forensic, are
   confounded. There is here no reference whatever to any judicial
   defection, save through the moral of which it is a result. On the whole
   I do not know an example in the Old Testament, where the original moral
   word above referred to, whether translated righteousness, righteous,
   and be right, or justice, just, and justify, is used in any but a
   properly moral sense.

   We come now to the Greek word of the New Testament, the same which is
   translated righteousness, just, and justify, in the particular passage
   I How they stand in the New Testament. am debating. Here we find the
   noun [dikaiosune] always translated righteousness, never justice; for
   justice is a word which does not once occur in the New Testament; the
   adjective [dikaios,] translated about fifty times righteous, and just
   in the moral sense ("condemned and killed the just") [64] about thirty
   times, never once in a judicial, unless it be in the passage we have
   under examination; also the verb [dikaioo,] always translated to
   justify, because we have no other Hiphil word to fill the place; still
   showing clearly always, by the collocation it is in, as here, that it
   has a moral force only, just as it has in the Old Testament. Taking
   this very sentence then--"to declare his righteousness that he might be
   just and the justifier"--who can imagine that the two latter words,
   just and justifier, are words to be turned away from their family
   relation in the very same sentence, and made to carry a forensic or
   judicial meaning? There was never such an example of bad writing in the
   world. Besides it may be safely affirmed, that no hardest possible
   strain of labor put upon this causative or Hiphil word, to justify, can
   make it carry, at all, the complicated, artificial notion of such a
   justifying--that which justifies, without either making any body just,
   or accepting any body as being just, but only passes a verdict of quasi
   justice, on grounds of penal suffering not personal in the subject, but
   contributed by another. Why if the transgressor had borne his own
   suffering, and had perfectly filled up the measure of it, who can
   imagine a fiction so extravagant, as that he should be called a just
   man? He would not even be forensically just, any more than a malefactor
   who has served out his sentence.

   I ought perhaps to note, in this connection, the very intensely,
   mysteriously moral impression held by such Uses and conceptions of
   Plato. a writer as Plato, when he speaks of right, or righteousness;
   or, if so he is translated, of the just, or justice. "Justice," he
   says, "is the virtue of the soul, injustice its vice. The just soul
   then and the just man will live well." [65] In the same connection he
   speaks of the harmonizing effect on the moral nature, calling
   righteousness, or justice, "a correct arrangement of the parts of the
   soul towards each other, or about each other." He recurs again and
   again to a discussion of right, or justice, and gets lost in the
   mystery, not finding how to conceive it. He represents Socrates in a
   discourse upon it, telling how he has inquired of many, and has only
   been sunk in greater doubts by their answers--this only is clear that
   they all conceive it as a certain divine something, going through all
   things, to rule them by its unseen sway. One whom he questions goes
   into the etymology of the word dikaios, conceiving that it was
   originally diaion, because it goes through and governs all things, and
   that the k was inserted "for elegant enunciation." Another, consulting
   the mysteries, found it to mean the same as cause; viz., a power to
   rule and set in order. Another referred it to the sun, because it had a
   pervading and heating and all-nourishing power. Another, for a like
   reason, took it to be a certain divine fire in the soul. Another took
   it as a kind of piercing world-soul, that, like the soul of Anaxagoras,
   mingled with nothing, yet pervaded all things. Whereupon affectingly
   baffled by so many sublime guesses, he gives over the search, declaring
   that he is now in greater doubt and mystery of thought, than before he
   undertook to learn what justice is. [66] How far off now, in all these
   wondering, almost adoring struggles of thought, is this great teacher,
   from even so much as the faintest mental reference to any judicial
   analogies! Could he have conceived the right, as everlasting, necessary
   idea, a law before all government, going through, as it were, even God
   and God's perfections, and so through all moral natures, he would, at
   least, have found the Monarch Principle of the universe in that also,
   some fit point of rest for his inquiries Even the groping in which we
   have just followed him, the lofty burning mystery he is in, were a
   preparation how sublime, how almost sacred, for the apostle's doctrine
   of the cross, when he says--"Whom God hath set forth to declare his
   righteousness for the remission of sins." The transcendent principle he
   could not find, yet even worshipfully sought, is there discovered--a
   law, as Hooker conceives, "laid up in the bosom of God." [67]

   We come back thus upon the apostle's great text of justification, to
   settle, if we can, the true construction of its meaning. And it could
   hardly The three words then, are moral not judicial. be more clear, I
   think, that none of the words here grouped together, righteousness,
   just, justifier of, are to receive a judicial, or judicially
   vindicative meaning; which, again, is but another form of the
   conclusion that, in Christian justification, there is no reference of
   thought whatever to the satisfaction of God's retributive justice, or
   to any acquittal passed on guilty men, because the score of their
   account with God's justice has been made even by the sufferings of
   Christ. The justification spoken of is a moral affair, related only to
   faith in the subject, and the righteousness of God, operative in or
   through his faith. In this conviction we shall be farther confirmed, if
   we take up each of the three co-relative words and follow them into
   their relational uses.

   1. The righteousness of God. Many teachers appear to understand this
   expression, in the particular case now in hand, as meaning, in fact,
   the vindicatory justice of God. God declares his justice, they
   conceive, in the penal sufferings of Christ, so that he can remit the
   sins that are past and keep his justice good. If so, there is no other
   such use of the term. We do not read "the justice of God which is by
   faith;" [68] nor No judicial meaning in the righteousness of God. "by
   the justice of one the free gift came upon all;" [69] nor "going about
   to establish their own justice, have not submitted themselves to the
   justice of God;" [70] nor "the justice of God unto all, and upon all
   them that believe." [71] These passages all turn upon the word
   righteousness, and if we substitute their meaning by that of justice,
   they only become absurd, or even revolting.

   2. That he might be just. Here it is often conceived, that God must
   needs keep himself just, in men's convictions; The being just not
   judicially meant. that is just in the judicial and vindicatory sense,
   as the avenger of transgression, else he can not forgive, or justify.
   The English word just occurs only twice in the New Testament, in this
   retributive and judicial sense, where it translates, not dikaios, the
   moral word, but endikos, a word always retributive. [72] Meantime, in
   the more than thirty other examples, where it translates dikaios, it
   means simply just in the sense of right, or righteous, and can not be
   made to mean any thing else. In the phrase we are now debating,
   therefore, we can not understand the word just to mean retributively,
   forensically just, without supposing that, in this one single use, the
   original word has forgotten its meaning--which is the most unlikely
   thing possible. Besides, the adversative construction that goes almost
   necessarily with the idea of a retributive meaning in the epithet just,
   is favored by nothing in the grammar, but is forbidden rather. It does
   not read--"that he might be just [retributively] and yet justify," but
   "that he might be just and justify;" that is that he might be so
   conspicuously, gloriously righteous, as to communicate righteousness to
   every believer. Neither will it signify any thing to say that, in
   undertaking to be so conspicuously righteous, he will rather repel than
   draw, and of course will do any thing but communicate; for though there
   may be something appalling in the perfect and pure righteousness of
   God, it is also, in another view, a character most tender, benignant,
   and patient. If I were a wholly righteous man, given up to right in a
   perfect and unfaltering homage, I should certainly forgive my enemy for
   that reason. And in just this way an apostle conceives the
   righteousness of God, saying--"faithful and just [that is, righteous]
   to forgive us our sins." [73] His opinion of God's righteousness is
   such, that he even grounds the confidence of forgiveness in it. And
   another apostle grounds the confidence of a most tender treatment of
   the undeserving, on the same idea of God's righteousness, saying--"God
   is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, in that ye
   have ministered to the saints," &c. [74] Fallen sadly away from their
   faith, he even conceives that God will have it still as a point of
   righteousness, to remember their good deeds and make more of them than
   they deserve. In this way, God will have declared his righteousness in
   Christ-shown him self righteous, even to the extent of putting
   righteousness upon every one that believeth.

   3. And the justifier of. Here we have the causative mood of the Old
   Testament word reappearing in the The justifying not judicial. New. And
   there is no example, that I know, where it carries a judicial meaning
   though there is, of course, a large variety of meaning in the uses.
   When it is declared that men shall "justify God," it certainly does not
   mean the same thing as when God is said "to justify the ungodly;" and
   yet there is a closer approach of meaning, in the two cases, than
   might, at first, be supposed. When men justify God, they pass him
   righteous, and when God justifies the ungodly, he passes them
   righteous--only he becomes, besides, the righteousness upon them that
   makes it true. The justification is purely moral in the first case,
   because no justification but a moral one is here possible; and that, in
   the second, there is no thought of a judicial acquittal, on account of
   penal compensations paid by Christ, will be most conclusively shown
   from the fact that the common uses of the word so plainly relate to
   what is moral only. Thus it is declared, by our apostle, in the very
   discussion we are having in review, that Abraham "believed God and it
   was counted unto him for righteousness;" [75] and the very particular
   matter of promise on which he believed, being so justified by his
   faith, is given us expressly; viz., that he should have an heir to
   perpetuate his family. He is justified, we can see, by simply being
   brought nigh enough to God in his faith, to be the friend of God, and
   become in vested in God's righteousness. This justification again is
   called "the justification of life," [76] supposing evidently the fact
   of some life-giving power in the dispensation of it; and where is the
   life-giving of a mere acquittal, passed on the ground that the bad
   account of sin is made even? Again Christ is declared to have been
   "delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification."
   [77] But if the whole matter of the justification depends on what he
   has suffered for our offenses, we shall as certainly be justified, or
   have our account made even, if he does not rise, as if he does.
   Doubtless the rising has an immense significance, when the
   justification is conceived to be the renewing of our moral nature in
   righteousness; for it is only by the rising that his incarnate life and
   glory are fully discovered, and the righteousness of God declared in
   his person, in its true moral power. But in the other view of
   justification, there is plainly enough nothing depending, as far as
   that is concerned, on his resurrection. When, again, he is himself
   declared, though "manifest in the flesh" and subject to its low estate,
   to be "justified in the spirit," [78] what does it mean but that his
   higher life is seen to be invested with tile evident righteousness of
   God--inwardly just, or justified? To imagine that he is only declared
   to be legally acquitted, judicially justified, is quite impossible.
   When again we read--"but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye
   are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our
   God" [79] --what is the very subject matter of the declaration, but the
   moral renewing of the soul? Besides, "the Spirit of God" is conceived
   to be concerned in the justifying spoken of; as he certainly could not
   be and is never even supposed to be, in the doctrine of a mere
   compensational and judicial justification.

   Having now these three main points of the apostle's language made out
   and established, in a manner that leaves no room for dispute, we need
   also The "declaring" and the "remission" explained. to notice, in a
   very brief manner, two or three of the subordinate points which affect
   the general meaning. The expression "to declare," is rather
   insufficient. The original, very forcible expression is, "for the
   in-showing" [endeixin,] that is, "for producing an effective impression
   of, the righteousness of God." For every thing, as regards a justifying
   effect depends, it will be seen, on the powerful demonstration made of
   God's righteousness, in the incarnate life and death of Christ. It
   appears to be a matter of doubt, with the commentators, whether the
   phrase, "through the forbearance of God," is to be connected with the
   participial clause, "that are past," or with the clause, "for the
   remission." But the participle, "that are past," does not mean "that
   are passed by," but only "that took place in past time." To conceive,
   therefore, that the sins took place, by the forbearance of God, is too
   weak to be a true conjunction. Say, instead, "for the remission, by
   God's forbearance, of sins in the ages past;" and the vigor of good
   sense returns. There appears to have been a fear of saying "the
   remission of sins by God's forbearance," lest it might not be the true
   theology. It is not considered, perhaps, how the declaration of God's
   righteousness will have covered up that laxity, if laxity there was.

   We read the whole passage then as follows--"To declare [that is,
   demonstrate, inwardly impress] his righteousness, for the remission, by
   God's forbearance, The true version. of sins heretofore committed; to
   declare [demonstrate,] I say, for this present time, his righteousness,
   that he might be righteous [stand full before us in the evident glory
   of his righteousness] and the justifier [righteousser] of him that
   believeth in Jesus."

   If any apology is necessary for using again this very ungrammatical,
   mock-English substitute for the word "justifier," it must be that,
   without some Catholic and Protestant versions both considered. such
   device, I do not see in what way I can steer my exposition exactly
   enough, through the close and perilous strait between the Catholic
   doctrine on one hand, and the Protestant on the other, to avoid an
   appearance of lapsing in this or that--when both, in fact, are only
   unsuccessful attempts to exhibit the true gospel idea. The Catholic
   says, "making righteous;" the Protestant says, "declaring to be
   righteous;" neither of which is the exact conception of Christian
   justification. The Christian is not a man made righteous in himself, or
   in his own habit; neither is he a man held to be righteous, when he is
   not, by what is called a "declaratio pro justo;" for it is no fitting
   way, for a gospel of divine mercy, to end off in a fiction that
   falsifies even the eternal distinctions of character. Hence there is
   wanted here a verb that we have not--even as the Greeks appear to have
   made one out of their adjective--so that we also may say, "that he
   might be righteous and the righteousser," &c.; for it is the peculiar
   and exact result of this outlandish word, that it describes a state,
   where the righteousness may be conceived as a flowing in of God's
   righteousness upon the believing soul, thus and forever to flow. The
   subject is not conceived to be made righteous personally, by infusion,
   and started off as an inherently right-going character, but is thought
   of as being held in everlasting confidence and right-going, because he
   is vitally connected, by his faith, with the inspirations of God, or of
   the righteousness of God. He is made righteous, using the Catholic
   words, in the sense that he is always to be so derivatively from the
   righteousness of God; accounted righteous, using the Protestant, in the
   sense that he is always being made so, by the righteousness of God
   revealed from faith to faith. And this is his condition of
   justification; his being always just because he always believes; never
   to be just, for a moment, after he ceases to believe.

   In this careful exposition of what may be called the charter text of
   Christian justification, two points have been held in reserve for
   separate consideration; viz.. the righteousness of God as related to
   justification; and the relation we ourselves have to God's
   righteousness, in the faith by which we are justified.

   I. The righteousness of God as related to justification. The apostle,
   as we have already observed, makes much of the in-showing, or felt
   impression produced, of the righteousness of God; The Righteousness of
   God as related to justification. repeating, for the sake of
   emphasis--"to declare"--"to declare, I say, the righteousness of
   God"--first "for the remission of sins," and next "for the justifying,"
   or righteoussing of sinners; evidently conceiving that, in the
   declaration, or impression made [endeixin] of God's righteousness, lies
   all the principal value of his work.

   According to the common conception, his declaration of the
   righteousness of God prepares a ground of remission, or a ground of
   justification; and in Christ not a ground, but a power, of
   justification. that sense Christ obtains, by his death, the grace of
   remission, or of justification. Perhaps we shall find reason to
   believe, that Christ is a great deal more to us than a ground; viz., a
   power of the same things--in such sense a power that, if they were not
   wrought by him, they would never, in fact, be, at whatever cost of
   grounding they obtain a right to be.

   The very light notions prevalent concerning remission, or forgiveness,
   and especially in connection with the idea that Christ is concerned to
   prepare Light notions of remission. a ground of remission, make it
   necessary to revise our impressions at this point. It is a rather
   common question, whether God could forgive sins on the ground of our
   mere repentance, without any ground of compensation made to his
   justice? But if he could, meaning only what is commonly meant by
   remission, the remission would make no change and confer no benefit
   whatever. Besides the question only asks what God could bestow, if we
   should do the impossible? For no man is able, by his own act, to really
   cast off sin and renew himself in good; and to ask what God may do, in
   such a case, indicates a very superficial view both of sin and of
   remission.

   What then is remission more sufficiently conceived? The word, both in
   Greek and English, is a popular word, which signifies, in common
   speech, a letting go; that is, a letting go of blame, a consenting to
   raise no impeachment farther and to have all wounded feeling dismissed.
   But though God accommodates our understanding, in the use of this
   rather superficial word, we can easily see, as I have already intimated
   in another place, that his relations to a sinning soul under his
   government, taken hold of, as it is already, by the retributive causes
   arrayed in nature itself for the punishment of transgression, are so
   different from those of a man to a wrong doing fellow man, that a mere
   letting go, or consenting no longer to blame, really accomplishes
   nothing as regards the practical release of sin. It is only a kind of
   formality, or verbal discharge, that carries practically no discharge
   at all. It says "go" but leaves the prison doors shut. [80]

   We ought to be sure beforehand, that the Scripture will not leave the
   matter here, but will somehow man age to strike a deeper key. And we
   find, Three conceptions held by the Scripture. as we go into the
   inquiry, that we have, at least, three distinct forms of expression
   given us, to accommodate our uses, according to the particular mode of
   thought by which we are, or are to be, exercised.

   Thus, if we are thinking of God's displeasure, or his feeling of blame,
   we have the word "remission," that speaks of releasing the blame; and
   we often use the much deeper word forgiveness in the same superficial
   sense.

   If, again, we think of our sin as a state of moral incapacity and
   corruption, fastened upon us by the retributive causes which our sin
   has provoked, we are allowed to speak of "forgiveness" as the "taking
   away" of our sin; just as we may of being "healed," "washed,"
   "reconciled," "delivered," "turned away," "made free." Here we conceive
   that God is able, in the declaration of his righteousness, to get such
   a hold of the souls that are sweltering in disorder, under the natural
   effects of transgression, as to bring them out of their disorder into
   righteousness. By his moral power, which is the power of his
   righteousness supernaturally revealed in Christ, he masters the
   retributive causations of their nature, and they receive what is more
   than a ground of remission; viz., the executed fact of remission, or
   spiritual release. Otherwise, under a mere letting go, the bad causes
   hold fast like fire in brimstone refusing to be cheated of their prey.
   The same is true of forgiveness; only when this same deliverance is
   called, in the English, "forgiveness," there appears to be a reference
   to the fact that Christ forgives, in the sense of giving himself for,
   the transgressor, to get so great power over him and be the power of
   God unto salvation upon him. [81]

   If, again, we think of something higher and more sovereign, even than
   this executed release; if we want to get above all the condemnations of
   statutes, and the severe motivities or enforcements of instituted
   government itself; if we raise our thought, with a certain divine envy,
   to God, longing to be as little hampered as He, by fears and
   requirements and bad liabilities; then it is given us to know that we
   are "justified"--made and kept righteous, by the righteousness of God
   upon us, and reigning as a Divine Moral Power in us. And therefore it
   is that so much is made of "the declaring [in-showingj of the
   righteousness of God" by Christ because, in real verity, our
   justification is to be the righteousness of God upon us. For this
   righteousness declared is but another name for the great Moral Power
   already shown to be obtained by Christ in his sacrifice. Beginning at
   the point of Christ's humanity, and tracing his course onward through
   death and the resurrection, he is obtaining, all the while, as man, a
   great Name and Power; till finally we see him culminate in absolute,
   deific perfection, or the righteousness of God. Beginning at the other
   pole, and conceiving him in deific perfection, or righteousness, which
   is by him to be declared, or made a power on men, we only describe
   inversely the same thing. In one case the humanity culminates in the
   righteousness of God; and in the other the righteousness of God is
   incarnated and declared in humanity. The result is an embodiment, in
   either case, of God's perfection in a human life and character, to be a
   new-creating, justifying power, and so a gospel.

   Christian justification has, in this view, no reference whatever to
   justice under the political analogies, or to any compensation of
   justice. As respects Justification has no reference to justice. the
   full, round conception of it, an immense advantage is gained by the
   distinction I have drawn, between the law before government, and the
   instituted government by which God undertakes the maintenance of it,
   and our final restoration to it. The righteousness of God is what God
   was, before the eternal, necessary law of his own nature, When we are
   justified by faith, or "by yielding our members instruments of
   righteousness unto God," which is the same thing, we are carried
   directly back into the recesses, so to speak, of God's eternity--back
   of all instituted government, back of the creation, back of the
   statutes, and penalties, and the coming wrath of guiltiness, and all
   the contrived machineries and means of grace, including in a sense even
   the Bible itself, and rested with God, on the base of His antecedent,
   spontaneous, immutable righteousness. We are taken by all the
   foundations of the world, and the governings, compulsions, fears, and
   judgments that make up the scaffolding of our existence, and have our
   relations, with God, only to the law before government; being in it,
   and the freedom of it, as being in Him and His freedom. In so far as we
   are still incomplete, statutes, penal enforcements, and all kinds of
   instituted means and machineries, are necessary to the mixed quality we
   are in; but in so far as we are in the righteousness of God, we are
   raised above them, into that primal law which God undertook, as the
   total object of his administration, to establish in created minds. We
   are thus united to God in the antecedent glories and liberties of his
   eternal character. The bondages and fears of our guiltiness are left
   behind. Being in God's righteousness, we also share the confidence of
   his integrity. And the work of righteousness, both for Him and for us,
   shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and
   assurance forever.

   This is justification with a meaning, and it is only this, however we
   may conceive it, that makes our justification a state of peace and
   liberty, so unspeakably strong and triumphant. How artificial, and
   meager, and cold in comparison, is the justification which only means
   that justice is satisfied in Christ's pains, and that faith, seizing on
   that fact, concludes that punishment is escaped! This is justification
   as before justice--which is only one of God's means of government--not
   before the everlasting standard for which government exists. In other
   words, it is justification without righteousness; for if any thing is
   said of that, it appears to be only meant, that as good a footing is
   obtained for the soul without righteousness, as if it were righteous.

   But if justifying faith has no respect to the fact that justice is
   satisfied, then it will be objected that the liabilities of justice
   still remain. Undoubtedly Objected that the liabilities of justice
   still remain. they do, if by liabilities we mean the dues of justice;
   and our dues would be exactly the same if a ground of release were
   provided in the pains of another. That ground provided would not make
   the dues of penalty any the less due, in justice, from us. The
   objection here is created by an assumption that there is no deliverance
   from the claims of justice, save as they are legally compensated. What
   has been said of justice and penalty, in the four previous chapters,
   will sufficiently show the contrary. Besides, no soul that has felt the
   righteoussing power of God, and been raised to a conscious
   participation of his righteousness--set in His confidence, let forth
   unto His liberty--will assuredly want any other evidence.

   Another kind of objection will occur to many; viz., that the
   righteousness of God is too severe and stern to have, when declared,
   any such attractive Another objection that righteousness condemns and
   repels. power over souls that are in wrong, and is most of all unfitted
   to become a new-creating force in their life. Such persons have been
   somehow accustomed to think of God's righteousness, as being one and
   the same thing with his justice, and their associations correspond.
   Instead of blessing themselves, and counting all souls blessed, in the
   fact that God is everlastingly right, having all the benignities,
   fidelities, integrities, and supreme glories of a perfect
   righteousness, they speak of it as being an appalling character, one
   that creates inevitable dread and revulsion; setting it forth in
   terrorem, not seldom, as a hard and fateful rigor opposite to love.
   Whereas righteousness, translated into a word of the affections, is
   love, and love, translated back into a word of the conscience, is
   righteousness. We associate a more fixed exactness, it may be, and a
   stronger thunder of majesty with righteousness, but there is no
   repugnance between it and the very love itself of Christ. When Christ
   thinking of his death and resurrection, says that he will convince the
   world, in that manner, of righteousness, does he mean that he will not
   also draw the world by love? or does he rather mean that, raising the
   conviction of righteousness, he will draw the more powerfully? Nowhere,
   in fact, do we feel such a sense of the righteousness of God, as we do
   in the dying scene of Christ--"Certainly this was a righteous man"--and
   we only feel the more powerfully that God is a forgiving God.

   Indeed we have just the same opinion of righteousness in men--we only
   expect the more confidently to be forgiven, because the man we have
   injured is a righteous man. If I have an enemy who has done me a great
   personal wrong; if I can bring him to justice and make an example of
   him that will do much to honor the laws; if, too, I have a fire of
   natural indignation that, apart from all revenge, arms me against him
   and prepares me to see him suffer; shall I be false, therefore, to my
   own virtue, if I do not make him suffer? Calling this my instinct of
   justice, is it therefore a finality with me, beyond the control of
   reason and right? Is there no justice above justice, in which, as a
   righteous man, I am even bound to subordinate the lower ranges of
   vindictive impulse, and give myself tenderly to courses of patience and
   suffering sacrifice, that I may gain my enemy? Nay, if my vindicatory
   impulse should indeed assume to be my law, what can I do but call it a
   temptation of the devil, and betake myself to fasting if need be to
   subdue it?

   Dismissing then all such false impressions, and taking the
   righteousness of God no more as a preventive to mercy, but as a ground
   of mercy rather, Justification restores the normal state of being. we
   begin to see how much it means that Christ, in becoming the moral power
   of God in his sacrifice, becomes, in another, but nowise contrary view,
   the righteousness of God declared. For in the original normal state of
   being, the righteousness of God was to be a power all diffusive, a
   central, self radiating orb--Sun itself of Righteousness, shining
   abroad on all created minds and overspreading them, as it were, with
   the sovereign day of its own excellence. The plan never was that
   created beings should be righteous, in such a sense, by their own
   works, or their own inherent force, as not to be derivatively righteous
   and by faith. They had and were eternally to have, their righteoussing
   in God. Remaining upright, they would consciously have had their
   righteousness in God's inspirations, and would even have been hurt by a
   contrary suggestion.

   Hence the dismal incapacity of sin; because it separates the soul from
   God's life-giving character and inspirations. Having Him no more, as
   the fontal source, of righteousness, it falls off into an abnormal,
   self-centered state, where it comes under fears, and legal
   enforcements, and judicial wrath, and struggles vainly, if at all, to
   keep its account even, or recover itself to its own ideals. Works of
   the law, dead works carefully piled, will-works, works of
   supererogation, penances, alms, austerities of self-mortification--none
   of these, nor all of them, make out the needed righteousness. Still
   there is a felt deficiency, which the apostle calls "a coming short of
   the glory of God." Nothing will suffice for this, but to come back,
   finite to infinite, creature to Creator, and take derivatively what, in
   its nature, must be derivative; viz., the righteousness that was
   normally and forever to be, unto, and upon, all them that believe.

   Here then is the grand renewing office and aim of the gospel of Christ.
   He comes to men groping in a state of separation from God, consciously
   not even with their own standards of good, and, what is more,
   consciously not able to be--self-condemned when they are trying most to
   justify themselves, and despairing even the more, the more they
   endeavor to make themselves righteous by their own works--to such
   Christ comes forth, out of the righteousness of God, and also in the
   righteousness of God, that he may be the righteousness of God upon all
   them that believe, and are so brought close enough to him in their
   faith, to receive his inspirations. And this is the state of
   justification, not because some debt is made even, by the penal
   suffering of Christ, but because that normal connection with God is
   restored by his sacrifice, which permits the righteoussing of God to
   renew its everlasting flow.

   When I speak thus of the connection with God as being restored, by the
   sacrifice of Christ, let me not be understood as meaning, by the
   sacrifice, only what is tenderly sympathetic and submissive in Christ's
   death. I include all that is energetic, strong, and piercing; his
   warnings, his doctrines of punishment and judgment, all that is done
   for the law before government, by his powerful ministry and doctrine.
   His sacrifice is no mere suit or plaint of weakness, for the
   righteousness of God is in it. When the metallic ring of principle, or
   everlasting right, is heard in the agonies and quakings of the cross,
   the sacrifice becomes itself a sword of conviction, piercing
   irresistibly through the subject, and causing him to quiver, as it
   were, on the point by which he is fastened. Mere sympathy, as we
   commonly speak, is no great power; it must be somehow a tremendous
   sympathy, to have the true divine efficacy. Hence the glorious
   justifying efficacy of Christ; because the righteousness of God is
   declared in his sacrifice. We pass now to consider--

   II. The relation of faith to justification. Though the righteousness of
   God is declared and made to shine Faith how related to justification.
   with its true divine luster and glory by Christ, still the
   justification is not conceived to be an accomplished fact, as indeed it
   never can be, prior to faith in the subject. It is justification by
   faith and not without--"and the justifier of him that believeth in
   Jesus." What is this faith, and why is it necessary?

   It is not the belief that Christ has come to even our account with
   justice; neither is it the belief that he has obtained a surplus merit,
   which is offered, over and above, as a positive righteousness and set
   to our credit, if we will have it. Neither of the two is a fact, or at
   all credible any way. Neither would both, if believed as mere facts, do
   any thing more for us than a belief in any other facts. Our sins do not
   fly away because we believe in a fact of any kind. We can even believe
   in all the historic facts of Christianity, as thousands do, with. out
   being any the more truly justified.

   No, the real faith is this, and very little intelligence is required to
   see the necessity of it; viz., the trusting of one's self over, sinner
   to Saviour, to be in him, and of him, and new charactered by him;
   because it is only in that way that the power of Christ gets
   opportunity to work. So the sinner is justified, and the justificatior
   is a most vital affair; "the justification of Faith defined. life." The
   true account of it is that Jesus, coming into the world, with all God's
   righteousness upon him, declaring it to guilty souls in all the
   manifold evidences of his life and passion, wins their faith, and by
   that faith they are connected again with the life of God, and filled
   and overspread with his righteousness. And there springs up, in this
   reconnection of the soul with God's righteousness, a perfect liberty
   and confidence; for it is no more trying to climb up into a righteous
   consciousness and confidence by itself, but it has the righteousness by
   derivation; flowing down upon it, into it, and through it, from the
   everlasting spring of God's excellence. And just here it is that
   Christianity wins its triumph. It shows man how to be free in good and
   makes it possible. The best that all other religions and moralities can
   do, is to institute a practice of works, and a climbing up into
   perfection by our own righteous deeds; but the gospel of Jesus comes to
   our relief, in showing us how to find righteousness, and have it as an
   eternal inspiration; "even the righteousness of God that is by the
   faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe." [82] In
   it we do not climb, but rest; we goad ourselves into no
   impossibilities, groan under no bondage that we can not lift; sink into
   no deep mires because we try to struggle out. We have a possible
   righteousness, because it is not ours but God's; Christ received by our
   faith, to be upon us and for us, all that we could wish to be for
   ourselves. This is the transcendent distinction, the practically
   sublime glory of our gospel, our great all-truth--Justification by
   Faith. Here is conquered the grandest of all problems, how to put
   confidence in the bosom of guilt, and settle a platform of virtue, that
   shall make duty fxee and joyful under all conscious disabilities.

   Here it was that Luther broke into heaven, as it were, and a
   bewilderment of change that he could not, for the Luther's great
   discovery of justification. time, understand. He had been trying to be
   justified by works; that is, by fastings, penances, alms, vigils,
   wearing down the body under the load of his sins, and crying to God in
   his cell, day and night, for some deliverance that should ease the
   torment of his still and always self-condemning soul. A right word from
   Staupitz let him see the fool that he was--that Christ would take him
   because he was guilty; having died for him because he was guilty, and
   not because he was righteous. At that point broke in, what light and
   confidence! His emancipated soul burst off all its chains in a moment,
   and took, as it were, the range of heaven in its liberty. He was new
   himself, the world was new, the gospel was new. It had not entered into
   his heart to conceive the things that were freely given him of God, but
   now he has them all at once. Justification by faith, justification by
   faith--his great soul is full of it; he must preach it, he must fight
   for it, die for it, know nothing else.

   In the inspiration of this truth it was, that his great career as a
   reformer and spiritual hero began, If any thing will make a man a hero,
   it will be the righteousness of God upon him, and the confidence
   Luther's head did not understand his heart. he gets in the sense of it.
   If he can be eloquent for any thing, it will be in the testimony of
   what Christ is to him, in the now glorified consciousness of his inward
   life, But we must not fall into a very great mistake here. Luther is,
   in fact, two, not one; viz., a Christian, and a theologian; and his
   Christian justification by faith, that which puts such a grand
   impulsion into his feeling, and raises the tone of his manly parts to
   such a pitch of vigor, is a very different, altogether separate matter,
   from that theologic contriving of his head, which he took so
   confidently for the certain equivalent. Taking this latter, it would be
   difficult to find how any one should become much. of a hero, or be
   lifted to the pitch of any great sentiment, in it. Indeed, the very
   great wonder is, that a man so intelligent should imagine, for a
   moment, that he was fired with a passion so mighty, and a joy so
   transcendent, by the fact that an innocent being had taken his sins and
   evened the account of justice by suffering their punishment! This he
   thought he believed; but we are not obliged to believe that he did.
   Really believing it, and conceiving what it means, the fact would have
   set his stout frame shuddering, and turned his life to gall. The truth
   indeed appears to be, that his heart sailed over his theology, and did
   not come down to see it. We find him contriving, in his "Epistle to the
   Galatians," how Christ, having all the sins of mankind imputed to him,
   "becomes the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer thief,' rebel,
   and blasphemer, that ever was, or could be, in all the world;" and his
   doctrine is, that suffering the just wrath of God, for the sin that is
   upon him, Christ makes out a right of justification for us before God
   which is complete, because it completely satisfies the law. And then to
   be just cleared of punishment, and believe that he is, he conceives to
   be the very thing that makes his glorious liberty and raises the
   tempest of his joy! The manner appears to be hideous, the deliverance
   to be negative and legal only; but his heart is ranging high enough, in
   its better element--the righteousness of God--even not to be offended
   by the crudities he is taking for a gospel.

   But this is not the first time, that the head of a great man has not
   been equal even to the. understanding, or true interpretation, of his
   heart. Indeed, nothing is more common, as a matter of fact, than for
   men of real or even the highest intelligence, to so far misinterpret
   their own experience in matters of religion, as to ascribe it to and
   find it springing radically out of, that which has no sound verity, and
   could never have produced such an experience. Let no one be surprised,
   then, that Luther's justification by faith, that which puts his soul
   ringing with such an exultant and really sublime liberty, makes a
   plunge so bewildering into bathos and general unreason, when it comes
   to be affirmed theologically in his doctrine. As he had it in his
   Christian consciousness, the soul of his joy, the rest of his
   confidence, the enlargement of his gracious liberty, nothing could be
   more evidently real and related to the deepest realities of feeling;
   but as he gave it in his dogmatic record, I confess that calling it
   justification by faith--articulus stantis, vel cadentis ecclesiae--I
   could more easily see the church fall than believe it. Happily our very
   great reverence and admiration for the man may be accommodated in the
   confidence, that any one may reject it utterly, and yet receive all
   that his faith received in his justification; and may also be with him
   in profoundest sympathy, in the magnificat he chants, and, with such
   exhaustless eloquence of boasting, reiterates, in his preaching of the
   cross and the glorious liberty it brings. Certain it is that no man is
   a proper Christian, who is not practically, at least, in the power of
   this great truth. If any thing defines a Christian, it is that he is
   one who seeks and also finds his righteousness in God.

   I am well aware how insufficient this exposition of the great Christian
   truth, justification by faith, will be to many--to some, because it is
   a truth that can be sufficiently expounded, by nothing but a living
   experience of its power; to others, because they have already learned
   to find their experience in words and forms of doctrine, by which it is
   poorly, or even falsely represented. What questions the view presented
   will encounter, especially from this latter class, I very well know,
   and will therefore bring the subject to a conclusion by answering a few
   of them.

   Do we not then, by holding a view of justification so essentially
   subjective, virtually annihilate the distinction between justification
   and sanctification? This is Justification and sanctification not
   confounded. one of the questions, and I answer it by saying that if the
   two experiences were more closely related than they are commonly
   supposed to be, I do not see that we need be greatly disturbed on that
   account. Still they are sufficiently distinct. According to the
   Catholic doctrine they are virtually identical; because the "making
   just," or "making righteous," which is conceived to be the sense of
   justification, is understood to be a completed subjective change, one
   that goes below consciousness and makes the soul inherently
   right--which is the very significance also of sanctification. But if we
   only conceive the soul to be so joined, by its faith, to the
   righteousness of God, as to be rather invested by it, or enveloped in
   it, than to be transformed all through in its own inherent quality; if
   the righteoussing goes on, even as the sun goes on shining when it
   makes the day, and stops of necessity when the faith withdrawn permits
   it to go on no longer; then we have a very wide and palpable
   distinction. The consciousness of the subject, in justification, is
   raised in its order, filled with the confidence of right, set free from
   the bondage of all fears and scruples of legality; but there is a vast
   realm back of the consciousness, or below it, which remains to be
   changed or sanctified, and never will be, except as a new habit is
   generated by time, and the better consciousness descending into the
   secret roots below, gets a healing into them more and more perfect. In
   this manner, one who is justified at once, can be sanctified only in
   time; and one who is completely justified is only incipiently
   sanctified; and one who has consciously "yielded his members as
   instruments of righteousness unto God," may discover even more and more
   distinctly, and, by manifold tokens, a law in his members not yet
   sanctified away. There is also a certain reference in justification to
   one's standing in the everlasting law; whereas sanctification refers
   more especially to the conscious purity of the soul's aims, and the
   separation of its moral habit from evil. By another distinction,
   justification is the purgation of the conscience, and sanctification a
   cleansing of the soul's affections and passions. Both of course are
   operated by God's inspirations, and are operated only in and through
   the faith of the subject.

   There is indeed no objection to saying that, in a certain general way,
   they are one--just as faith is one with love, and love with
   regeneration, and this with genuine repentance, and all good states
   with all others. The same divine life or quickening of God is: supposed
   in every sort of holy exercise, and the different names we give it
   represent real and important differences of meaning, accordingly as we
   consider the new life quickened' in relation to our own agency, or to
   God's, or to means accepted, trusts reposed, or effects wrought. In the
   same way, justification is sanctification, and both are faith; and yet
   their difference is by no means annihilated.

   Another question likely to be raised in the way of objection is,
   whether, in the kind of justification stated, I do not give in to the
   rather antiquated notion of imputed How related to imputation.
   righteousness? To this I answer that if the notion supposed to be thus
   antiquated, is the theologic fiction of a surplus obedience, over and
   above what was due from Christ as a man--contributed by him in pains
   and acts of duty from the obedience of his higher nature--which surplus
   is imputed to us and reckoned to our account, such imputation is
   plainly enough rejected; still there will be left the grand,
   experimental, Scripture truth of imputed righteousness, a truth never
   more to be antiquated, than holiness itself.

   The theologic fiction more fully stated appears to have been something
   like this: that Christ, taken simply as a man, was under. all the
   obligations that belong to a man; therefore that he was only righteous
   as he should be in fulfilling those obligations, and had no
   righteousness to spare; but that, as being the God-man, he was under no
   such obligations; whence it resulted that, by his twofold obedience,
   passive and active, he gained two kinds of surplus righteousness; a
   passive to stand in the place of our punishment and be a complete
   satisfaction for it, and an active to be set to our account as being
   our positive obedience--both received by imputation. And so we are
   justified and saved by a double imputed righteousness, one to be our
   suffered penalty, the other to be such an obedience for us as will put
   us even with the precept of the law. It is even a sad office to recite
   the scholastic jingle of such a scheme, made up and received for a
   gospel. Plainly it is all a fiction. The distinction of a passive and
   active obedience is a fiction; the passive obedience being just as
   voluntary as the active, and therefore just as active, The assumption
   that Christ, to put righteousness upon us, must provide a spare
   righteousness not wanted for himself, is a fiction that excludes even
   the possible koinonia of the righteousness of God. And a still greater
   fiction is the totally impossible conception of a surplus
   righteousness. Christ was just as righteous as he should be, neither
   more nor less, and the beauty of his sacrifice lay in the fact, not
   that it overlapped the eternal law, but that it so exactly fulfilled
   that law. His merit therefore was not that he was better than he should
   be, but all that he should be; for if he was perfect without the
   surplus, then he was more than perfect with it, and we are left holding
   the opinion, that there is a righteousness above and outside of
   perfection! Still again the imputation of such a perfection to us, so
   that we shall have the credit of it, is a fiction also of the coldest,
   most unfructifying kind, and impossible even at that. What has any such
   pile of merit in Christ, be it suffering, or sacrifice, or punishment,
   or active righteousness, to do with my personal deserts? If a thousand
   worlds-full of the surplus had been provided for me, I should be none
   the less ill deserving, if I had the total reckoning in possession.

   The experimental, never-to-be antiquated, Scripture truth of imputed
   righteousness, on the other hand, is this:--That the soul, when it is
   gained to faith, is brought back, according to the degree of faith,
   into its original, normal relation to God; to be invested in God's;
   light, feeling, character--in one word, righteousness--and live
   derivatively from Him. It is not made righteous, in the sense of being
   set in a state of self-centered righteousness, to be maintained by an
   ability complete in the person, but it is made righteous in the sense
   of being always to be made righteous; just as the day is made luminous,
   not by the light of sunrise staying in it, or held fast by it, but by
   the ceaseless outflow of the solar effulgence. Considered in this view,
   the sinning man justified is never thought of as being, or to. be, just
   in himself; but he is to be counted so, be so by imputation, because
   his faith holds him to a relation to. God, where the sun of His
   righteousness will be forever gilding him with its fresh radiations.
   Thus Abraham believed God enough to become the friend of God--saying
   nothing of justice satisfied, nothing of surplus merit, nothing of
   Christ whatever--and it was imputed to him for righteousness. No soul
   comes into such a relation of trust, without having God's investment
   upon it; and whatever there may be in God's righteousness--love, truth,
   sacrifice--will be rightfully imputed, or counted to be in it, because,
   being united to Him, it will have them coming over derivatively from
   Him,. Precisely here therefore, in this most sublimely practical of all
   truths, imputed righteousness, Christianity culminates. Here we have
   coming upon us, or upon our faith, all that we most want, whether for
   our confidence, or the complete deliverance and upraising of our guilty
   and dreadfully enthralled nature. Here we triumph. There is therefore
   now no condemnation, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath
   made us free. If we had a righteousness of the law to work out, we
   should feel a dreadful captivity upon us. If we were put into the key
   of righteous living, and then, being so started,; were left to keep the
   key ourselves, by manipulating our own thoughts, affections, actions,
   in a way of self-superintendence, the practice would be so artificial,
   so, inherently weak, as to pitch us into utter despair in a single day.
   Nothing meets our want, but to have our life and righteoussing in God,
   thus to be kept in liberty and victory always by our trust in Him.
   Calling this imputed righteousness, it is: no conceit of theology, no
   fiction, but the grandest and most life-giving of all the Christian
   truths.

   We have this imputation also in another form that is equally natural
   and practical. Thus, instead of having our faith imputed unto us for
   righteousness, We also to have our righteousness putatively in God. we
   ourselves teach our faith to locate all our righteousness putatively in
   God; saying "The Lord our righteousness," "Christ who is our life,"
   "made unto us righteousness;" as if the stock of our virtue, or
   holiness, were laid up for us in God. All the hope of our character
   that is to be we place, not in the inherent good we are to work out, or
   become in ourselves, but in the capital: stock that is funded for us in
   Him. And then the character, the righteousness, is the more dear to us,
   because it is to have so high a spring; and God is the more dear to us,
   that he will have us hang upon him by our faith, for a matter so
   divine. And the joy also, the confidence, the assurance and rest--all
   that we include in our justification--is the more sublimely dear, that
   we have it on a footing of permitted unity with God so transforming and
   glorious. There is, in short, no truth that is richer and fuller of
   meaning and power, than this same figure of mental imputation, in which
   we behold our character laid up and funded for us in the righteousness
   of God. In one view it is not true; there is no such quantity, or
   substance, separate from him, and laid up in store for us; but there is
   a power in him everlastingly able to beget in us, or keep flowing over
   upon us, every gift our sin most needs; and this we represent to our
   hearts, by conceiving, in a figure, that we have a stock, just what we
   call "our righteousness," laid up for us even beforehand, in the
   sublime quarter-mastering of his love.

   It is no fault then of our doctrine of justification by faith, that it
   favors a notion of imputed righteousness; for in just this fact it is,
   that the gospel takes us out of the bondage of works into a really new
   divine liberty. Here, in fact, is the grand triumph of Christianity;
   viz., in the new style of righteousness inaugurated, which makes the
   footing even of a sinner good, and helps the striving bondman of duty
   to be free; even the righteousness of God that is by faith of Jesus
   Christ, unto all, and upon all them that believe. When this is anti.
   quated, just then also will salvation be.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [57] Romans iii, 25-6

   [58] Vide note p. 382.

   [59] Dan. xii, 3.

   [60] Isa. liii, 11.

   [61] Isa. l, 8.

   [62] Deut. xxv, 1, and 1 Kings viii, 32.

   [63] Ex. xxiii, 7; Prov. xvii, 15; Is. v, 23.

   [64] James v, 66.

   [65] Republic, Lib. I., Cap. 24.

   [66] Cratylus.

   [67] I have said nothing, in this verbal disquisition, of a very
   singular philological anomaly, that occurs, in the etymology of this
   word dikaiosune. Used, as far as I have been able to discover, in an
   exclusively moral sense, it appears, and is taken by the
   lexicographers, to be of the same root, as another family of words,
   that have none but a vindictive and intensely judicial meaning. Thus we
   have dike translated vengeance, punishment, and the like; endikos just,
   in the sense of justly deserved; endikeo to avenge, or revenge;
   katadikazo to condemn. Now this forensic family and the moral family
   are supposed, both together, to be derived from the Sanscrit radical
   dik, which means to show, and is the undoubted root of the Greek word
   deiknumi, which also means to show. And perhaps we get a clue in this,
   to the manner in which both the families above referred to raise their
   meaning. For to show is to spread out, to level, or, as we say, to
   ex-plain. And this kind of figure associates well with the true
   straight line of rectitude, and also with the even impartiality of
   retributive justice; as when the prophet says--"Judgment also will I
   lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet." In the same way it
   comes to pass, that Solon calls the calm, smooth sea, "the right
   [dikaion] sea." Xenophon also calls a jolting chariot a "not right [not
   level] chariot," in the same way. Virgil too calls the outspread, even
   plain, "justissima tellus." Whatever may be true, in this very singular
   problem of etymology, the two great families, the moral and judicial,
   are certainly distinct in their meaning, and there is no fair pretext
   for carrying over a judicial meaning to the moral family, on the ground
   of their etymological relationship.

   [68] Rom. iii, 22.

   [69] Rom. v, 18.

   [70] Rom. x, 3.

   [71] Rom. iii, 22.

   [72] Just now referred to in the note, p. 414.

   [73] 1 John i, 9.

   [74] Heb. vi, 10.

   [75] Rom. iv, 3, 20-22.

   [76] Rom. v, 18.

   [77] Rom. iv, 25.

   [78] 1 Tim. iii, 16.

   [79] 1 Cor. vi, 11.

   [80] Dr. Whitley says with great truth--"Remission of sin is not the
   mere cold reputative or forensic remission of a bond or debt; it is not
   a bare judicial, external discharge from the obligation of the law to
   positive pains and penalties; it is something more distinct and
   practical, something more present and homefelt within us--it is
   remission or liberation from the essential naughtiness, heinousness,
   and malignity of moral evil itself; for whilst all penal ire and
   positive infliction might be remitted and foreborne, the spiritual
   disease and death of the soul might remain in all their genuine
   horrors, in all their innate mischief and misery." (Atonement and
   Sacrifice, Sect. 12.)

   [81] By a singular coincidence, other languages make their word of
   release out of the verb to give, in the same manner. Thus we have
   condono, par-don, ver-geben, accurately matching our English word
   for-give. A coincidence the more remarkable that the Greek word
   charizomai, translated by our word forgive, has no reference to the
   figure of giving at all. Still Christ is put in this figure, [dedome
   huper,] many times over in the New Testament, and that perhaps is the
   sufficient explanation. Gal. ii, 20; Eph. v, 25; 1 Tim. ii, 6; Tit. ii,
   14; John vi, 51.

   [82] Rom. iii, 22.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    PART IV.

SACRIFICIAL SYMBOLS AND THEIR USES..
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER I.

  SACRIFICE AND BLOOD AND THE LUSTRAL FIGURES.

   BY the previous exposition, Christ is shown to be a Saviour, not as
   being a ground of justification, but as being the Moral Power of God
   upon us, so a power of salvation. His work terminates, not in the
   release of penalties by due compensation, but in the transformation of
   character, and the rescue, in that manner, of guilty men from the
   retributive causations provoked by their sin. He does not prepare the
   remission of sins in the sense of a mere letting go, but he executes
   the remission, by taking away the sins, and dispensing the
   justification of life. This one word Life is the condensed import of
   all that he is, or undertakes to be.

   In the unfolding of this view, I have not overlooked, or at all
   neglected, the representations of Scripture; every thing advanced has
   been carefully supported and fortified by ample citations, fairly and
   reverently, but not always traditionally interpreted. Some, however,
   may be disappointed, or perhaps offended, by the slight attention I
   have paid thus far to a large class of phrases and figures derived from
   the ceremonial law and the uses of the altar, and brought over, by a
   second application, to express the practical verities of the cross. But
   my design has not been to put any slight on these sacrificial
   terminologies. I have only adjourned them to a future discussion by
   themselves, because of the unhappy confusion it would create in our
   trains of thought, if they were brought in to be canvassed, here and
   there, at points of casual application. We have now reached a point,
   where the attention: may be given them which their very great
   importance demands.

   I propose therefore, in this and the next following chapter, to
   ascertain, if possible, their precise Christian The sacrificial terms
   and their interpretation. meaning, and exhibit their true relation to
   the doctrine of Christ, as expounded in the preceding pages. I
   undertake this inquiry, not with a view to getting sanction for the
   opinions expressed, but in the conviction rather, that a great part of
   the misconceptions and doctrinal crudities that have been the world's
   affliction, in this greatest of all matters given to knowledge, have
   been due to certain hasty, half-investigated impressions, and a kind of
   traditional charlatanry of dogmatism that have thrown these ritual
   terms and figures out their proper and rightful meaning. Reserving to
   the next following chapter terms and questions more secondary in their
   import, I shall occupy the present chapter with a discussion of the
   primary terms sacrifice, and blood, and the lustral figures of
   cleansing and purifying--with which the secondary terms are blended,
   and by which, to a certain extent, they must be explicated.

   The whole ground to be covered is well represented, in a single passage
   from the Epistle to the Hebrews--"How much more shall the blood of
   Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot
   to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God."
   [83] In this "how much more," referring back to the sacrifices and
   sprinklings of blood in the ritual of the previous dispensation, we
   have brought into view the fact of some important, divinely appointed
   relationship between those sacrifices of the old religion, and the
   grand final sacrifice of Christ in the new.

   If we speak thus of a "divinely appointed relationship," we impliedly
   assume that the sacrifices were divinely appointed. There has been The
   Hebrew sacrifices, how related to that of the gospel. much debate on
   this question, even among Christian teachers themselves. The great
   Hebrew scholar, Spencer, maintains the opinion that the Jewish
   sacrifices were established by Moses, in a way of accommodation to the
   heathen sacrifices, in which his people had been trained. Archbishop
   Tillotson goes still beyond him, admitting that even the Christian
   sacrifice is an act of accommodation to the prejudices and
   superstitions of the pagan nations. It will not be denied, or should
   not be, that pagan nations, all pagan nations, have been ready somehow
   to erect altars and make suit to their gods by sacrifices. This
   standing confession of guilt and apostasy from God is about as nearly
   universal as dress, or food, or society. But the remarkable thing, in
   this general use of sacrifices, is that they take so coarse a form, and
   one so evidently tinged with superstition.

   By a most learned and thorough canvassing of proofs, Dr. Magee [84] has
   shown the truly appalling fact that human Human sacrifices, Pagan,
   never Jewish. sacrifices have been offered by every people of the known
   world except the Jews. And a guilty fear, just as conspicuous and just
   as nearly universal, has prevailed, that the gods are up in their wrath
   and must have blood to appease them. Now if the Jewish people had
   borrowed their sacrifices from the pagan peoples, whence comes it that
   they never show a trace of any such superstition--except in cases where
   it is reproved and condemned--and never once in their history offer a
   human sacrifice? For the very point of the command upon Abraham to
   sacrifice his son is, to show him, in the: end, that no such sacrifice
   is wanted--that obeying God is the deepest reality of sacrifice.
   Abraham had never read Edwards on the Affections, knew nothing of a
   piety by definition; and the object is to give him a lesson
   transactions ally, such that, when he is put through the lesson, he
   shall have the fact established implicitly in his heart--just as Jacob
   learned to pray transactionally, by his wrestling with the angel.
   Exactly the same lesson was learned transactionally, or was to be, in
   all the sacrifices; only in a less impressive, and thoroughly
   searching, and fearfully trying, manner.

   But supposing the Hebrew sacrifices not to have been derived, in any
   sense, from the pagans, as they even visibly were not, still it is a
   question how they originated, and especially whether they Sacrifices
   both human and divine in their origin. were taken up spontaneously, or
   were instituted by the direction of God? And here again there is even a
   more persistent debate that is not yet ended; as indeed it never can be
   till the question is more skillfully stated. For if they were
   instituted by God, it could only be by God acting through the
   sentiments, and wants, and guilty yearnings, of men. They were
   instituted doubtless just as language was; viz., by a divine
   instigation acting through human instincts and voices. Man was made for
   language, and had, in his very nature, a language faculty. But God's
   work was not ended when that faculty was given, it was only begun; he
   goes on with it providentially and by secret helps of instigation,
   causing it to be put forth, and guiding it by his educating and
   pervasive intelligence, and so the resulting fact of language is
   completed. In the same manner, human so0uls were made for religion, and
   the fact of a fall into sin made the want of it even more urgent. There
   was now an aching after God, and a dreadful oppression felt in the
   sense of separation from God. And what could occur more naturally, than
   some distinct effort to be reconciled to God. In this way, minds were
   put on the stretch to find some way of expressing penitence,
   self-mortification, homage, and the tender invocation of mercy.
   Observing thus how it was the way of smoke to go up heavenward, what
   hint could they take more naturally, than to make it the vehicle of
   religion; bringing their choicest, finest animals, such as they took
   even for their food, and the expression of their hospitality, and
   sending up their cloud of worshipful homage, by offering them in fire
   upon their altars? Meantime God is turning them inwardly, by his secret
   inspirations, to the same thing; wanting as much to help them in being
   reconciled to him, as they to be reconciled. And so, being in vicarious
   sacrifice Himself, he prepares them to the very patterns of the
   heavenly things in Himself, and gets them configured to the everlasting
   sacrifice, afterwards to be revealed in his Son. For there is a
   correspondence here, and all these rites, in which for a time the souls
   of men are to be trained, are so related to Christ and are so prepared
   to be, that when he is offered, once for all, their idea is fulfilled;
   whereupon the outward names they generate are to rise into spiritual
   word-figures, for the sufficient expression of his otherwise
   transcendent, inexpressible grace.

   Sacrifices then are not the mere spontaneous contrivances of men, but
   the contrivances of men whose contrivings are impelled and guided and
   fashioned by God--just as truly appointed by God, as if they were
   ordered by some vocal utterance from heaven. They relate, in fact, to
   all God's future in the kingdom of his Son, and are as truly necessary,
   it may be, to that future as the incarnation itself. Nay, they are
   themselves a kind of incarnation before the time. Assuming thus a
   clearly divine origin for them, we go on to consider more distinctly
   what is not their office, and also what it is. And here the first thing
   necessary is, to rule out certain false teachings or assumptions which
   have created inversions of order and thrown the whole subject into
   confusion.

   Thus it is maintained extensively, that we are to get our conceptions
   of the old sacrifices from the sacrifice of Christ, taking them as
   shadows cast Not to be interpreted by the sacrifice of Christ. backward
   from the sun. But this is very much like assuming, that we are to get
   our notions of the heart, as a physical organ, from our understanding
   of the heart as the seat of spiritual life; or to get our notions of a
   straight line from our understanding of right, or rectitude. We invert
   the order of nature in this manner, and reverse the whole process of
   language. The maxim, "first that which is natural, afterwards that is
   spiritual," we turn quite about, and instead of conceiving that
   physical things are given to be the bases of words, or word-figures
   representing spiritual truths, we say that the physical objects were
   fashioned after the ideas, after the figures, to be coarser substances
   correspondent with the spiritual realities represented by them. If we
   know any thing, we know that the whole process of generation in
   language runs the other way, and that the figures come after the facts,
   the higher spiritual meanings after, and out of, the physical roots on
   which they grow.

   It is very true that God, in creating the outward forms of things, has
   a reference of forecast to the uses they will serve as forms of thought
   and spirit; a reference, for example, in bodily pain, to the generation
   of the legal word penalty, as a word of religion; a reference in the
   formalities of the ritual sacrifice And yet they are meant for
   Christian uses. to the uses they may fill, as terms and figures, in the
   representation of Christ, the grand spiritual sacrifice. It is also
   true that we, looking back on the ancient sacrifices, after
   apprehending the glorious consummation of their meaning in Christ, may
   regard them with a higher respect, and with many different impressions;
   just as we may think of the heart and indeed of the whole human body,
   in a different manner, after we have seen, with Mr. Wilkinson, the
   whole spiritual nature represented by it, and coursing, and flowing,
   and finding fit procession, in it. But these different impressions are
   only impressions, and no man would undertake, in having them, to draw
   out the physiology of the human body from them. No more will any sound
   teacher undertake to show what the ancient sacrifices were, or meant,
   from the sacrifice of Christ, for which they have provided the
   necessary nomenclature.

   Clearly no such method of interpretation is admissible. We can not
   construe meanings backward, but we must follow them out in that
   progressive way, in which they are prepared. If we are to understand
   the sacrifices, we must take them in their outward forms, and in the
   meaning they had to the people that used them, just as we take all the
   physical roots of language; and then, having found what they were in
   that first stage of use, we must go on to conceive what Christ will
   have them signify, in the higher uses of his spiritual sacrifice.

   We have another inversion of time and order equally mistaken, when it
   is maintained that the sacrifices were given to be types, to the
   worshipers that used them, of Christ and his death Not given to the
   worshipers to be types to them of Christ. as a ground of forgiveness
   for sins. They are certainly "types," "shadows," when looked back upon
   by us, of good things that were to come; but it does not follow that
   they were either types, or shadows, or any thing but simple facts of
   knowledge and practical observance, to the people who were in them. Nor
   is there any the least probability that, in using them, they were
   taking a gospel by forecast. There is no lisp of any such impression in
   the sentiments they express, either at, or about, their sacrificial
   worship. The prophets themselves could as little understand "what," as
   "what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ that was in them did
   signify," when testifying of the Messiah to come. Not even Christ's own
   disciples, instructed by his teachings for three whole years, had any
   conception at all, or even suspicion, of the appointed correspondence
   between his suffering life and death and the sacrifices of the law,
   until the descent of the Spirit, after his death, gave them discernment
   of such a correspondence. Is it then to be conceived, that these
   sensuous, simple-minded, first men of the world outreached all their
   prophets, and even the carefully taught hearers of Jesus, and got their
   salvation at the sacrifice of lambs and bullocks, by embracing a Christ
   before his coming, whose prefiguration, in such sacrifices, not even
   these could understand, or imagine, for whole weeks after his sacrifice
   was accomplished? Such a conceit is over-theoretical and scholastic; it
   is theologic moonshine, not the true sunlight of sober Christian
   opinion.

   This also was too nearly true of all the immense type-learning that
   once figured so conspicuously in the Scripture interpretations of this
   and And yet even necessary as types of Christian language. other
   subjects. It is very true that the ancient sacrifices were, and were
   given to be, types of the higher sacrifice of Christ. Not, however, in
   the sense that they were such to the worshipers in them, but in that
   common, widely general, always rational sense, that all physical
   objects and relations, taken up as roots of language, are types and are
   designed to be, of the spiritual meanings to be figured by them, or
   built into spiritual words upon them--the physical heart to be the
   radical image and name of the spiritual disposition, good or bad; the
   straight line [rectus, right] to be the natural word-type of duty and
   righteousness. A type is, in this view, a natural analogon, or figure,
   of some mental, or spiritual idea; a thing in form, to represent, and
   be the name of, what is out of all physical conditions, and therefore
   has no form. And the outward world itself is a grand natural furniture
   of typology, out of which the matters of thought, feeling, unseen
   being, unseen states and worlds of being, are always getting, and to
   get, their nomenclature.

   In this sense the ancient sacrifices were, no doubt, appointed to be
   types of the higher sacrifice; visible forms, or analogies that, when
   the time is come, will serve as figures, or bases of words, to express
   and bring into familiar use, the sublime facts and world-renewing
   mysteries of the incarnate life and suffering death of Jesus. There
   were no types in nature, out of which, as roots, the words could grow,
   that. would signify a matter so entirely supernatural, as the gracious
   work and the incarnate mystery of Christ. The only way, therefore, to
   get a language for him at all, was to prepare it artificially; and the
   ancient ritual of sacrifice appears to have been appointed, partly for
   this purpose. It had other uses for the men who were in it, but the
   analogical relation between it and the supernatural grace of Christ,
   hereafter to be represented in the terms it is preparing, is one that
   reveals a positive contrivance. We discover in it, both the strictly
   divine origin of the sacrifices, and that they were appointed, quite as
   much for the ulterior, higher uses to be made of them, (which no man
   would even conceive for ages to come,) as for the particular,
   immediate, benefit of the worshipers in them. An apostle speaks of
   them, it is true, as "the example and shadow of heavenly things," [85]
   and as "a figure for the time then present." [86] They were indeed such
   examples and figures, and were used as rites of practical religion for
   the time then present; but he only means to say that the ancient
   worshippers received impressions in their use, answering to "the
   heavenly things" in Christ, without conceiving, either him, or the
   analogical relations of their worship. They had nothing to say
   themselves of a future sacrifice, shadowed in their rites; though it
   was their privilege, apart from all such impossible expectations, to be
   inducted into a temper and state, in the use of them, that was after a
   heavenly pattern--even the sacrifice that was in God and that, being
   shadowed in their forms was after wards to be revealed in Christ
   himself.

   There is, then, we perceive, an inherent appointed relationship between
   the ancient sacrifices and the sacrifice What meaning had they to the
   worshipers? of Christ, such that we shall come into the true sense of
   what is meant by his sacrifice, offering, blood, only by an accurate
   and careful discovery of the meaning, and use, and power, and historic
   associations of the ancient sacrifices. What then did these sacrifices
   signify? what were they appointed to do, for the persons who accepted
   and observed them as the cultus of their religion?

   When we set ourselves to answer this question, we are met by two very
   common assumptions, or teachings, They made nothing of the pain of the
   victims. that only misdirect our search, and throw us out of the true
   line of discovery. Thus a great deal is made, by many, of the fact that
   the animal is slain for the sacrifice--thrust down into death, it is
   conceived, in the worshiper's place. Quite as much also is made, or
   even more, of the fact that the animal suffers pain in dying; and thus
   is an offering of so much pain to God, in substitution for the deserved
   pain of the transgressor, Both these constructions upon sacrifices
   belong, it will be seen, to schemes of expiation, or legal
   substitution, asserted for the gospel, which in fact require and look
   for the discovery of similar ideas in the analogies of the ancient
   ritual.

   As to the latter, the pain of dying, it is no light and trivial way of
   answer, to say that, if the pain of the animal was any such principal
   thing, then there was no need of any thing farther. To burn the flesh
   and sprinkle the blood were of no consequence, if the sacrifice was
   already complete. Offering the flesh in smoke was nothing, if only the
   pain was offered; for there was no pain in the dead victim. Even
   supposing the pain to be valuable to the worshiper in a way of
   expression, the expression is complete, as soon as the victim is dead.
   What is wanted therefore is the killing of the animal, which requires
   no special ceremony.

   Furthermore it is, to say the least, a very singular thing, if so much
   of the power and significance of the sacrifices lies in the death and
   the dying pains of the animals, that no single worshiper of the old
   -dispensation, ever has a word to say of these animal dyings and pains
   of dying, drops no word of sympathy for the victims, or of sympathetic
   relenting for sin on their account, testifies no sorrow, witnesses to
   no sense of compunction, because of the impressions made on him, by the
   hard fortune they are compelled to suffer. I recollect no single
   instance in the whole Scripture, where the faintest intimation of this
   kind appears; and yet, by the supposition, impressions to be made in
   this way are even a principal matter in the sacrifices!

   Besides, it is also another fault in all such representations of the
   mode of what is called atonement by sacrifice, Had no tender sympathy
   for the victims. that they suppose a tenderness of feeling, as regards
   the death and suffering of animals, which this people had as little of
   as every pastoral people must; that is, very nearly none at all. They
   lived, every day of their lives, on the animals killed in the morning
   at the tent door. Every woman, every child, looked on at the butchering
   and grew up in the most familiar habit of seeing life taken; nor was
   any thing more common than for women, or even for quite young children,
   to kill and dress a lamb, or a kid, with their own hands. And yet their
   sacrifice of atonement, it is conceived, is going to have its effect,
   by the impressions of death and dying pain it wakens in their delicate
   sensibilities! The fictitiousness of such conceptions is quite too
   evident.

   Moreover it is a great point in the observance of these rites that the
   animal shall be the first born of its The choice quality of the animal
   signified more. dam; a male without spot or blemish. But why, on what
   principle, if the chief value of the sacrifice depends on the death and
   dying pains of the animal? Would not any other, a third born, a female,
   or a lame or blemished animal, die as convulsively and suffer as much?

   It is also a very significant objection to these constructions of
   sacrifice, that, when two goats are brought to the priest for the
   people's offering, one is slain and his blood sprinkled on the
   mercy-seat and about the holy place, to remove the defilement The
   deportation of the sin signified by the scape-goat. supposed to be upon
   them, from the sins and uncleannesses of the people; and then the
   other, by which they are to be personally cleansed themselves, suffers
   no death, or dying pain at all, as their substitute, but having their
   sins all put upon his head, by the priest's confession, is turned loose
   alive and driven off into the wilderness--so to signify the
   deportation, or clean removal of, their guiltiness. It is therefore
   called their "atonement" and is, in fact, an offering just as truly as
   the other that was slain, only it is sacrificed by expulsion, and
   without even so much as a thought of its death or pain of dying.

   Excluding now these unsupported and really forced constructions of the
   sacrifices, the question returns, what, in positive reality, were they?
   Ordained to be a liturgy. wherein lay their use and value? They were
   appointed, I answer, to be the liturgy of their religion; or, more
   exactly, of their guilt and repentance before God as a reconciling
   God--not a verbal liturgy, but a transactional, having its power and
   value, not in any thing said, taught, reasoned, but in what is done by
   the worshiper, and before and for him, in the transaction of the rite.

   The people, it must be conceived, have not yet come to the age of
   reflection. They know nothing about piety, or religious experience, as
   reflectively defined, preached, tested, by words. Always going out
   after their eyes in objective ways of action, and never returning upon
   They wanted a religion for the eyes. themselves, they have no
   reflective action, no discovery of themselves by self-testing
   criticism. They are conscious of certain single acts, which they feel
   to be sins, but not definitely conscious of sin as a state of moral
   disorder. Of course they are religious beings, guilty beings, but these
   deep ground-truths of their nature work out in them, from a point back
   of their distinct consciousness; felt only as disturbances, not
   discovered mentally in their philosophic nature and reality. Now to
   manage such a people and train them towards himself, God puts them in a
   drill of action, works upon them by a transactional liturgy, and
   expects, by that means, to generate in them an implicit faith,
   sentiment, piety, which they do not know themselves by definition, and
   could not state in words that suppose a reflective discovery.

   This transactional liturgy, taken as a divine institute, is a
   contrivance of wonderful skill. Considered as in Their fine adaptation
   as a transactional liturgy. reference to the capacities of the
   worshipers, and also to results of repentance for sin and newness of
   life, it displays a wisdom really divine. It begins at a point or base
   note of action, that, so far as I can recollect, is wholly unknown to
   the cultus, or the sacrifices, of any heathen religion. Moving on
   results of purity, or purification from sin, it supposes impurity, and
   lays this down as a fundamental figure, in what may be called the
   footing of ceremonial uncleanness. Then the problem is to cleanse, or
   hallow the unclean.

   There is no definition of the uncleanness; for the time of definition
   has not come. Every thing stands, thus far, on the basis of positive
   institution. Implicit meaning of the unclean state. Every priest is
   unclean, till he is cleansed; every place, till it is hallowed. On the
   great day of atonement, every body is unclean, and the general mass of
   the people go up thus every year to Jerusalem in caravans, at the
   greatest inconvenience and with much expense, to be cleansed of their
   defilement by sacrifice. How far they distinguish in idea this moral
   kind of uncleanness, from that of their legal appointments, we do not
   know. Perhaps they do not very soon raise the question of such a
   distinction. This only they know, that whoever touches a dead body is
   unclean, and the house in which he dies; that the leper is unclean;
   that whoever has any suppurative issue is unclean; that whoever
   touches, or eats an unclean animal, is unclean; that every vessel,
   dress, oven, defiled by such animals, makes unclean by the use. The
   specification is too long to be completed, and I only add that every
   person touching an unclean person is ipso facto unclean. Add also that,
   as the unholy can not approach unto God, so every unclean person is
   shut away from the temple, from society and house and table, put under
   quarantine as regards every body else, and every body else under
   embargo as regards him, producing a state of revulsion and of general
   torment that is, in the highest degree, uncomfortable.

   Upon this now as a basis, is erected the liturgy of sacrifice and blood
   as a positive institution. It terminates formally in the result of
   making clean. The argument of it is--"For I am the Lord your God; ye
   shall Meaning also of the clean state made by sacrifice. therefore
   sanctify yourselves and ye shall be holy." It says "do this," "bring
   this offering," "sprinkle this blood, and you are clean." Perhaps the
   worshiper will do it only in a ritual, half political way; still he
   will be so far clean, at any rate. But there is a chance that his soul
   will go on beyond the mere ritual effect, and, allow a deeper sentiment
   to be called into play. Perhaps he will pass into a new sense of
   cleanness that breaks over the mere ritual confines, and imports some
   real beginning of a higher cleansing in his spiritual nature. It
   certainly will be so, if he brings his offering as a really devout and
   penitent worshiper.

   So it was with these men of the first, most unreflective ages,
   exercised in this kind of worship. By and by, as a reflective habit
   gets to be a little Conceptions more and more spiritual thus matured.
   unfolded, a kind of chiding, or rebuke of heartlessness begins to be
   heard in certain quarters, as if men could think to carry God's favor
   by bullocks and goats and blood! Still farther on, one, or another will
   be heard crying out in the depth of his guiltiness, and quitting all
   sacrifice in despair of it, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and
   renew a right spirit within me." Then the prophets will begin to rebuke
   the multitude of sacrifices, as a wretched imposture and offense to
   God, and to prophesy the complete ending of this old covenant of forms,
   and the establishment of God's new covenant, by the Messiah; who shall
   come to write God's law in the heart itself, and make religion the
   completely spiritual affair openly, which it always has been
   implicitly. Then, at last, Christ comes, to substitute all sacrifices,
   and be himself the sacrifice offered once for all--in what sense and
   manner we shall see.

   Having sketched this outline of the sacrificial history, in its stages
   of progress and its final culmination, we go back now to the simple
   first stage of How the sacrifices get their power. the liturgy, and
   look into the scheme of it, inquiring how it is to get its power? Not
   by the death of the victim, we have seen; there is nothing said of the
   death as having any significance, and there is really not care enough
   felt for it to give it any. Not by the pain of the victim; nothing is
   made of that, and nothing is farther off from the worshiper's thought,
   than to have so much as a serious feeling about it. Not by the
   satisfaction for sin, or the satisfaction of God's justice; nothing is
   said either of satisfaction, or of justice, as there could not be when
   nothing is made either of the pain, or the dying. Not by the
   substitution made of the victim, given up to suffer in the worshiper's
   place; for if nothing is made of the suffering of the victim, nothing
   could be made of a substitution of that suffering. A certain symbolic
   substitution, or substitution for significance's sake, is made, when
   sins are confessed on the head of the offering, and just the same is
   made on the head of the scape-goat, even more formally, when he is
   driven off alive, to signify the deportation of sin; where, of course,
   the symbolic sign is all and the goat nothing--but simply a goat
   feeding elsewhere.

   Excluding now these negatives, the question returns, whence comes the
   liturgic value and power of the sacrifice on the feeling of the
   worshiper? First of all there is a certain expense and pains-taking
   incurred by him, in providing the victim and in making a journey,
   commonly toilsome, and consuming many days' time to get his offering
   duly made. Secondly, it is another matter which enters the more deeply
   into his feeling, that he chooses reverently a fine, fair, first-born
   animal, that he may give his best to God and that which he most values.
   Thirdly, when he comes to the altar, before that mysteriously veiled,
   invisible recess where Jehovah dwells, he puts his hands on the head of
   the victim, or the priest does it for him, and confesses his sin; going
   away absolved, as one made clean. Fourthly, it contributes immensely to
   the power and impressiveness of the transaction, that the blood which
   figures so largely in it, sprinkled and poured and touched upon this
   and that place to sanctify the altar and the priest, has been
   previously invested with an artificial sacredness for this very
   purpose. No one, even from the earliest beginnings of sacrifice, has
   been permitted to eat blood, and Moses reenacts the law, under which he
   makes it even a capital offense, like blasphemy or sacrilege--"For the
   life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the
   altar, to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that
   maketh atonement for the soul." [87] Not that the life thus offered the
   life made sacred and mysterious by such associations gathered to it,
   carries effect by ceasing to live, that is, by death symbolized in the
   sprinkling of it. No, it gets its effect as being life, the sacred,
   mystic, new-creating touch of life; for death is uncleanness itself-no
   one touches a dead body without being made unclean-but the blood is all
   purifying; "all things are by the law purged with blood."

   Here then is the grand terminal of all sacrifice; taken as a liturgy,
   it is issued in a making clean; it purges, washes, sprinkles, purifies,
   sanctifies, The effect is to be lustral only. carries away pollution,
   in that sense, absolves the guilty. Calling it a making of atonement
   for this, or that place, or person, it is in the result a making
   clean--"the priest shall make atonement for her and she shall be
   clean;" [88] "make atonement for the house and it shall be clean;" [89]
   "made an atonement for them to cleanse them." [90] The effect is to be
   lustral simply. The worshiper may never have thought reflectively on
   his inward defilement, but when so much is done by him for the lustral
   effect, in a manner so reverent, when he has been touched by the sacred
   blood in which the mystery of life is hid, followed by the formula that
   pronounces him clean, it will be strange if his transactional liturgy
   has not signified more for the state of his inward man, than any
   prescribed trial and testing in the doctrines of words could have done,
   at his stage of culture. It is very true that these sacrifices which
   they offered year by year continually, are declared by an apostle "not
   to make the comers thereunto perfect." But he only means that they do
   not finish out, or bring his want of grace to an end; not that they
   result in no genuine fruits of character. So when he declares that "it
   is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away
   sins," he does not mean that no one finds a true remission in his
   offering, but only that he wants another still, and still another,
   while Christ is offered, once for all, and makes a complete finality of
   sacrifice.

   In what sense a sacrifice?--this now is the principal question whose
   answer we seek, and are ready to give. In what sense Christ is a
   sacrifice. Here, of course, all the exclusions just made are to be
   repeated--his pains have no value as pains, or his dying as death; he
   does not satisfy God's justice; he is not legally substituted in our
   place. There was nothing of this nature in the sacrifices and, when he
   becomes a sacrifice for sin, there should not be in his.

   A good proximate and general answer to the question, in what sense a
   sacrifice? is this: that he fulfilled Not a literal sacrifice but more.
   the analogy of the ancient sacrifice; serving like uses, only in a
   highe key, and in a more perfect manner, with a more complete lustral
   effect. It has been a question, much discussed, whether Christ is a
   literal, or figurative sacrifice, and the latter conception has been
   repelled, with much feeling, partly because it has been advocated in a
   way of escaping the fact of any sacrifice at all, and partly because
   both parties fail to see any very serious meaning left, when the
   figurative sense is admitted On one side he is just a figure sacrifice,
   nothing more. On the other, being reduced to this, he is just a phantom
   sacrifice, and that is nothing at all. It is not perceived that, when a
   word rises out of fact in the physical range, to be the fixed name, by
   figure, of something in the range of thought and spirit, it obtains a
   meaning as much fuller and more solid as it is closer akin to mind. Is
   good taste nothing because it is not the literal tasting faculty of the
   mouth? Is a good heart nothing because it is not the pumping organ of
   the body, but only a figure derived from it? Is rectitude nothing
   because it is only a figurative straightness, and not a literal
   straight line? Is integrity nothing because it is only a moral
   wholeness and not the veritable integer of arithmetic? How visibly does
   the figure, as figure, rise to a nobler and more real meaning, in all
   such examples; and when we find that human language is underlaid all
   through, in this manner, with physical images, observing their wondrous
   fitness to serve as a wording for all that mind can think, or wish to
   express, we are half disposed to believe that they were made and set
   into nature for this purpose. They become even more real as figures
   than they are as facts, and there is no so great victory for any truth,
   or subject of intelligence, as when it has obtained some fit analogon,
   or "figure of the true," to be its interpreter.

   Here, accordingly, it was that God displayed his skill, in adjusting
   the forms of the altar, and all the solemn A nomenclature for the
   gospel. externalities of the ritual service. They were not only to be a
   liturgy for the time then present, but they were to prepare new bases
   of words not existing in nature, and so a new nomenclature of figures
   for the sacrifice of his Son. And it took even many centuries to get
   the figures ready, clothed with fit associations, wrought into fit
   impressions, worn into use and finally almost into disuse, by the
   weary, unsatisfied feeling that is half ready and longing for something
   beyond them--all this it required, to get a language made that was at
   all competent to express the perfectly transcendental, supernatural,
   otherwise never imagined or conceived fact of divine suffering and
   vicarious sacrifice in God. Now the central figure, in this new
   language for the cross, is sacrifice; a word as much more significant
   when applied to Christ, than when applied to the altar ceremony, as the
   Lamb of God signifies more than a lamb. Other words and images come
   along in the same train, which also belong to the altar and the old
   transactional liturgy of the temple, and. Christ emerges on the world
   through them all, as by a kind of Epistle to the Hebrews, himself the
   full discovered love and vicariously burdened sorrow--the cross that
   was hid in God's nature even from eternal ages. In this view he does
   not begin to be the real and true sacrifice, till he goes above all the
   literalities of sacrifice, and becomes the fulfillment of their meaning
   as figures.

   However this may be, it is sufficiently plain that he can be a
   sacrifice, only under conditions of analogy and figurative
   correspondence, and I am quite certain that he was never conceived, by
   any one, to A sacrifice under conditions of analogy. be a literal
   sacrifice, who had not somehow confounded the distinction between a
   real and a literal sacrifice. He is a sacrifice in much the same sense
   as he is a Lamb. He is not offered upon any altar, not slain by a
   priest, not burned with fire. He is not offered under and by the law;
   but against even the decalogue itself--by false witness and murder. He
   dies on a gibbet, and the priests have no part in the transaction, save
   as conspirators and leaders of the mob. There is no absolution, but a
   challenge of defiance rather--"his blood be on us and on our children."

   In this exposition a certain discoverable analogy is supposed, between
   what was done, or suffered by Christ, and the offering of victims at
   the altar. No external correspondence in the analogy, unless in the
   sacred blood. But there is no shadow of resemblance in the external
   facts of Christ's death, unless it be in some slight finger-marks of
   correspondence, such as the evangelist notes, when he says, "that the
   Scripture should be fulfilled--A bone of him shall not be broken." And
   yet there is such a deep-set, grandly real, and wide-reaching
   correspondence, that no man, fresh in the sentiments of the altar,
   could well miss of it, or fail to be strangely impressed by it. Here is
   the first-born, the unblemished beauty, the chaste Lamb of God--never
   came to mortal eyes any such perfect one before. And the expense he
   makes, under his great love-struggle and heavy burden of feeling, his
   Gethsemane where the burden presses him down into agony, his Calvary,
   where, in his unprotesting and lamb-like submission, he allows himself
   to be immolated by the world's wrath--what will any one, seeing all
   this, so naturally or inevitably call it, as his sacrifice for the sins
   of the world. His blood too, the blood of the incarnate Son of God,
   blood of the upper world half as truly as of this--when it touches and
   stains the defiled earth of the planet, what so sacred blood on the
   horns of the altar and the lid of the mercy-seat, did any devoutest
   worshiper at the altar ever see sprinkled for his cleansing! There his
   sin he hoped could be dissolved away, and it comforted his conscience
   that, by the offering of something sacred as blood, he could fitly own
   his defilement, and by such tender argument win the needed cleansing.
   But the blood of Christ, he that was born of the Holy Ghost, he that
   was Immanuel--when this sprinkles Calvary, it is to him as if some
   touch of cleansing were in it for the matter itself of the world! In
   short, there is so much in this analogy, and it is so affecting, so
   profoundly real, that no worshiper most devout, before the altar,
   having once seen Christ--who he is, what he has done by his cross, and
   the glorious offering he has made of himself in his ministry of good,
   faithful unto death--who will not turn away instinctively to him,
   saying, "no more altars, goats, or lambs; these were shadows I see; now
   has come the substance. This is my sacrifice and here is my peace--the
   blood that was shed for the remission of sins--this I take and want no
   other."

   And so it comes to pass that Christ is continually set forth in the
   gospels and epistles of the New Testament, in the terms of sacrifice,
   because there is Christ called a sacrifice because of his lustral
   power. so great power in it for the soul; also in the fact, otherwise
   never conceived or brought down to mortal experience, that God's
   eternal character has a cross in it, a sorrowing, heavily burdened
   mercy for his enemies, a winning and transforming power, which it is
   even their new-creation to feel. I can not go over all the sacrificial
   terms and expressions of the New Testament, or even the very deliberate
   exposition of whole chapters in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the
   correspondence, or analogy, between Christ and the ancient sacrifices,
   is carefully traced. I will only say, in general, that a very important
   oversight, in respect to all the altar phrases of the gospel, needs to
   be corrected. They are cited to prove atonement in the sense of
   satisfaction, or of an offering made to reconcile God. Hence there is
   nothing made of the lustral figures, that almost always go along with
   them; which, if they had any meaning given them, would conduct the mind
   straight in upon the conclusion, that Christ is offered, not to satisfy
   God, but to take away sin, to cleanse, purify, make alive and holy, the
   moral state of sinners.

   Sometimes and not seldom the lustral figures themselves, the very
   object of which, under the old ritual, was to conduct the worshiper's
   mind Abuses of Scripture texts. the into a fit conception of the result
   preparing in his sacrifice are taken just as if they only meant by the
   cleansing they speak of in a New Testament use, that God is so far
   reconciled by due satisfaction, that he may pass transgressors now as
   being clean, when they are not. They are sprinkled, washed, purged,
   purified, cleansed, in the sense that for Christ's sake they are
   admitted to be so, when they are not! And so the proof texts of
   satisfaction are multiplied with great facility. Let any one gather up
   all the allusions made in the New Testament to the altar sacrifices,
   noting carefully those which look towards a lustral and transforming
   effect on men, as distinguished from those which clearly and positively
   refer to an effect on God, and he will be astonished to find how the
   doctrine of judicial satisfaction has engulfed, as by a maelstrom
   sweep, every most unwilling thing that has come in its way. Probably
   ninetenths at least of the proof texts of the New Testament, under
   figures taken from the altar, make the sacrifice of Christ a plainly
   lustral offering in its effect, while the other tenth as plainly stop
   short of any reconciling effect on God. And yet they have so long been
   read in a different way, that we are scarcely aware of the forced
   meaning put upon them. Such a fact can not be verified, without going
   into a general canvass of the texts, which is here impossible. I can
   only call attention to the fact, adding as examples just a few of the
   principal texts, which it will be seen, without a word of comment, bear
   the lustral meaning, or the expectation of a cleansing, sin-removing,
   life-giving, effect, on their faces.

   Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. [91]

   In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent
   his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.
   [92]

   The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. [93]

   Who his own self bare our sins, in his own body on the tree, that we,
   being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye
   are healed. [94]

   How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal
   Spirit, offered himself, without spot, to God, purge your conscience
   from dead works to serve the living God. [95]

   Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the
   blood of Jesus, * * * Let us draw near, with a true heart, in full
   assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil
   conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. [96]

   And having made peace, through the blood of his cross, by him to
   reconcile all things unto himself; by him I say, whether they be things
   in earth, or things in heaven. And you that were sometime alienated and
   enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled, in
   the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy, unblamable,
   and unreprovable in his sight." [97]

   Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.
   [98]

   The charlatanism of interpretation--it is really one of the saddest
   chapters of our Christian history! And what a revelation of it have
   these poor texts to give, when released from their long captivity, and
   allowed to simply speak for themselves!--testifying, all, with glad
   consent, that Christ is our sacrifice, for the taking away of our sin,
   our quickening unto life. our cleansing and spiritual reconciliation
   with God.

   There is still another class of figures generated casually, outside of
   the ritual; partly judicial, partly political and historical, partly
   commercial, and partly natural. The footing already gained by what we
   have shown respecting the divinely contrived symbols of the altar,
   makes it unnecessary to devote a distinct chapter to their
   consideration. It will be sufficient to give them a brief supplementary
   notice here.

   The first class, the judicial, or seemingly judicial, appears
   abundantly in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah--The judicial figures.
   "stricken, smitten of God and afflicted;" 4t wounded for our
   transgressions;" "bruised for our iniquities;" "the chastisement of our
   peace was upon him;" "by his stripes we are healed;" "for the
   transgression of my people was he stricken;" "it pleased the Lord to
   bruise him." These are all figures that refer, more or less clearly, to
   judicial and penal processes; as if Christ, the subject, were somehow
   punitively handled in our place. But the whole chapter, it will be
   observed, is from the point of gratitude, or holy ascription, after the
   offering is made. It is the witness of a tender confession, not a
   prophesy, save in that form. And what is more natural than for a soul
   delivered of its curse, its retributive woes, its penal bondage, and
   heaving in great sentiments of praise and holy ascription to its
   deliverer, to represent him, in his suffering goodness, as having taken
   upon himself the very pains and dues of justice he has removed? "Did he
   not bear my punishment? did he not bleed under my stripes? was not my
   chastisement upon him? was he not smitten of God in judgments that were
   falling on me?" And yet every one who makes this confession will know
   that he means this only as in figure, to express his tender
   acknowledgment, and nothing will be farther off from his thought than
   to imagine that he was literally asserting the punishment of his
   deliverer. [99]

   Besides we have, here and there, a mark put in, which indicates moral
   effect, and turns the meaning quite away from the understanding of a
   literal punishment; as for example in the "peace" that follows
   chastisement, and the healing that follows the stripes--"with his
   stripes we are healed." Furthermore, it would be a plain abuse of
   Scripture to set one class of figures, in regard to a given subject,
   clashing with another; and still more to set the mere chance symbols of
   a subject directly against the deliberately contrived symbols prepared
   for it. If, then, we find the altar symbols looking systematically, all
   as one, towards results of moral effect, these casual symbols and all
   others of the same general nature ought surely not to be taken as
   looking towards an effect purely judicial and penal.

   And there is still less reason for this, in the fact that Christ, doing
   all for moral effect, did actually bear, as we have fully shown, the
   corporate curse and penal disorder of the world, in a way of renewing
   it; a fact in which all such judicial figures. are sufficiently met,
   though the curse was in no sense penal as against him.

   The political and historical figures are such as grew out of the
   release of captives taken in war. Thus we Political and historic
   figures. have "redemption," as a figure derived from the buying back of
   captives; and "ransom," as the sum advanced for that object. Thus
   Christ, in offering himself for our deliverance, became our redemption,
   gave himself a ransom for us, or more briefly gave himself for us.
   Where, of course, the main idea signified, is our moral and spiritual
   emancipation from the bondage of evil; a result in the nature of moral
   effect, wholly coincident with the lustral figures of the ritual.

   The commercial figures are to the same effect--"bought with a price;"
   "purchased with his blood;" The commercial figures. "forgive us our
   debts." Whole theories of atonement have been based on each of these
   analogies, and all the other symbols of the New Testament have been
   compelled, how often, to submit themselves to the regulative force of
   these analogies, taken virtually as the literalities of the question. A
   much truer and freer meaning would be assigned with as much greater
   dignity, and requires not even to be stated.

   The natural figures are such as death and life, "reconciled by the
   death;" "saved by his life;" "tasted death for every man;" "Christ who
   is The naturally significant figures. our life." In all these figures,
   which are multiplied in a hundred shapes, and set in a hundred diverse
   combinations, moral effect is the always present and, in fact, only
   constant matter intended.

   I will not pursue this exposition farther; for the reason that there is
   plainly no necessity for it. The general conclusion is, that all the
   Scripture symbols coincide, as nearly as may be, in the one ruling
   conception, that Christ is here in the world to be a power on
   character--to cleanse, to wash, to purify, to regenerate, new-create,
   make free, invest in the righteousness of God, the guilty souls of
   mankind. Beyond that nothing plainly is wanted, and therefore there is
   nothing to be found.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [83] Hebrews, ix, 14.

   [84] Vol. I., p. 74, §§.

   [85] Heb. viii, 6.

   [86] Heb. ix, 9.

   [87] Lev. xvii, 11.

   [88] Lev. xii, 8.

   [89] Lev. xiv 52.

   [90] Numb. viii, 21.

   [91] John i, 29.

   [92] 1 John iv, 9-10.

   [93] 1 John i, 7.

   [94] Peter ii, 24.

   [95] Heb. ix, 14.

   [96] Heb. x, 19-21.

   [97] Col. i, 20-2.

   [98] Rev. i, 5.

   [99] Illustrated more fully pp. 396-7, Part III., Chap. VI.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER II.

  ATONEMENT, PROPITIATION, AND EXPIATION.

   IN the previous chapter, a careful investigation was made of the use or
   purpose of the ancient sacrifices and rites of blood, and the endeavor
   was, to find by what means, or in what sense, Christ is called a
   sacrifice, and is represented as accomplishing so much by his blood. In
   this investigation I passed over certain much disputed points in the
   institution and the Christian doctrine of sacrifice, that, in settling
   first the more positive questions of practical use and meaning, we
   might not be distracted, or confused, by multiplicities too numerous to
   allow the distinct settlement of any thing. We come now to the much
   debated and difficult questions that range under the words atonement,
   expiation, propitiation. These are words pertaining secondarily to
   sacrifice, or to the effects of sacrifice, and are commonly set in such
   prominence, as to be words of principal figure, not only in the
   doctrine, but also in the preaching of the cross. Our investigation
   therefore of sacrifices and the Christian sacrifice will not be
   complete, or satisfactory, till these ruling words and ideas are
   ventilated by a careful discussion.

   As regards the words themselves, it may be well to note, in the first
   place, that the English word atonement is entirely an Old Testament
   word, not Two ruling conceptions. Atonement and Propitiation. occurring
   at all in the translation of the New, except in a single instance;
   [100] where it is given as the translation of a word that is twice
   translated reconciliation, in the previous verse, and in every other
   place in the New Testament is translated reconciliation. And yet the
   deviation in this particular instance is less remarkable, because the
   English word atonement, at the time when the Scriptures were
   translated, meant to reconcile, that is, to at-one. And it is in this
   sense of making reconcilement, putting-at-one, that the word is so
   often used in the Old Testament. There, however, it is not so much the
   literal translation or transfer of the Hebrew word in its own type, as
   a new, though very good and proper construction, put in its place. The
   Hebrew word is cover, the very same root from which our English word
   cover is derived. Thus where we read so often, "he shall make atonement
   for you," "scape-goat to make atonement," and the like, it means the
   same thing as to make sin-cover, that is, reconciliation; the
   conception being, that sin is thereby covered up, hidden from sight or
   memory. Exactly the same thing is meant, when, using a different
   figure, it is said to be purged, cleansed, taken away. When the
   transgressor is said to be atoned or reconciled, the being covered is
   taken subjectively in the same way; as if something had come upon him
   to change his unclean state, and make him ceremonially, or, it may be,
   spiritually, pure.

   But the subject thus atoned is not only covered or cleansed in himself,
   but he is figured as being put in a new relation with God, and God with
   him; and it is as if God were somehow changed towards him--newly
   inclined, mitigated, propitiated or made propitious. It resulted
   accordingly, that the Hebrew word to cover was very frequently
   translated in the Greek Septuagint, by a word that signifies to
   propitiate or make propitiation. And the same word occurs, in six
   instances in the New Testament, and under three grammatic forms; where
   it is translated, three times, "propitiation;" once, "to make
   reconciliation;" once, "be merciful;" and once, "mercy-seat;" the three
   latter examples having, of course, their fair equivalents, in the
   phrases, "make propitiation," "be propitious," and "seat of
   propitiation."

   We have then, two ruling conceptions of sacrifice, connected with, or
   resulting from, the figure of a sin Both conceptions miscolored by
   expiation. cover; one representing the effect in us, and the other an
   effect in God as related to us--reconciliation [at-one-ment,] and
   propitiation. I shall recur to them again, at the close of the chapter,
   to settle more exactly their relative import, when applied to the
   Christian sacrifice. Meantime, another very weighty matter demands our
   careful attention; viz., the question of expiation.

   Both these terms, atonement and propitiation, are turned from their
   true meaning, in our common uses, by the false idea of expiation
   associated with them, or entered theologically into them. To atone is
   no more to reconcile, that is to restore and make clean, but it is made
   to mean the answering for sin, making amends for it, by offering
   expiatory pains to obtain the discharge of it. Propitiation is made in
   the same way, to signify the placation of God, by a contribution of
   pains and expiatory sufferings. We can not therefore recover the two
   words, atonement and propitiation, to their true meaning, without going
   into a deliberate and careful investigation of the false element by
   which they are corrupted.

   The word expiation does not once occur in the Scripture. The idea is
   classical, not scriptural at all, but the word has been sliding into
   use by the Expiation not a word of the Scriptures but of the classics.
   christian disciples and teachers, and getting itself accepted
   interchangeably for such as belong to the Scripture, till it has come
   to be even a considerable test of orthodoxy. I do not object to it,
   however, because of its origin, but because of its incurable falsity. A
   new word applied to christian subjects is not, of course, to be
   condemned, because it is new. Neither is a pagan word to be always cast
   out. But a word both new and pagan, made staple as in application to an
   old, divinely ordered, staple institution of Scripture, like that of
   sacrifice, must be admitted, I think, to wear a suspicious look. It
   should certainly have been carefully questioned, before it was
   baptized, into the faith, as I very much fear it was not.

   But the baptism is passed and we have the word upon us. The only matter
   left us for inquiry therefore, relates to ideas themselves, and I
   propose, that I may cover the whole ground of the subject, three
   questions,--

   I. What is expiation?

   II. Is it credible as a fact under the divine government?

   III. Is there any such thing as expiation supposed in the Scripture
   sacrifices?

   I. What is expiation? It does not, I answer, simply signify the fact
   that God is propitiated, but it brings in the pagan, or Latin idea (for
   it is a Expiation is an evil given to buy the release of an evil. Latin
   word,) that the sacrifice offered softens God, or assuages the anger of
   God, as being an evil, or pain, contributed to his offended feeling.
   That Christ has fulfilled a mission of sacrifice, and become a
   reconciling power on human character, has been abundantly shown. And
   this change thus wrought in men, we shall also see, is the condition of
   a different relationship on the part of God. But an expiatory sacrifice
   proposes a settlement with God on a different footing; viz., that God
   is to be propitiated, or gained over to a new relationship, by very
   different means. The distinctive idea of expiation is that God is to
   have an evil given him by consent, for an evil due by retribution. It
   throws in before God or the gods some deprecatory evil, in the
   expectation that the wrath may be softened or averted by it. The power
   of the expiation depends not on the sentiments, or repentances, or
   pious intentions connected with it, but entirely on the voluntary
   damage incurred in it. According to the Latin idea, "Diis violatia
   expiatio debetur"--when the gods are wronged, expiation is their
   due--and the understanding is that, when the wrong doers fall to
   punishing themselves in great losses, it mitigates the wrath of the
   gods and turns them to the side of favor.

   Now it is in this particular idea of expiation, the giving an evil to
   the gods, to obtain a release for other evils apprehended or actually
   felt, that A pagan corruption of the Jewish cultus. the sacrifices of
   all the heathen nations were radically distinguished from the Jewish or
   Scripture sacrifices. And the pagan religions were corruptions plainly
   enough, in this view, of the original, ante-Mosaic, ante-Jewish
   cultus--superstitions of degenerate brood, such as guilt, and fear, and
   the spurious motherhood of ignorance, have it for their law to
   propagate. As repentance settles into penance under this regimen of
   superstition, so the sacrifices settled into expiations under the same.
   And the process only went a little farther, when they fell, as they did
   the pagan world over, into the practice of human sacrifices; for since
   the gods were to be gained by expiatory evils, the greater the evil the
   more sure the favor; and therefore they sometimes offered their
   captives, sometimes their sons and daughters, sometimes their kings'
   sons, and sometimes even their kings and queens themselves; believing
   that in no other manner could they sufficiently placate their envious
   and bloody deities. Expiation figured in this manner, not as a merely
   casual and occasional part of religion, but as being very nearly the
   same thing as religion itself. For as even Tacitus could say, that "the
   gods interfere in human concerns, but to punish," what could they think
   of doing, in religion, but to expiate? The classic and all pagan
   sentiments of worship, being thus corrupted by the false element or
   infusion of expiation, the later Jewish commentators and Christian
   theologians finally took up the conception, laying claim to it as a
   worthy and genuine property in all sacrifices, whether those of the
   law, or even the great sacrifice of the gospel itself. And now there is
   nothing more devoutly asserted, or more reverently believed, than our
   essential need of an expiatory sacrifice, and the fact that such a
   sacrifice is made for our salvation, in the cross of Jesus Christ.

   It is a matter of justice I gladly admit, and, for the honor of the
   gospel, I should even like to make the Expiation not so defined, yet so
   understood. concession broader still, that the advocates of Christian
   expiation do not define it in the terms I have given. They do not seem
   to have drawn their thoughts to any point close enough to yield a
   definition, but only understand, in general, that when they speak of
   expiation, they mean a bloody sacrifice. And yet they do mean, if we
   take their whole mental content, something more; viz., just what I have
   described. How we commonly use the term in other matters than religion,
   may be seen, for example, when we say of a murderer who has been
   executed, that he has expiated his crime; or of any one who has done a
   dishonorable deed, that the shame in which he lives, is the bitter
   expiation of his fault. We always show, in such modes of speaking, that
   the matter of the expiation is conceived to be an evil, a pain, a loss.
   And our religious impressions are cast in the same mold. We never speak
   of good deeds, or sentiments, or sacrifices of love, as expiations.
   Nothing is expiatory that does not turn upon the fact of damage, or
   pain, or self-punishment. Neither is there any difficulty in
   discovering, from the manner in which theologians speak of expiation,
   that they think of God as having some evil, or pain, or naked suffering
   offered him for sin, and that, on account of such offering, he may
   release the evil, or pain, or suffering his unsatisfied wrath would
   otherwise exact. Thus, taking the mildest form of superstition, it will
   be maintained that God's wrath is to be averted by sacrifice; that is
   by something given to wrath, that is wrath's proper food; which can of
   course be nothing but some kind of pain, or evil. Sometimes the
   expiation will be conceived under moral conditions, as a transaction
   before God's justice; the assumption being that, as God is just, he
   must, of course, lay upon wrong doing exactly the evil or pain it
   deserves, and can only release it by having other pain given him in
   direct substitution. Sometimes it will be conceived that God is
   maintaining a good law for the world, which he can do only by annexing
   evils, in a way of penalty, that fully express his abhorrence of sin,
   and that such evils can be released only by giving him others, in which
   he may express the same abhorrence. But in all these varieties we have
   plainly enough the common element of expiation; viz., an evil given for
   sin, which is to avail as being an evil. It is not conceived, as in the
   Scripture sacrifice, that the sinning man is to come bringing the
   choicest, most beautiful lamb of his flock, that, in offering it, he
   may express, and in expressing feel, something which God wants him to
   feel, and for his own benefit show; but the pagan idea prevails; the
   sacrifice it is claimed, must be an expiation--some evil brought, that
   is to work on God by deprecation, or self-punishment, or painful loss.
   Nor does the moral absurdity of putting any such heathenish
   construction on the Scripture sacrifices deter at all from doing it.
   Still, as there is sin, there must be expiation, and that is made, not
   by offering up a child, or a magistrate, but by the property loss of a
   sheep--felt as a great evil, or pain, by the soul! A kind of expiation
   more fit to kindle God's wrath than to soften it; for the more it is
   felt as an evil the meaner and more heartless the sacrifice.

   Having distinguished in this manner, what an expiation is, we proceed
   to inquire--

   II. Whether expiations for sins, taken as defined, are admissible under
   the divine government?

   And here I do not undertake to say that nothing can be asserted under
   the word, which is worthy of respect and acceptance. Thus if a sinner
   of mankind, oppressed with a sense of inward ill-desert and shame,
   should seek out voluntarily some mode of expense, or pains taking, in
   which, considered as a punishment of himself, he might prove and
   express, and, by expression, exercise a clean repentance before God,
   and, doing Possible good sense of expiation. this, should call it
   making expiation for his sin, God might properly enough accept his
   unenlightened sacrifice; not however because of the evil brought him in
   it, but because the guilty sufferer came thus, trying honestly to
   trample his sins and put God in the right concerning them. Such uses of
   the word are admissible, but in the sense of expiation above defined,
   the sense which belongs to it whenever we speak of expiatory sacrifice,
   where giving God an evil not deserved, we expect Him to be placated in
   regard to an evil deserved,--in such a sense expiation has no character
   that makes it approvable by intelligence, or endurable by a true
   sentiment of God's worth and justice.

   If it is a mere feeling in God which is to be placated by an expiatory
   sacrifice, then we have to ask, is God such a being that, having a good
   mortgage title to pain or suffering as against an offender, he will
   never let go the title till he gets the pain-if not from him, then from
   some other? Such a conception of God is simply shocking. [101]

   But the title to pain, as against offenders, it will be said is simply
   what is demanded of them by justice, Not demanded by justice or
   consistent with it. and what he, as the eternal guardian of justice, is
   as truly bound to inflict, as they to suffer. God therefore has no
   option, he can not release the foredoomed evils, or pains, save as they
   are substituted by compensative evils. But suppose it to be so, and
   that God, as ruler of the world, is bound to do by every man just as he
   deserves. What means this inflexible adherence to the point of 4esert,
   when, by the supposition, he is going to accept, in expiation, an evil
   not deserved? He is going, in fact, to overturn all relations of
   desert, by taking pains not deserved, to release pains that are. Is
   this justice? or is it the most complete and solemn abnegation possible
   of justice? To get a pain out of somebody, is not justice; nothing
   answers to that name, but the inexorable, undivertible, straight-aimed
   process of execution against the person of the wrong doer himself.

   So of punishment, regarded as the penalty ordained for the enforcement
   of law, necessary to be enforced for the honor and due authority of
   law. Doubtless if something better can be done, in given circumstances,
   than to literally execute the penalty, something that will keep the law
   on foot, clothe it with still higher authority, and make the dread of
   its penalty felt as being even more imminent than before, a
   qualification of vindicatory justice so prepared will do no harm. But
   to remit a punishment or pain deserved, in consideration of a similar
   punishment or pain not deserved, accepted by an innocent party, so far
   from being any due support of law, is the worst possible mockery of it.
   It belongs to the very idea of punishment, that it fall on the
   transgressor himself, not on any other, even though he be willing to
   receive it. The law reads "do this or thou shalt die," not "do this or
   somebody shall die." A fine, or a debt, may be paid by any body; but a
   punishment sticks immovably to the wrong doer, and no commutation,
   expiation, or transfer of places can remove it.

   In the story of Zaleucus often referred to as an illustration, nothing
   is shown but a very sorry fraud practiced on the law. The father
   finding his Story of Zaleucus. son guilty of a crime, whose prescribed
   penalty in the law is that the malefactor shall have his eyes put out,
   contrives to get off his son with the loss of one eye, by consenting,
   in a most fond paternity, to lose one of his own eyes, in substitution
   for the other. But the law did not require, for its penalty, the loss
   of two eyes; it required the putting out of the two eyes of the
   transgressor; that is that he be reduced to blindness for the rest of
   his life. After all, this old historic myth, so often celebrated as an
   example of rigid and impartial justice, is only an example of bad law,
   or of a very tenderly parental sophistry enacted for the evasion of
   law.

   Much better and more solidly true to law is Cromwell's answer in the
   case of George Fox. The facts are given by Fox himself in his Journal.
   [102] He was lying Cromwell and George Fox. in prison, at the time, in
   a basement pit, inexpressibly filthy, called Doomsdale. And he says:
   "While I was in prison in Lancaster, a friend went to Oliver Cromwell
   and offered himself, body for body, to lie in Doomsdale in my stead, if
   he would take him and let me have liberty. Which thing so struck him
   that he said to his great men and council, which of you would do as
   much for me, if I were in the same condition?' And though he did not
   accept of the friend's offer, but said he could not do it, for that it
   was contrary to law, yet the truth thereby came mightily over him."

   It might also be urged that, if expiation were a more feasible and
   better element than it is, not derogatory Trinity rightly held,
   excludes expiation. to the character of God, not incompatible with
   first principles of justice, not a way of compensating law that takes
   away its most essential, highest moral attribute as law; viz., the
   unalterable personality of its distributions--if, in all these
   respects, it were a morally admissible and even wholesome conception,
   still there is a difficulty in it, as far as the sacrifice of Christ is
   concerned, which is insurmountable. If the gist of that sacrifice
   consists in the fact, that Christ in atoning, or expiating sin by his
   death, offers the simple endurance of so much evil or pain, we can not
   but ask who is Christ, in all that gives significance to his life, but
   the incarnate Word of God's eternity? Take whatsoever view of Christ's
   person we may, no one can imagine that his sacrifice was simply a man's
   sacrifice, a transaction of his merely human nature. Besides the pain
   he suffered, that of his agony, that of his cross, was in all but the
   smallest, scarcely appreciable part, a moral pain, the pain of his
   moral sensibility,--his love, his purity, his compassionate feeling,
   that which it was a great part of his errand to reveal, that which not
   to have suffered, under such conditions, would have been a virtual
   disproof of his greatness and divinity. So far, at least, his pains are
   pains of his divine nature. Does then God's right hand offer pains to
   his left, and so make expiation for the sins of the world? How many
   Gods have we? Not any more truly three, or less simply one, because we
   hold the faith of a trinity. Expiation appears to suppose that we have
   at least two, one placating the other, and he again accepting the
   expiation of sins in the sufferings of the first. Faithfully holding
   that our God is one, expiation loses opportunity. There is no place for
   it; no such transaction can be had for the want of parties, and the
   matter is incredible as being simply impossible.

   Holding now these very sufficient objections to the matter of
   expiation, or expiatory sacrifice, we should not expect to find it
   recognized in the Scriptures. Passing then to the question that
   remains, we inquire:

   III. Is there any such thing as expiation contained, or supposed to be
   wrought in the Scripture sacrifices?

   The common assumption is that the sin offerings of the Old Testament
   and the offering of Christ in the New are all expiatory, and in that
   fact have their value, contrary to all such impressions.

   I am able, after a most thorough and complete examination of the
   Scriptures to affirm with confidence, No trace of expiation in the
   Scriptures. that they exhibit no trace of expiation. I had supposed
   that the impression so generally prevalent must be well grounded, but
   my suspicions were awakened by observing one or two points where the
   impression failed, and was tempted thus to push the inquiry to its
   limit. That such an opinion has been so long and generally held of the
   Scripture sacrifices, I can only account for, in the manner already
   suggested; viz., that there is a natural tendency in all worthy ideas
   of religion to lapse into such as are unworthy--repentance, for
   example, into doing penance--that the sacrifices could easily be
   corrupted in this manner, and, in fact, were by all the pagan
   religions; and then that there was imported back into the constructions
   of holy Scripture, a notion of expiation, as pertaining to sacrifice,
   under the plausible but unsuspected sanction of classic uses and
   associations. Nothing could be more natural and it appears to be
   actually true. Indeed it is a common thing, even now, to illustrate the
   manner and supposed necessity of expiation for sin, by citations from
   Hesiod, Homer and other classic writers.

   It is impossible, of course, in a discussion of this nature, to go over
   a complete review of the whole series of Scripture instances and uses,
   but the argument will be tolerably well conceived under heads of
   classification such as follow.

   1. That Nothing made of the victim's pains. nothing was made of the
   victim's death, or pain of dying, in the ancient sacrifices, was
   sufficiently shown in the last previous chapter.

   2. Expiations are always conspicuous in their meaning. No man could
   even raise a doubt of the expiatory object of the pagan sacrifices; no
   such Expiations ought to be palpable, and are not. doubt was ever
   entertained. In this view, if the scripture sacrifices do not show an
   expiatory meaning on their face and declare themselves unmistakably in
   that character, if it is a matter of rational doubt or debate, such
   doubt is a clear presumptive evidence that their object is somehow
   different.

   3. The original of the word atone, or make atonement, In the Hebrew
   scripture, carries no such idea of expiation. It simply speaks of
   covering, or The atonements not expiations. making cover for sin, and
   is sufficiently answered by any thing which removes it, hides it from
   the sight, brings into a state of reconciliation, where the impeachment
   of it is gone. Accordingly it is sometimes translated to reconcile or
   make reconciliation; [103] sometimes to pardon; [104] sometimes to
   purify, cleanse, purge. [105] It is also true that this word is
   sometimes translated, in the Septuagint, by the same Greek word, or a
   word of the same root, as that which is translated propitiation in the
   New Testament; and it is also true that this Greek word is often
   translated into Latin and English, by the word expiation. But to draw
   an argument from this, for the fact of expiation in the Hebrew
   sacrifices, is to go upon a long circuit of travel, and get nothing
   that amounts to evidence at the end. For the classic tongues would
   certainly be apt to associate expiation with sacrifice, and the
   Septuagint would not be likely to avoid that mistake. Every thing turns
   here, manifestly, on the meaning of the original- Hebrew word; and as
   the root or symbol of this word means simply to cover, we can see for
   ourselves that, while it might be applied as a figure, to denote a
   covering by expiation, it can certainly as well and as naturally be
   applied to any thing which hides or takes away transgression.

   4. Atonements are accordingly said to be made, where the very idea of
   expiation is excluded; and Atonements that exclude expiation. sometimes
   where there is, in fact, no sacrifice at all. Thus atonements were made
   for the sanctifying of the altar; that is, for sanctifying it in men's
   feeling; for as it was necessary to the liturgic power of the sacrifice
   on the sentiment of the worshipers, that the blood of their offering
   should be made to be a sacred thing, so it was necessary that the altar
   itself should be invested with a real and felt sanctity. Thus we read,
   [106] "Seven days shalt thou make an atonement for the altar, and
   sanctify it, and it shall be an altar most holy." To give an example
   where expiation is excluded because there is no sacrifice, Moses, when
   the people had sinned so grievously, in the matter of the golden calf,
   said, [107] "Now I will go ap unto the Lord, peradventure I shall make
   an atonement for your sin." He went up accordingly and made
   intercession for them, in words of supplication, without any sacrifice
   at all and this was his atonement. Plainly enough there is no expiation
   in these cases. In the first there is none, because there is no sin
   upon the altar to be expiated, and in the second because there is no
   sacrifice. The atoning spoken of is a purifying, or a making
   reconciliation, without a possibility of expiation.

   5. It is a great point that expiations, or expiatory sacrifices, are
   certainly not offered where we should expect them to be, if they are
   offered at all. Expiations not offered where we should expect them.
   Thus in the case just referred to of the sin of the golden calf, where
   the sottish convictions of the people have been roused, and their fears
   raised into a panic by the terrible judgment of God upon them, Moses
   himself speaks of the "atonement" they need for their sin; but instead
   of a great and solemn sacrifice of expiation, where, if ever, it was to
   be expected, he undertakes their case for them himself, in his own
   personal intercession before God. So again, in the great mutiny of the
   people that followed the judgment of Korah, where a deadly plague is
   falling upon them for their sin, Moses orders no sacrifice of
   expiation, but he says to Aaron [108] "Take a censer and put fire
   therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly into the
   congregation, and make atonement for them; for there is wrath gone out
   from the Lord." The plague is stayed; not by expiation certainly; for
   it is never supposed that there is any such thing as expiation by
   incense. And yet this was a case for expiation, if any such ever
   existed. We have another case like it, in the great reformation of
   Josiah, [109] where the sacred book is found in the temple, and the
   king and people, on a public reading of the book, are put in such dread
   of the wrath of God about to overtake them, in the curses of the book
   denounced upon their sin, that a grand convocation of Israel is called
   to avert the impending judgments. Now again is the time for a great
   sacrifice of expiation; and yet there is no sacrifice made, or
   prepared; but the king, seeing no better and surer way of deliverance,
   takes his position before the assembled multitudes, and requires them
   all to join him in a solemn covenant to forsake their evil ways, and
   walk in all the statutes of the book. So again, when Ezra is overtaken
   with great concern for the nation, on account of the general
   intermarriage of priests and people with idolatrous women, he betakes
   himself to fasting, confessing, weeping, and casting himself down
   before the house of God; the people also weep sore with him; but no
   sacrifice of expiation is offered, and no other way of averting God's
   anger is thought of, than a general and total forsaking of the sin;
   which every transgressor is required to do without equivocation or
   delay. [110] Now in all such cases, and they are many, we look for
   expiation and do not find it, and what is quite as remarkable, there is
   no case to be found where God's anger, in a day of guilt and fear, is
   placated, or even attempted to be, by a clearly expiatory sacrifice. It
   was not so among the pagan nations, and it could not be so here, if
   expiation were any recognized part of the national religion.

   6. The requirement of the heart, as a condition necessary to acceptance
   in the sacrifices, is a very strong presumptive evidence that no idea
   of expiation The requirement of the heart, against expiation. belonged
   to sacrifice. At first, nothing appears to be said of the spirit in
   which the offering is to be made, though it is not to be supposed that
   it was ever accepted, in any but a merely ritual and ceremonial sense,
   unless coupled unconsciously, or implicitly, with a true feeling of
   repentance. As already observed, there was at first, almost no capacity
   of receiving truths and being exercised in states, by reflection.
   Spiritual impressions and results of character were to be operated for
   a time transactionally only, under liturgical forms of sacrifice. And a
   beginning made in this way, connected with a continued drill under
   miraculous Providences, was to operate a course of development, and
   prepare a more reflective capacity. By and by this will so far be
   accomplished, that the prophets and other teachers of the people will
   begin to put them in a consideration of their sentiments, and the
   amendment of their lives, in their sacrifices. This will bring on
   frequent rebukes of hypocrisy in them; and contrasts between mere
   heartless offerings and a genuine holiness of life, that relatively
   sink the importance of sacrifice, and sometimes appear to almost sink
   it out of sight, as a thing of little account. Indeed we are made to
   feel, before the prophetic era is closed up, that sacrifice is getting
   to be well nigh outgrown, or superseded, by a more reflective way of
   exercise, that is moderated and guided by truth.

   Now that any such religious progress could have been accomplished under
   a training of expiatory sacrifice appears to be quite impossible. The
   giving of evils to God to obtain the release of evils, is a practice so
   nearly akin to superstition, so barren of all right sentiment, so
   little likely to stimulate habits of personal conviction, that we
   rather look for a lapse into fetichism under it. Such a kind of
   sacrifice requires nothing obviously but the placation of God by a
   contribution of the necessary evils, and they may as well be
   contributed in one feeling as another. Enough that they are
   forthcoming, no matter in what feeling, if only the due penance be
   made.. Under a plan of sacrifice contrived to work on the sentiments of
   the worshipers, and quicken germs of holy feeling in them, a different
   result might be effected,--never under sacrifices of expiation.

   To bear out these strictures, and show that they are verified by facts,
   I will refer to only a few of the many scripture citations that might
   be offered. Thus, taking one example from the historic books, we find
   that Saul, an overgrown child of superstition, offers a sacrifice on
   two several occasions in his own way, disregarding God's appointed way
   and even his special command,--in the first instance, because, in going
   to battle, he wants to "make supplication to the Lord;" [111] and in
   the second, because, having gained a victory, he wants te honor God in
   a grand ovation of sacrifice--whereupon Samuel meets him in sharp
   rebuke, saying, [112] "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt
   offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold
   (this appears to be an already accepted proverb,) to obey is better
   than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."

   The same sentiment is reiterated many times by David, [113] testifying
   his readiness to yield God what is better than all sacrifice, an
   obedient heart. In the Psalm first -mentioned, he uses, out of his own
   personal feeling, just the language that is afterwards applied to
   Christ, [114] "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire, mine ears
   hast thou opened; burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not
   required. Then said I, lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is
   written of me, I delight to do thy will, O God, yea, thy law is within
   my breast." As if it were every thing, even at the stage of development
   then reached, to have God's law in the heart; sacrifices practically
   nothing--"The sacrifices of God a broken spirit." Isaiah holds the same
   sentiment in a strain of indignant rebuke, [115] --"To what purpose is
   the multitude of your sacrifices unto me saith the Lord? I am full of
   the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts. Bring no more
   vain oblations. Wash you, and make you clean, put away the evil of your
   doings from before mine eyes." And for them who will receive such
   counsel, he adds the promise of a lustral effect or cleansing that mere
   expiations do not even think of--"Though your sins be as scarlet, they
   shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall
   be as wool." Jeremiah and Amos make the same remonstrance. [116] Micah
   turns the point of his rebuke directly down upon expiation itself;
   alluding to the manner in which the heathens offer their children, and
   suggesting a parallel between the superstitions of his own people in
   their heartless ostentations and penances of sacrifice, and the
   expiations of the false gods. [117] "Wherewith shall I come before the
   Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with
   burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased
   with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I
   give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the
   sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, man, what is good; and what doth
   the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy and to
   walk humbly with thy God."

   When the Prophets, who are the preachers of the old religion, are found
   speaking of its rites in this way, two things are evident; first, that
   the rites are very much outgrown by the moral and spiritual ideas
   developed; and secondly, that no such growth in reflective capacity has
   been accomplished, under any stimulus received from the placation of
   God by expiatory sacrifices.

   7. The uses of blood in sacrifice have no such connection with an
   expiatory office, as appears to be supposed in the common modes of
   speaking Uses of blood not expiatory. concerning it. Something we say,
   must bleed, sin must draw blood before it can be forgiven--"without
   shedding of blood there is no remission." The blood is spoken of, and
   the bloody rites, and the bloody sweat, and the cross dripping blood,
   as if some dreadful inquest were gone forth against the world, and
   nothing could sate the divine anger but to see blood flow for a ransom.
   Now all such impressions are un.. historic and exactly contrary to the
   scripture ideas of blood; they carry, in fact, a strong scent of
   superstition. There is no vindictive figure in the scripture uses of
   blood. It is not death, but life, that is in it. Hedged about by walls
   of prohibition, as regards all common uses, it is made to be a holy
   element to men's feeling, that when it is applied, in the offering, it
   may seem to purify and quicken every thing it touches. As the blood is
   the life, so it is to be life-giving; a symbol of God's inward
   purifying and regenerating baptism in the remission of sins. The
   associations of blood are to have no such appalling, fateful hue as
   expiation supposes, or as they might get from battle-fields, and
   scaffolds, and the stains of midnight murder; it is not to be the blood
   that cries to God from the ground, but the blood that speaketh better
   things than that of Abel--peace, forgiveness, holiness, and life. And
   in just this view it is, that blood becomes a type of so great
   significance, in the higher uses of the Christly sacrifice itself-it is
   used, in this manner, not because it signifies expiation, but because
   God's promise, and forgiving, purifying love are in it as an element of
   life.

   8. It is a fact worthy of distinct attention, that the passover
   sacrifice has certainly nothing of expiation in it. The passover not
   expiatory. This is the sacrifice that Christ is celebrating when he
   institutes his supper, and the blessing of the bread and wine in this
   first observance of the supper is probably the closing scene of the
   passover observance itself. Here it is that Christ, taking the cup,
   says,--"This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed, for many,
   for the remission of sins." And again, when it is mentioned at the
   crucifixion, as another point of correspondence, "that it might be
   fulfilled, a bone of him shall not be broken," the reference made is to
   the passover lamb. [118] And what is a more practical evidence of the
   close affiliation of the passover and the work of Christ, the passing
   by of the destroying angel, wherever the door-posts are found sprinkled
   with the blood of the lamb, is a good and expressive type, or symbol,
   of the deliverance of souls by the blood of Christ. And yet there is
   clearly no thought of expiation for sin in the passover rite. It is
   given simply as a pledge of favor and deliverance to the people, and is
   continued afterwards not as an expiatory, but as a commemorative and
   partly festive rite. "Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and
   in the seventh day, [the passover] shall be a feast unto the Lord. And
   thou shalt shew thy son, in that day, saying--This is done because of
   that which the Lord did unto me, when I came forth out of Egypt." [119]
   Finding thus no reference whatever, in the rite, to an. expiation of
   sin, how much shall we expect to find in the grand passover grace of
   Christ himself, taken as a continuance of it, and represented by the
   Christian supper taken from it?

   9. Observe in, this connection how these rites of blood, or bloody
   sacrifice, are connected habitually with all the most joyous and
   grandest religious The festivities of sacrifices against expiation.
   festivities. All the pomps, jubilees, historic commemorations, public
   reformations, national deliverances, are celebrated in rivers of blood,
   and lift their joy, by the smoke of burnt offerings, coupled with
   processions of music and shouts of praise. In this way, the sacrifices
   get invested with associations that make the phrase "sacrifices of joy"
   synonymous with sacrifice itself. Thus David celebrates the preparation
   made for the building of the temple, in the sacrifice of a thousand
   bullocks, and a thousand rams, and a thousand lambs, and the people eat
   and drink "before the Lord on that day, with joy and gladness." [120]
   Solomon again celebrates the dedication of the temple, in a grand
   festivity of sacrifice, continued for a whole week, in which twenty
   thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep are offered.
   [121] Hezekiah's feast of reformation and his passover that followed,
   [122] are celebrated in the same profusion of blood, and sacrifice, and
   joy. In all which it is sufficiently evident, that burnt offerings and
   rites of blood are not associated, whether in the passover institution
   or elsewhere, with notions of penal sanction for sin, or contributed as
   expiations to avert God's anger on account of it.

   10. It is important, as a final consideration, to notice that, where
   the rite of sacrifice bears a look of expiation, and the instances are
   taken as facts of expiation, a closer examination shows, in every case,
   that the impression is not supported by the transaction. The The
   sacrifice of Job. sacrifice of Job for his sons may be taken as an
   example. As they are feasting, and as it would seem roistering in
   excess from day to day, he is afflicted with concern for them, and goes
   before God with his daily offering on their account, saying" It may be
   that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." [123] But
   this, at most, is a supplicatory, not an expiatory offering; for he is
   even hoping, it will be observed, that so great sin may not have been
   committed; and the mere contingency of sin is certainly no fit occasion
   for expiation. As we just now saw, in the case of Saul, sacrifice was
   even commonly considered to be a way of prayer.

   Besides this sacrifice of Job, I find no other historic instance or
   example, where there is even so much as a semblance of the expiatory
   character. But there is a complete day's-work of sacrifice
   circumstantially prescribed, a great day of atonement, sometimes called
   The great called day of expiation without expiation. "the great day of
   expiation," sometimes the day, where the remembrance of sins, once a
   year, is religiously observed, and where, as it is commonly believed,
   expiation is the simple and sole office of the observance. Here, if any
   where, the fact of an expiatory sacrifice will be found. I shall
   therefore conclude my investigation of this very important question, by
   a careful review of the solemnities of the day referred to, as they are
   detailed in the record of its institution.

   It is a day specially devoted, we shall see, to the guilty and bad
   state of sin end the sublime need it creates of a reconciliation with
   God. The intention plainly is to make it the most serious and
   impressive day of the year; a day of strong conviction and, if
   possible, of hearty repentance and true turning unto God. A whole
   chapter and a long one, [124] is occupied with a specification of the
   observances. But we shall be struck, in the review of them, not with
   any discovery of an expiatory element, but with the fact, that every
   thing is ordered with such a manifestly artistic study and skill, to
   beget, in minds too crude for the reflective modes of exercise, a whole
   set of impressions answering to those of the christian doctrine of
   salvation; the holiness of God, the uncleanness and deep guilt of sin,
   and the faith of God's forgiving mercy. The whole day, from sunset to
   sunset, as Jahn describes it, is to be a day of strict fasting. All the
   common works of life are to cease, and the people are to have it as a
   day in which to "afflict their souls." Not that, by such
   self-affliction, an expiatory penance or pain is to be suffered for
   sin. The same expression is familiarly used by us in reference to
   fasting, with no thought certainly of expiation. It simply means that,
   with and by help of it, we may settle our mind into a just impression
   of the unworthiness and guiltiness of our sin, and feel it as we ought
   in the sorrow of a true repentance. We do not afflict ourselves that
   God may be placated by our pains, but we choke down the appetites, we
   put the body under by a violent downward thrust, and proclaim a truce
   to the strivings of gain, that, in stillness and before God, we may
   receive a just impression of our ill-desert as sinners.

   Having the day fenced about in this manner, and devoted to such
   purposes, all the rites of the day are contrived to give it effect. A
   kind of fundamental conception which lies back of all and colors every
   thing in the feeling, is that there is a universal, overspreading
   uncleanness to be removed,--"because of the uncleanness of the children
   of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins." It
   is as if every thing handled, touched, breathed upon, or even looked
   upon by them, had taken some defilement from them; "the holy
   sanctuary," "the tabernacle of the congregation," "the altar," "the
   priests," and "all the people of the congregation;" all which are
   accordingly to be atoned, or purified, in turn. And the rites of the
   day are all so ordered as to produce the profoundest impression
   possible of the separateness, or holiness of God; also to encourage the
   faith of his acceptance, and of the actual remission; that is, of the
   removal or cleansing of, the sin.

   The high priest forbidden, on pain of death to enter the holy of
   holies, the sacred recess of the temple where God dwells, on any other
   day of the year, is this day to go in and be accepted there for himself
   and the people. This he is to do, putting the people back even from the
   tabernacle of the congregation, that they may not come too nigh, while
   their sin is upon them. He is to be anointed and sanctified for this,
   with a particular ointment, not to be made or used for any other
   purpose on pain of death.h. [125] And the incense he is to offer is
   made by a divine recipe, and is to be kept sacred in the same manner,
   for this particular use. [126] And the blood he is to sprinkle on the
   mercy-seat, and the altar, and the tabernacle of the congregation, is
   made sacred, as was just now observed, by a fixed separation, under the
   same penalty, from all common uses; because it has in it the sacred
   mystery of life. The offerings too, the bullock that is offered for the
   priest, and the goat that is offered for the people, are permitted, in
   no part, to be eaten, as in the ordinary and more festive celebrations
   but are to be carried outside of the camp, or city, and there to be
   wholly burned; because they are supposed to bear the taint of the sin
   upon them. And to make the impression more complete, that the sin is
   taken away, the men who carry out the offerings to burn them, come
   back, as unclean, publicly washing them selves for their cleansing.
   And, to make the removing of the sin more impressive, it is
   dramatically represented, by the introduction of another goat beside
   the one that is offered, on the head of which the priest is to confess
   and representatively place all the sins of the people, and which is to
   be driven out alive, bearing "on him all their iniquities, into a land
   not inhabited." And then, as the man who drove out the goat, having
   such uncleanness upon him, must be supposed to have suffered defilement
   in consequence, he is to return and wash himself, in token of his
   cleansing.

   And the conclusion of all is, not that certain penalties for sin are
   satisfied, or removed by expiation, but that the sin itself is covered,
   or taken away. "For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for
   you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the
   Lord."

   I do not, of course, affirm that every worshiper concerned in the rites
   of the day is ipso facto justified, born of God. In all such rites of
   the altar, two results are concerned, going along, or designed to go,
   together, but under very different conditions. First there is to be a
   ceremonial cleansing, which is wrought absolutely, every person
   concerned being made ceremonially clean. And secondly, there is or is
   designed to be, a moral and spiritual cleansing, wrought implicitly, or
   transactionally; every thing as regards exercise and impression being
   adjusted to favor, and make it the privilege of the worshiper, if only
   he, on his part, will offer his heart to it. If he takes the sense of
   his uncleanness with a true feeling, if he is so cast down by it that
   he wants to comfort himself in seeing all most sacred things offered
   for his sin; if he truly believes that God, in the holy of holies,
   receives him, and that what the scape-goat signifies is a confidence
   truly given him; then he is more than ceremonially clean; the seeds of
   a better life are quickened in his heart. And this is what the promise
   signifies; it speaks of a privilege given, not of a fact
   accomplished,--"that ye may be clean from all your sins before the
   Lord."

   There is then I conclude, for that is the result to which we are
   brought by this very careful inquiry, no such thing as expiation in the
   sacrifices Result, how honorable to the Hebrew Scriptures. of the Old
   Testament religion. And I hardly need say how great a satisfaction it
   is, and what strength it contributes to the evidences of this ancient,
   or ante-christian dispensation of God, to find that it is clear of a
   notion so abhorrent to all right feeling, and so essentially
   dishonorable to God. And the discovery is the more satisfactory, that
   it puts so wide a gulf of distance between this ancient, divine
   institute, and the crudities of barbarism and superstition that infest
   the sacrifices of all the contemporary and even subsequently developed
   religions of paganism; proving, at once, the immense superiority it has
   to all such growths of superstition, and establishing, as it were by
   incontrovertible evidence, its essentially divine origin.

   It is scarcely necessary, after this extended exposition of the Old
   Testament sacrifices, to show, by a distinct No expiation, of course,
   in the sacrifice of Christ. argument, that there is no such thing as
   expiation, in the proper and defined sense of the term, in the
   sacrifice of Christ. Only two or three passages occur to me in the New
   Testament, that even appear to allow such a construction, without a
   look of violence. Thus when Caiaphas [127] "thought it expedient that
   one should die for the people," and so "prophesied" verbally, without
   inspiration, I think it likely that he was contriving how the murder of
   Christ, in the pious pretext of an expiation for the people, was
   altogether expedient; and probably enough too, he believed in
   expiations; but it does not follow that he would be a reliable teacher
   of Christian doctrine. The conception of Paul [128] that "Christ is
   made a curse for us," is cited often as a text for expiation. But the
   meaning is exhausted, when he is conceived to simply come into the
   corporate state of evil, and bear it with us--faithful unto death for
   our recovery. The text most commonly cited as a conclusive and
   indubitable assertion of expiation, is that which was just now referred
   to--"for without shedding of blood there is no remission." [129] As if
   the word blood" were to be taken with all our uncircumcised
   associations of murder and death and terror upon it, not as a life
   giving and restoring word; and as if the word "remission" were to have
   our lightest, most superficial, merely human meaning of a letting go;
   when we know that, in order to really mean any thing in religion, it
   must signify an executed remission, an inward, spiritual release or
   cleansing. Suppose then that our great apostle had said, what to him
   signifies exactly the same thing, "for without the life-renewing blood
   there is no cleansing for sin." It is difficult to speak with due
   patience of this unhappy text, so long compelled to grind in the mill
   of expiation; turning out, always, in the slow rotation of centuries,
   this creak of harsh announcement, that God must have some bloody
   satisfaction, else he can not let transgression go!

   Sometimes it is imagined, that there is a peculiar and most sacred
   impression of God and his law made upon us, by the assertion of
   expiation, or penal The supposed effects of expiation remain without
   expiation. satisfaction; as for example, in this text. There stands, it
   is said, the inexorable, awe-inspiring fidelity of God, and the
   conscience-piercing word that tells of the immovable necessity by which
   he is holden, wakens an impression of too great power and benefit to be
   willingly lost. A theologic friend, whose opinions I much respect, can
   not break loose from the dogma of expiation, or penal satisfaction,
   though it confessedly infringes somewhat on his rational convictions
   and even his moral sentiments, because he imagines, in the impression
   just referred to, that it must have some transcendental virtue, which,
   without knowing exactly whence it comes, or how it works, proves it to
   be from God, Now there certainly is an impression of great value made
   upon us by this same text, and it is the deeper, both for the
   conscience and the heart, when it is taken with no moral offense of
   expiation, or penal satisfaction, included. And yet the reference of it
   to God's inexorable fidelity, and the sense of an immovable necessity
   by which he is holden, is here made good as before. Here stands, fast
   by God's throne, the everlasting must, commanding even righteousness to
   suffer, that justifying grace may have its way. For there comes out
   here, in grand, appalling mystery, the immovable necessity and
   everlasting fact, that goodness in all moral natures has a doom of
   bleeding on it, allowing it to conquer only as it bleeds. We can not
   even contrive a way for it to be, in this or any other universe,
   without having pains to suffer and deaths to undergo. Why, the simple
   thought of ascending into good, puts us, forthwith, in a condition of
   great cost, and if we should come off without the shedding of blood,
   that will at least be a good type of what we are required to suffer.
   Our hatred of sin is a pain, our struggle with it painful every way.
   Pity is itself a pain, beneficence for pity's sake a state of war. If
   we give ourselves to truth, truth is unpopular, and we may have to die
   for it. Good in no shape, whether of love or mercy, can press upon
   evil, without being maligned, or conspired against; and it is well if
   the evil is not exasperated, even up to the point of phrensy and bloody
   violence, Good laws and liberties cost blood. Slavery is vanquished and
   wild rebellion crushed, only by what years of suffering, and how many
   blood-sodden fields of conflict, The inexorable law is upon us--"And
   without shed. ding of blood there is no remission." All good conquers
   by a cross, and without a cross it is nothing. Ascending hence to God,
   we go not above this doom, this inexorable law, but simply go up to the
   point where it culminates, and whence it begins. The eternal
   righteousness of God has in it this inherent doom of war. It must
   suffer, it must bleed, and only so can reign. The cross is in it, even
   before the foundation of the world. We have, in our theodicy, all
   manner of ingenious showings, but the short account of God's great way
   and work is, that goodness and right must propagate goodness and right;
   and must therefore create souls capable of goodness and right; which
   also, being capable of badness and wrong, will infallibly propagate
   badness and wrong. And this is evil--evil to be mastered, cleansed,
   forgiven. Evil therefore lowers over the eternal possibilities of God,
   and God is linked, in that manner, by a prior, unalterable necessity to
   conflict and suffering; so that if the good that is in him will get
   into men's bosoms, it must bleed into them. "Ought not Christ to
   suffer" "For it became him, [it was even a fixed necessity upon him,]
   for whom are all things, and by whom. are all things, in bringing many
   sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through
   sufferings." And so returns upon us, still again, the same great text
   of expiation--"and without shedding of blood there is no
   remission"--returns with a face wholly turned away from expiation, and
   yet with no abatement of the power. What, in fact, can be more
   impressive, than the inherently tragic fidelity of good--that which, at
   the summit of omnipotence, will not swerve from being confronted with
   evil, and suffering for it, and bleeding to cleanse it?

   We are brought on thus, finally, to the conclusion, that expiation is
   no Christian idea, and is not contained in the Christian Scriptures.
   Excluding Atonement resumed and shown to be at-one-ment. it then, as a
   false third meaning given to the Hebrew word cover, we return to the
   two others, assigned for it in our English translation, atonement and
   propitiation, and resume the discussion of these, at the point where we
   left them, in the beginning of the chapter.

   To atone, or make atonement then, is to remove transgression itself, or
   reconcile the transgressor. It fulfills, in a figure, the original
   physical sense of the word to cover; as when, for example, the ark was
   covered with pitch. It is such a working on the bad mind of sin as
   at-ones it, reconciles it to God, covers up and hides forever the wrong
   of transgression, assures and justifies the transgressor. In one word,
   constantly applied to it in the atonements of the old ritual, it makes
   clean. The effect is wholly subjective, being a change wrought in all
   the principles of life and characters and dispositions of the soul.

   A passage from the Epistle to the Romans [130] is sometimes cited in
   support of a different conclusion--"For, if, when we were enemies, we
   were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being
   reconciled shall we be saved by his life." This reconciliation denotes
   simply a change of condition, it is said, not of character; a being
   brought upon the new footing of pardon; for it is something
   accomplished "when we were enemies." The reconciliation therefore
   signifies the placation of God, and not our restoration to God. What
   then remains, following the same style of argument, under the
   conditions of time, but to infer that our salvation by Christ is to be
   accomplished wholly by his life; that is, by his second life, after the
   resurrection? Whereas, if we can take a more dignified way of
   construction, we shall understand the apostle to be only raising an
   argument of degrees, for the confidence of our complete salvation--For
   if when we were yet enemies God undertook our reconciliation by the
   death of his Son, much more, being now reconciled, will he stand by us,
   since he lives again to finish the salvation begun.

   Atonement then, as applied to Christ, is just what is figured so
   carefully in the atonement of the ancient sacrifice. For as every thing
   about the temple was reconsecrated and made clean, by the sacred things
   offered in the sacrifice--the sacred incense burned before the
   mercy-seat, and the sacred blood sprinkled on whatever had taken the
   defilement of our sin--so the sprinkling of the far more sacred blood
   of Jesus, dying as the Lamb of God, in the volunteer obedience of his
   vicarious sacrifice, reconsecrates the law broken by our sin,
   dishonored and defiled by our defilement, and by its life-touch in our
   feeling and faith, purges our consciousness from dead works, to serve
   the living God. And as the old sacrifice made a remembrance of sins
   every year, and opened a way, once a year, into the holy of holies, so
   Christ, by an offering once for all, has made a reconciliation that is
   perfect and complete; so that we may all, as being now made priests
   unto God and ourselves, enter at all times and with boldness, into the
   holiest, by the blood of Jesus. That altar blood, or sprinkling,
   purified the patterns of the heavenly things; this other, holier
   sprinkling, the heavenly things themselves; viz., God's throne, law,
   and truth--every thing defiled by our transgressions--and also our
   transgressions themselves.

   The true Christian idea of propitiation is not far hence. The pagan
   color of the word is taken off; Propitiation and prevailing prayer.
   there is no such thought as that God is placated or satisfied, by the
   expiatory pains offered him. It supposes, first, a subjective atoning,
   or reconciliation in us; and then, as a farther result, that God is
   objectively propitiated, or set in a new relation of welcome and peace.
   Before he could not embrace us, even in his love. His love was the love
   of compassion; now it is the love of complacency and permitted
   friendship. This objective propitiation of God answers exactly to
   another objective conception, commonly held without any thought of
   correspondence. Thus we have a way of saying, as regards successful
   prayer, that it prevails with God. Is it then our meaning that it turns
   God's mind, makes him better, more favorable, more inclined to bestow
   the things we seek? Probably enough many persons think so, and it is
   much better that they should, than to conclude, with many others, that
   it accomplishes nothing; obtaining no gifts that would not have been
   given as certainly without any prayer at all. But the true conception
   is this--that God has instituted an economy of prayer to work on
   Christian souls and brotherhoods and churches, encouraging them to come
   and make suit to him, for the blessings they need. This draws them
   nearer to him than before, chastens their spirit, kindles their holy
   desires and aspirations, unites them to aims of mercy like his own,
   brings them into a more complete faith, bands them together, two, or
   three, or many, in a more living fellowship of heart; and so, having
   gotten them, by this economy, into a state more configured to
   himself--which is the very object for which he orders the world--he is
   now able to grant, or dispense, things which before he could not, and
   he is prevailed with. Is he then better than before? is he induced to
   alter his plans? No, by no means. But he has now new subjects, or
   subjects in a new relationship, and if he were now to carry on all the
   courses of events, just as if the prayers were not, he would even
   violate a first principle of nature, that every event shall have its
   own consequences. Prayers are events like all others, and what forbids
   that, having their consequences, the consequences should be answers?

   God then is propitiated by a change of relationship, that permits him
   to greet the souls whom Christ has reconciled, in cordial welcome, as
   he otherwise could not --just as he is prevailed with in prayers, that
   are Objective propitiation supposes subjective faith. new conditions
   prepared for new blessings. And that this is the true conception is
   most effectually shown by the standard text itself, in that particular
   clause which was reserved to this point of the argument [131] --"Whom
   God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood."
   The apostle does not say, it will be observed--"propitiation through
   his blood"--as the scheme of expiation requires, but "propitiation
   through faith in his blood." No propitiation therefore reaches the
   mark, that does not, on its way, reconcile, or bring into faith, the
   subject for whom it is made. There is no God-welcome prepared, which
   does not open the guilty heart to welcome God.

   The apostle, in this manner, takes away from the Greek word he uses,
   which it must be confessed is commonly used by the pagan writers in a
   way that implies expiation, any possibility of such a meaning; for they
   have never a thought of any such thing as an expiation through faith;
   and, what is more, expiation itself excludes the supposition, that any
   kind of moral condition is necessary in the subject for whom it is
   offered; the very idea being, that it avails, as being a contribution
   of evils to obtain the release of evils; not as having now a state of
   faith prepared, as a new receptivity for good. I know not how often
   this language of the apostle is, quoted, as if it asserted a
   propitiation that is accomplished before faith, and wholly apart from
   faith; a placation of God that has respect to no human conditions
   whatever--precisely that which he carefully and even formally excludes.

   Atonement then is a change wrought in us, a change by which we are
   reconciled to God. Propitiation is an objective conception, by which
   that change, taking place in us, is spoken of as occurring
   representatively in God. Just as guilty minds, thrown off from God,
   glass their feeling representatively in God, imagining that God is
   thrown off from them; or just as we say that the sun rises, instead of
   saying, what would be so very awkward to us, and yet is the real truth,
   that we ourselves rise to the sun. The necessity and uses of this
   objective language will be considered more at large, in the remaining
   chapter, and therefore need not be insisted on here, as in reference to
   the single word propitiation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [100] Romans v, 11.

   [101] Not even Dr. Magee, when asserting expiation, will allow that God
   is made placable by it, insisting that He simply appoints it "as the
   means by which to bestow forgiveness." And when it is urged that the
   expiation can have no use "but to appease a Being who otherwise would
   not forgive us," he takes shelter under his ignorance, from a
   conclusion so revolting, and answers--"I know not, nor does it concern
   me to know, in what manner the sacrifice of Christ is connected with
   the forgiveness of sins."--(Vol. 1, p. 19.) When however the crisis of
   the argument, at this point, is gone by, he recovers from his ignorance
   and is able to assert very positively that the justice of God is
   satisfied by the sacrifice of expiation.

   [102] Fox's Journal, Glasgow edition, p. 262.

   [103] Lev. viii, 15; 2 Chron. xxix, 24; Ezek. xlv, 20; Dan. ix, 24.

   [104] 2 Chron. xxx, 18; Jer. xviii, 23.

   [105] Ex. xxix, 36,-xxx, 10; Numb. xxxv, 33; 1 Sam. iii, 14; Ezek.
   xliii, 20-26; Isa. vi, 7.

   [106] Exodus xxix, 37.

   [107] Exodus xxxii, 30.

   [108] Numbers xvi, 46.

   [109] 2 Chronicles, xxxiv.

   [110] Ezra x, 1-15.

   [111] 1 Samuel xiii, 12.

   [112] 1 Samuel xv, 10-22.

   [113] As in Psalms xl, 1, and li.

   [114] Hebrews x, 6-9.

   [115] Isaiah i, 10-18.

   [116] Jeremiah vii, 21-23; Amos v, 21-24.

   [117] Micah vi, 6-8.

   [118] Exodus xii, 46.

   [119] Exodus xiii, 7-8.

   [120] 1 Chronicles xxix, 21-22.

   [121] 2 Chron. vii, 5.

   [122] 2 Chron. xxix and xxx.

   [123] Job i, 5.

   [124] Leviticus xvi.

   [125] Exodus xxx, 30-33.

   [126] Exodus xxx, 34-38.

   [127] John xi, 50.

   [128] Galatians iii, 13.

   [129] Heb. ix, 22.

   [130] Rom. v, 10.

   [131] Rom. iii, 28.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER III.

  PRACTICAL USES AND WAYS OF PREACHING.

   AFTER we have gone over the whole ground of the gospel as a work of
   vicarious sacrifice, settled the doctrine, found the meaning of the
   Scripture symbols, there still remain some very important practical
   questions respecting the modes of preaching and use. Neither can these
   questions be dispatched, by what may seem to be the ready and simple
   conclusion, that we are to preach and apply to our own lives just what
   we have found to be true, neither more nor less. For to preach what is
   true concerning a matter, and to preach the matter itself Truth
   concerning Christ not Christ. may be very different things. So if we
   speak of use, or application to our own spiritual state, we may only
   fool ourselves in the endeavor to get our benefit out of what is true
   concerning the gospel, when all true benefit lies in a right
   appropriation of the gospel itself. As concerning Christ, we have made
   up our account of his work, in the conclusion that he is in the world
   to be the moral power of God upon it; but it does not follow that we
   shall preach him, or receive him, in the most effectual way, by
   contriving always how to be in the power, and muster the power upon us.
   His truth may be most powerful, when we think least of the power, and
   have our mind wholly turned away, in love and trust, from ourselves. If
   I have a much honored and powerful friend, by whose great character I
   would like to mode, my own, I shall not do it probably by contriving
   always, artificially and consciously, how to get his efficacy upon me;
   but I shall be much with him, and putting faith in him, I shall breathe
   the atmosphere he makes, even as I do the air without contriving how to
   live by it; I shall admire his sentiments and his bearing in great
   crises of trial; I shall find a pleasure in meeting his wishes, and
   doing what I may, to advance the cause that engages him. Thinking
   nothing thus of getting a power upon me from his person, I shall be
   only the more completely pervaded and molded by his power. A glance in
   this direction is sufficient to show, that the preaching and personal
   uses of the gospel are a subject widely distinct from the truth
   concerning it.

   The gospel will of course be preached and applied to use in modes that
   have some agreement with what it is conceived to be. Thus if Christ be
   accepted Various kinds of preaching. only as a great moral teacher and
   reformer, the preaching over of his preaching, as recorded in the four
   gospels, will be the main thing, and almost nothing will be made of his
   personal life and death, and the reconciling purpose of his mission.
   Preaching will be teaching as the Master taught, even as the pupils of
   the Academy, the Porch, or the Peripatetic order, followed the school
   of their master. The after developments of his mission and the
   significance of it, as completed by the cross, and opened by the Holy
   Spirit--just that which the apostles received and pub. lished, when
   they preached him as the Saviour of sinners--will be virtually ignored.
   Precisely what made the day of pentecost will be omitted.

   If the gospel is conceived to be merely an array of legal motives
   addressed to interest, and so contrived as to cast a preponderating
   balance always on the side of right choices, then there will be cogent
   appeals to the conscience, and the fears, and the: love of happiness,
   and so, to the will-power of the; subjects addressed. And then, for
   such as choose rightly, Christ will be shown to have prepared a ground
   of forgiveness; and beyond that as the principal account of his
   mission, will be conceived to have no particular agency in the
   transformations to be wrought. This kind of preaching will take on a
   strenuous air, and will sometimes stir great commotions where only
   motions would be better. The piety thus resulting will be legal; a kind
   of will-work, too little freshened by the graceful affections, too
   little enriched by great sentiments, lifted by no inspirations, save
   when slipping, by chance, the legal detentions, it seizes the forbidden
   fruit of liberty.

   Another characteristic mode of preaching is produced by preaching a
   formula, supposed. to be the very equivalent and substantial import of
   the gospel. And we have abundance of complaints, -from such as mean to
   be faithful in this way, that Christ is now so little preached. They
   mean that Christ is not preached as an expiation, or a satisfaction to
   God's justice, or an exposition of God's abhorrence to sin. The
   substance of their complaint is really that a formula is not preached
   instead of Christ; that, too, a formula so painfully untrue as to make
   itself felt more often as a violation of natural feeling, than as a
   saving power upon it. If only this be preaching Christ, it will be a
   long time before he is preached in a way to satisfy this kind of
   complaint.

   The very idea of preaching Christ by formula, even if the true formula
   were developed, is a great mistake; for whatever mind, goes into
   limitation or incrustation under formula becomes sterile, and the
   gospel on which it perpetually hammers will be meager, and weak, and
   dry. All the ten thousand flaming truths that are crowding in, as
   troops of glory, on the thoughts of a soul in liberty, asking as it
   were to be uttered faster than the Sundays will let them, are
   suppressed, or shut back, by that inevitable little sentence of wisdom,
   which has concluded every thing. I will not deny that some general
   account or scheme of the gospel plan may be convenient, for the mind to
   fall back upon and gather itself into, for the minting and: due
   authentication of its issues. But a formula to be preached, and
   maintained as a gospel, is a very different matter--all the worse, if
   it has only been received pedagogically, and been set as the hand-organ
   tune which the school is engaged to play. Any formula is a necessary
   abortion, which is not the formulization of Christ discovered by the
   heart, and verified by a deep working Christian experience.

   Let us see if we can arrive at some better and more adequate conception
   of preaching. Christ is here, according to the doctrine of this
   treatise, to be the moral The true kind described. power of God on the
   world, so the power of God unto salvation. But if any one should set
   himself to preaching only this, turning it round and round, citing
   texts for it, and arguing down objections, he would only postpone the
   power he undertakes to assert. Christ will be the power, only as he is
   himself in that which makes him the power; viz., all that he was, did,
   and expressed, in his life and death and resurrection--Saviour of
   sinners and Judge of the world. We have seen him, for example,
   fulfilling the love principle in vicarious suffering for us; revealing,
   in his obedience, God's everlasting obedience to law; adding vigor to
   law by his tremendous enforcements; doing honor to God's retributive
   justice, by subjecting himself to all the corporate evils it brings on
   the human state; and by all these methods, declaring so impressively
   the righteousness of God, as to prepare the glorious possibility and
   fact of a free justification--these are all great truths for preaching,
   greater each of them singly in its power, than the general truth which
   includes them all; and yet when these again are subdivided, and run out
   into all the thousand facts and subjects included, they will ring even
   the more impressively in each one, because it is farther off from what
   is general and closer to the concrete matter of Christ's personal life.
   The subjects are endless, and the power inexhaustible.

   I think we shall best conceive the subject matter of preaching and in
   that sense the mode, if we specify three distinct elements which must
   be included, and are necessary to the genuine power.

   1. There must be a descent to human nature in its lower plane of
   self-love and interested motive, and a beginning made with the
   conscience, the God's law and justice to be preached. fears, and the
   boding expectations of guiltiness. To convince, intimidate, waken out
   of stupor, shake defiant wrong out of its confidences, must be
   deliberately undertaken and, if possible, effectively done. There must
   be no delicacy here; as if God's love and the vicarious ministry of
   Jesus were too softly good, to do any so rugged and severe thing as to
   punish. Christ's own doctrine of future punishment, Christ as the judge
   of the world, all that belongs to God's law, all that will be done by
   God's justice, the very dies irae of the wrath to come, must be
   faithfully declared, and that in a manner that indicates conviction. Of
   course there must be no violence, under pretext of suffering no
   delicacy, but a manner of tenderness that indicates due sensibility in
   a matter so appalling. The true conception is, that as God's justice is
   a co-factor with his mercy, it is to be set forth and magnified and
   made real in the same way, and for the same purpose. And no better
   model can be taken for this than Christ himself. Nor is any thing more
   certain, than that whoever gives in to the feeling that Christ is
   outgrown in this matter, has really no gospel to preach--his vocation
   is gone. For if Christ did not understand himself here, what reason is
   there to believe that he understood himself at all? In this dilemma one
   may think he has a gospel, and a specially superlative kind of gospel,
   but it will be nerveless and without sound; like the headless drums
   that marching children sometimes carry, beating on the rim. God is a
   just God, and if he is not shown to be, but only to be a beautiful God,
   or a gentle and loving God, sin will be abundantly reconciled to him
   staying where it is. There is no salvation here, and no power of
   salvation is wanted. There may be a dressing of the soul in what is
   called beauty of character, but the character will be only a beautiful
   affectation. But we pass to the saving side of the gospel, that in
   which the personal power of Christ's sacrifice is specially designed to
   operate. And here we shall find--

   2. That a very great and principal office of preaching will consist in
   a due exhibition of the Christian facts. The facts of Christ's life to
   be magnified. The power is to be personal, and will therefore lie in
   the facts of the personal life. These facts therefore are preëminently
   the good news that composes the gospel; requiring heralds, or preachers
   [precones,] to go abroad and publish it. Apart from these facts, the
   great subjects we have spoken of are nothing. They spring out of the
   facts and have no basis of reality beside. Hence also it is that in the
   Apostles' creed, or first recorded confession of Christ, nothing is
   included but the simple outline facts of his life; no other and better
   formula being yet conceived or attempted. Here accordingly is the
   original and truly grand office of preaching; viz., in the setting
   forth and fit representation of these gospel facts.

   They begin with the grand primal fact of the incarnation; for it is
   only in that, and by that mystery, that the person arrives whose
   history is to be entered into the world. Viewed in this light, the
   person arriving is not merely a man, but, as we must believe, a
   veritable God-man. Taken as being simply a man, the facts of his life
   would certainly be remarkable and valuable, he would only be a much
   greater and more incredible mystery, considering the morally perfect,
   and therefore superhuman character he is in, than he is when conceived
   as an abnormal, extra-mundane person, let into the world from above it,
   to fulfill a specially divine mission. All the after facts change color
   and consequence, accordingly, as they are viewed in one mode or the
   other. Considered as the God-man, there is not a single fact, or scene,
   in the history which, fitly conceived, does not yield some lesson of
   power; the infancy; the thirty years of silent preparation; the recoil
   of the poor human nature, called the temptation, when the work begins;
   every healing, every miracle, every friendship, every commendation,
   every denunciation, the lot of poverty, the hour of oppressed feeling,
   the weariness and sleep, the miraculous hem of his garment, the
   transfiguration, the prayers, the amazing assumptions of a common glory
   and right with the Father, the agony, the trial, the crucifixion, the
   resurrection, the appearings and tender teachings afterwards, and last
   of all the ascension, followed by the descent of the Spirit to
   represent and be himself, according to his promise, a Christ every
   where present, every where accessible--no longer limited and localized
   in space--in all these and in all he said and taught concerning God,
   himself, and us, the preacher is to find staple matter for his
   messages. There is almost nothing, even as to his mere manners and
   modes, which, if he is truly alive--and no Christian man has a right to
   be dead--will not open some gate or crevice into chambers of glory, for
   the conscience or the heart.

   Here has been one of the great faults or deficiencies in the preaching
   of Christ. Too little, by a thousand fold, A great fault of preaching
   has been here. has been made of the facts of his life. By some they are
   almost never dwelt upon, with the exception, perhaps, of two or three
   that could not be utterly passed over; the rest are as if they were
   not. Commonly the feeling is not brought close enough to them to find
   the life that is in them--what can they signify of importance, after
   the main doctrine of all has been decocted? How much easier to preach
   the decoction and let the dried herbs of the story go. It might be so,
   if they were really dry; but since they are all alive, fresh and
   fragrant as a bank of roses, how much better to go and breathe among
   them and catch the quickening odors. How little indeed does any
   preacher know of the true gospel, who only finds a dull, stale matter,
   in the wonderful, morally sublime record of such a character! No good
   news will ever go forth out of him. He thinks he has exhausted the
   gospel and gotten the whole matter of it in his head, just because he
   has gotten nothing, and knows not that there is any thing to get,
   besides what his formula contains. He mourns a little, it may be, over
   the want of power in his preaching, when in fact there ought to be no
   power, because there is no fact in the grand life-history of Jesus that
   is alive to him. He fails just where any really high ministry must
   begin; viz., in the ability to show forth Christ alive, in the facts
   that represent his living personality; thus to raise conviction, thus
   to keep interest in a glow, thus to conquer the heart and testify a
   Saviour who mediates peace.

   I think it would be hardly possible for a preacher of Christ to be too
   much in the facts of his life. Only they must be so handled as to raise
   great subjects, and kindle the heat of a true fire, as they always may.
   The mere doling of these facts, or the setting them off in a garnish of
   scene-painting or mock sentiment, or frothy laudation, does not fulfill
   the idea of such preaching. Something worthy of God's love, something
   deifically great must be found in them, and the feeling must be raised,
   that he is personally nigh, rich in his gifts, strong in his majesty,
   terrible in his beauty, heavyhearted and tender in the suffering
   concern of his love. We come next--

   3. To another and more difficult matter, as regards the power of the
   gospel in its uses, and the due impression of it, as a way of
   salvation; viz., No sufficient gospel without the altar forms. the
   right conception and fit presentation of it, under the altar forms
   provided for it. For, besides the outward figure of the facts,
   occurring under conditions of space and time, and significant to human
   feeling in that manner, God has contrived a thought-form, to assist us
   in that kind of use which may conduct us into the desired state of
   practical reconciliation with himself. In the facts, outwardly
   regarded, there is no sacrifice, or oblation, or atonement, or
   propitiation, but simply a living and dying thus and thus. The facts
   are impressive, the person is clad in a wonderful dignity and beauty,
   the agony is eloquent of love, and the cross a very shocking murder
   triumphantly met, and if then the question rises, how we are to use
   such a history so as to be reconciled by it, we hardly know in what way
   to begin. How shall we come unto God by help of this martyrdom? How
   shall we turn it, or turn ourselves under it, so as to be justified and
   set in peace with God? Plainly there is a want here, and this want is
   met by giving a thought-form to the facts which is not in the facts
   themselves. They are put directly into the molds of the altar, and we
   are called to accept the crucified God-man as our sacrifice, an
   offering or oblation for us, our propitiation; so to be sprinkled from
   our evil conscience, washed, purged, purified, cleansed from our sin.
   Instead of leaving the matter of the facts just as they occurred, there
   is a reverting to familiar forms of thought, made familiar partly for
   this purpose, and we are told, in brief, to use the facts just as we
   would the sin offerings of the altar, and make an altar grace of
   them--only a grace complete and perfect, an offering once for all.
   According to the Epistle to the Hebrews, the ancient ritual was devised
   by God, apart from its liturgical uses, to be the vehicle in words of
   the heavenly things in Christ, molds of thought for the world's grand
   altar service in Christ the universal offering, regulative conceptions
   for the fit receiving and effective use of the gospel.

   And so much is there in this that, without these forms of the altar, we
   should be utterly at a loss in making any use of the Christian facts,
   that would set us in a condition of practical reconciliation with God.
   Christ is good, beautiful, wonderful, his disinterested love is a
   picture by itself, his forgiving patience melts into my feeling, his
   passion rends open my heart, but what is he for, and how shall he be
   made unto me the salvation I want? One word--he is my sacrifice--opens
   all to me and beholding him, with all my sin upon him, I count him my
   offering, I come unto God by him and enter into the holiest by his
   blood.

   But the principal reason for setting forth the matter of Christ's life
   and death as an oblation remains to be stated; viz., the necessity of
   somehow Wanted to produce an attitude of objectivity. preventing an
   over-conscious state in the receiver. It was going to be a great fault
   in the use, that the disciple, looking for a power on his character,
   would keep himself too entirely in the attitude of consciousness, or
   voluntary self-application. He would be hanging round each fact and
   scene, to get some eloquent moving effect from it. And he would not
   only study how to get impressions, but, almost ere he is aware of it,
   to make them. Just here accordingly it was that the Scripture symbols,
   and especially those of the altar service, were to come to oui aid,
   putting us into a use of the gospel so entirely objective, as to
   scarcely suffer a recoil on our consciousness at all. The sacrificial
   offering was in form, an offering wholly to God, even as the smoke
   rolls up from the altar and comes not back. The result was that the
   worshiper was made clean; that is, according to the political, or
   statutory sense; and if, perchance, he was made clean in a deeper
   sense, it would be implicitly, just because his mind was going up
   wholly to God, with the smoke of his offering. So, when I conceive that
   Christ is my offering before God, my own choice Lamb and God's, brought
   to the slaying, and that for my sin, my thought moves wholly outward
   and upward, bathing itself in the goodness and grace of the sacrifice.
   Doubtless there will be a power in it, all the greater power that I am
   not looking after power, and that nothing puts me thinking of effects
   upon myself.

   In this manner coming unto Christ, or to God through Christ, in the
   symbols of sacrifice, we make an escape, as it were, from ourselves and
   that state of consciousness which is the bane of religion; an escape, I
   must frankly admit, which is none the less necessary, when we conceive
   that Christ has come into the world, not to expiate sin, but to be a
   power upon it; furthermore, an escape which God has provided, to make
   him more completely a power. For it is in these symbols that God
   contrives to get us out of ourselves into the free state of faith, and
   love, and to become the new inspiration of life in our hearts. And
   accordingly we should find, in the ready and free use of these symbols,
   our best means of grace, if only we could have them clear of
   misconstructions that often fatally corrupt their meaning. Oppressed
   with guilt, we should turn ourselves joyfully to Christ as the
   propitiation for our sins, Christ who hath borne the curse for us,
   Christ who knew no sin made sin for us, that we might be made the
   righteousness of God in him. We should cry in our prayers; O Lamb of
   God that takest away the sins of the world, take away our sins; or
   thinking of that sacred blood, by whose drops that fell as touches of
   life on the world's grand altar, Calvary, we should cry--wash us, O
   Christ, in the blood of thy cross and make us clean; or wanting, in
   despair of ourselves, some Helper and Friend to bear the sins we can
   not bear ourselves, we should take up tenderly the words of the poet,
   if not in his meaning, yet in the meaning which they ought to have--


     "My soul looks back to see

     The burdens thou didst bear,

     When hanging on the accursed tree,

     And hopes her guilt was there."

   We want, in short, to use these altar terms, just as freely as they are
   used by those who accept the formula of expiation, or judicial
   satisfaction for sin; in just their manner too, when they are using
   them most practically. Indeed, it is one of the enviable advantages of
   their scheme that they are able to use them freely; for, when they are
   so used, they will not always keep themselves close in the dogmatic
   misconstructions put upon them, but will often pour into the heart, in
   their true Scripture meaning, as chariots into some pos tern gate that
   is not closed. A more subjective gospel, one that looks to effects on
   character and the renewing of the life in God, has even a better right
   to their use; and they are almost indispensable, to save it from an
   otherwise nearly fatal subjectivity.

   Nor is there any thing so peculiar in this need of an objective form
   for the gospel. We need what is like it Objective terms a first want of
   language. every where, and human language is full of it. A very great
   part of the terms and expressions of language, and those that are
   liveliest and freshest, are such as put into things and facts meanings
   which are really not there, but in ourselves. We say that a thing is
   painful because we suffer pain from it; putting the pain into the
   thing, which is really in ourselves. We say, in the very palpable and
   common matters of color, that things are red, blue, white, and the
   like, when, as we all know, the colors are in us and not in the things.
   Subjectively speaking, we should have to say, awkwardly and
   pedantically, that we have sensations of redness, blueness, whiteness,
   before the things. We say that a thing has a sweet taste, when the
   sweet taste is not in the thing at all, but wholly in ourselves. The
   language of Christ, which is about as nearly perfect as it can be,
   abounds in these objective representations of subjective facts and
   ideas. Glance along the sermon on the mount, looking go farther, and we
   get examples like these, "If thy right eye offend thee"--"if thine eye
   be evil;" where he has no thought of any thing blamable in the eye, o!
   any thing without offending the eye, but only of the lustful, or
   grudging soul, that looks through it. "Lead us not into temptation;"
   where he means, not that God might lead us into it, but that we need to
   be kept from leading ourselves into it. "Lay up for yourselves
   treasures in heaven;" where he does not imagine that we have access to
   heaven, so that we can put in treasures there, but that we are to get
   heavenly treasures garnered in ourselves. Again--"straight is the gate,
   broad is the way;" where he seems to say that God's gate of life is
   made narrow, and his way of destruction broad. He could not raise any
   fit impression, by the real subjective fact, that our perverseness
   makes the gate of life narrow and difficult to enter, and the way of
   destruction broad and easy; so he puts the case objectively, willing,
   even at the expense of an almost seeming reflection upon God, to set us
   in a distinct feeling of the fearful alternative we are required to
   meet.

   To carry these illustrations of the genius of language, and especially
   of Scripture language a little farther, and show, on how large a scale,
   the forms Hence the Devil, or bad king. of truth are affected by the
   instinct of objective representation, I will refer to the devil, or o
   diabolos, of the Old and New Testament. Here we have a kind of bad God,
   over against the good, who leads the powers of darkness and manages the
   interest of evil. But there is no more reason to suppose that God has
   created any such being, or that any such really exists, than there is
   to suppose that there is a real being called the prince of this world,
   or another called antichrist, or two others called Gog and Magog. The
   devil is that objective person, whose reality is the sum of all
   subjective seductions, or temptations to evil; viz., those of bad
   spirits, and those of the corrupted soul itself. These bad spirits,
   sometimes called Legion, together with our own bad thoughts, are all
   gathered up into a great king of art and mischief and called the devil.
   Whether it is done by some instinct of language, or some special
   guidance of inspiration, in the use of language, or both, we do not
   know; the latter is more probable. But however it came to pass, we can
   see that it serves a most important use in the economy of revelation.
   In the process of recovery to God, men must be convinced of their sins,
   and made thoroughly conscious of their guiltiness, and this requires a
   turning of their minds upon themselves in reflection and a state of
   piercingly subjective attention to their own ill desert. And yet they
   must be taken away, somehow, from a too close, or totally subjective
   attention, even to their sins. For if they are to be taken away from
   their ill desert and guiltiness, they must be drawn out into a movement
   of soul in exactly the opposite direction; viz., in the direction of
   faith which is outward. And this exactly is what the grand objective
   conception of the devil prepares and facilitates. First, their sin is
   all gathered up with its roots and causes into the Bad King conceived
   to be reigning without; and then it is permitted the penitent, or the
   disciple struggling with his enemy, to conceive that Christ, in whom he
   is called to believe, is out in force, to subdue and crush the monster.
   And so he is helped away from the torment of a merely reflective state,
   even when contending with the sins of his own bosom.

   Only two days previous to the writing of this paragraph I was
   conversing with a very intelligent and, withal, a truly liberal
   Christian friend, who said, as arguing for the existence of the devil,
   that he liked to think of such a being, in distinction from thinking
   always of his sins, about which he knew very little, and then to hang
   his faith on Christ as warring with him, and able to pluck him down;
   for this takes in every thing and makes a clean issue, when we do it,
   in the simplest manner possible. To which the very obvious reply was,
   that for this very purpose God has given us the objective devil of
   Scripture to be hated, and conspired against, and by faith cast down,
   when the real, multitudinous, inconceivable matter to be thus hated,
   conspired against, and by faith cast down, is working subjectively in
   ourselves. And, what is more, there is no other conception of the devil
   of Scripture that makes him so profoundly real as this; partly because
   there is no other that has any look of credibility.

   We find then, as we look at language, whether out of the Scriptures or
   in, that objective representations are always best for us, most sought
   after, and prepared on a very large scale, because they take us away
   from mere self-management, and carry us out to rest our hope and faith
   in God. If we represented every thing subjectively which is subjective,
   we could do it only by using the most awkward and tedious
   circumlocutions. In one view, these outward projections of what is
   within are not true, and yet they are the more vigorously true for that
   reason. Shut up to saying every thing subjectively, our language would
   be only a torment.

   Any strictly subjective style of religion is vicious. It is moral
   self-culture, in fact, and not religion. We The outgoing state is thus
   secured. think of ourselves abundantly in the selfishness of our sins.
   What we need, above all, is to be taken off the self-center and
   centered in God. Ceasing to go by contrivance, we must learn to go by
   inspiration; that is, by the free impulse of God in our faith. Hence
   the profound importance of the altar symbols, divinely prepared and
   fashioned, to be the form of the Christian grace. They compose for us
   even a kind of objective religion; that is, a religion operated for us
   and before us. In one view they are not true, just as the ten thousand
   objective expressions of language referred to are not, and yet there is
   nothing so sublimely, healthfully true, in the practical and free uses
   of faith, because we are so simple in them, and so completely carried
   out of ourselves. Of course we shall be conscious beings still; we must
   be conscious always and in every thing we do; but how much does it
   signify that we can have an altar and an offering, once for all, where
   we can go with our confession, and pay our tender worship, without
   thinking, for the time, of any thing but what is before us and is done
   for us. Here it is that we drop out self most easily, and come away to
   God, in a liberty most perfectly unembarrassed by the habit of our
   guilty self-devotion. In the sacrifice we cling to and call our own, we
   are respited, and the ceasing from our will, makes us plastic to the
   grace that molds us. The new element we are in is peace; we are atoned,
   reconciled.

   But we encounter, at this point, a very great difficulty, in the fact
   that all these Scripture symbols have been so long and dreadfully
   misapplied, A great difficulty met. by the dogmatic schemes of
   expiation, penal suffering, and judicial satisfaction. Thus, if we
   attempt to use them, we are disturbed by the feeling, that neither we,
   nor they, will be understood, in any sense that is true. How shall we
   venture to speak of Christ as a sacrifice for sin, when even the ritual
   sacrifice, on which the figure is based, has been made to signify, not
   a confessional offering, or offering of pious devotion, in which the
   worshiper is turned to God, but the offering of a substituted victim,
   to even the penal account with God, or reconcile God to him? So of all
   the other symbols; the lamb is the victim, in the sense that he
   suffers; the slaying of the victim is death for death, and the dying of
   the victim is pain for pain; when truly nothing was made, either of the
   death, or the pain, but only of the offering of some choicest animal,
   as a reverently careful act of homage and repentance for sin. The blood
   sprinkled here and there is no more the life, that sacred element which
   pacifies every thing it touches, but it is the blood of slaughter,
   signifying that God is reconciled only when sin draws blood. Even the
   bearing of sin by the scape-goat--a beautifully contrived figure, to
   signify the deportation of sin--what is it but the certain fact of
   theology, that, if sins are to be removed, they must yet be borne by
   somebody? In the same way atonement is not the covering of sin, or the
   reconciliation of the sinner, but it is that paying for sin which evens
   the account. And so of all the lustral figures--making clean, washing,
   purifying, purging, sprinkling by the hyssop branch--they only mean
   that expiation is complete, and a clean, or even account made by it.
   So, too, of the extra-ritual figures. Redemption and ransom are not
   figures of release from captivity, but penal satisfactions paid to even
   the account of justice. The stripes that heal, too, are become the
   stripes that satisfy God's wrath.

   What then shall we do with these forms of the altar, when they have
   come to be thus sadly disfigured and turned from their true meaning?
   Shall we use them freely and rightly, and let such impressions be taken
   as certainly will be? Shall we use them with salvos and parentheses of
   explanation? That would be awkward and troublesome and besides would
   despoil them of all right effect. Shall we then give them up entirely
   and let them go? Many, alas, are doing it, contriving how to find a
   sufficient gospel in the forms of the facts themselves, described in
   the terms of common speech. And the result is, that they preach a
   philosophy of Christ instead of the Christian oblation, a Christ who is
   to work on souls under the natural laws of effect, and not a Christ to
   be our sacrifice before God. We can not afford to lose these sacred
   forms of the altar. They fill an office which nothing else can fill,
   and serve a use which can not be served without them. It may perhaps be
   granted that, considering the advance of culture and reflection now
   made, we should use them less, and the forms of common language more;
   still we have not gotten by the want of them and we never shall. The
   most cultivated, most intellectual disciple wants them now and will get
   his dearest approaches to God in their use. We can do without them, it
   may be, for a little while; but after a time we seem to be in a gospel
   that has no atmosphere, and our breathing is a gasping state. Our very
   repentances are hampered by too great subjectivity, becoming as it were
   a pulling at our own shoulders. Our subjective applications of Christ
   get confused and grow inefficacious. Our very prayers and thanksgivings
   get introverted and muddled. Trying to fight ourselves on in our wars,
   courage dies and impulse flags. And so we begin to sigh for some altar,
   whither we may go and just see the fire burning, and the smoke going
   up, on its own account, and circle it about with our believing hymns;
   some element of day, into which we may come, and simply see, without
   superintending the light.

   No, these much abused symbols are indispensable and must be recovered.
   It may be a task of some difficulty, yet of much less difficulty than
   How to get back the lost symbols. many suppose. It only requires a
   little resolute courage here, as always, to retake a battery that is
   lost. Let the preacher go before, in one or two discourses, showing
   what the sacrifices were not, and what they were; then how Christ,
   without expiation, becomes an offering for us, our lamb, our blood of
   remission, fulfilling the highest reality of sacrifice, and meeting all
   our highest Christian uses, in such molds of sacrifice; and then let
   him throw himself on the using of all these altar figures freely,
   allowing just such impressions to be taken as there sometimes probably
   will be; still going on without any sensitive concern. The result will
   be that, in a little while, the abused terms will right themselves and
   come into their places, rejoicing as it were in their own redemption,
   as the souls they fructify rejoice in the grace they minister by their
   use. And this act of reclamation is due to the Scriptures not less than
   to our ourselves. Not even the grand Scripture doctrine of
   justification by faith can be named in many places, without raising
   associations that are painful--such as follow in the train of penal
   suffering, expiatory death, literal substitution, judicial
   satisfaction, legally imputed righteousness. And this being so, there
   is no loyal way left but to retake the whole field, and restore all
   these lost symbols to their rightful meanings and places.

   I could not excuse myself, in the closing of this last chapter, if I
   did not call attention directly to the very Our doctrine ends where the
   first age began. instructive and somewhat humbling fact, that we are
   ending here, just where Christianity began. After passing round the
   circuit of more than eighteen centuries, occupied alas! how largely, in
   litigations of theory and formula, we come back, at last, to say,
   dropping out all the accumulated rubbish of our wisdom, preach Christ
   just as the Apostolic Fathers, and the Saints of the first three
   centuries did; viz., in the facts of his personal life and death; and
   these facts in the forms of the altar; and withal in his judgment
   sanctions, and his second coming to judge the world. If we look at the
   effects wrought, these first three centuries of Christian preaching
   have never been matched in any other three, and yet they had no formula
   at all of atonement, and had not even begun, as far as we can discover,
   to have any speculative inquiries on the subject. All our most
   qualified historians agree in this, and we can see for ourselves, from
   the epistles of Clement and other Apostolic Fathers so called, that no
   such inquiries had yet arrived. Is it then to be the end of all our
   litigations, theories, and attempted scientific constructions, that,
   after our heats of controversy have cooled, and our fires of
   extirpation have quite burned away, we come back to the very same kind
   of preaching alphabet, in which the first fathers had their simple
   beginnings? Be it so, and yet the labor we have spent is by no means
   lost. We shall come back into that first preaching, with an immense
   advantage gained over these fathers. What they did in their simplicity,
   we shall do in a way of well-instructed reason. Their simplicity, in
   fact, supposed the certainty of all these long detours of labor and
   contest afterwards to come; but we, in our return, come back with our
   experiments all made, and detours all ended, not simply to preach
   Christ in just their manner, but to do it because we have finally
   proved the wisdom of it, and the foolishness of every thing else;
   advantages that are worth to us all they have cost.

   And what if we shall seem to have proved something else that is more
   positive still; viz., that the formulizing God's true formula in place
   of all others. industry, in which we have so long been occupied, was
   anticipated by God from the first, and that he Himself, to save us from
   a task so far above our powers, provided us in fact a formula of his
   own. Perhaps I do not mean by this exactly what we commonly mean by the
   word, and yet perhaps I do. A formula is a little form, a condensed
   representation, by figure, of some spiritual truth; for every spiritual
   truth comes into figure and form of necessity, when it comes into
   language, or a statement in words. We commonly understand by a formula
   what is really never true of it, or is true only to the apprehensions
   of ignorance; viz., a propositional statement that conveys the
   spiritual truth or doctrine of a subject by words of exact notation. In
   this latter impossible sense of formula, there is none, of the
   Christian gospel, and what is more there never will be or can be any.
   But in the former and true sense, or only possible sense, the altar,
   with its offerings and rites of blood, is the very form and formula
   that God has provided for the gospel; provided, I may say, by long
   centuries of drill, in a liturgy of rites contrived, in fact, to serve
   this very purpose. After we have tried our own hand long enough, in the
   absurd endeavor to get up a formula, better than God's, in the common
   terms of abstraction, shall we not come back humbled and shamed, to
   rest in the discovery that the Scripture figures of sacrifice and blood
   make up a complete investiture for the gospel, in all its highest
   meanings and profoundest mediatorial relationships? Here we have, in
   small, all that Christianity is, or can do for us, in the way of our
   reconciliation to God. Preaching, and praying, and giving praise in
   these words of the altar, we have the gospel in its fullest and best
   use, with the advantage that every thing done, in that way of use, is a
   confession we are always reciting. In these terms of sacrifice we are
   kept fresh in the gospel, and the gospel is kept fresh and vital in us.
   It can never die and never be corrupted, as long as our faith keeps up
   its confession under these figures, unless the figures themselves are
   corrupted by artificial and false constructions put upon them--which is
   more than can be said of almost any other creed, on any other subject.
   No church, or synod, or council, need be at all concerned for the
   gospel, lest it should die for the want of a creed to keep it safe, as
   long as Christ is accepted and clung to in God's own chosen forms --the
   soul's great sacrifice, the Lamb that bears and takes away its sin, the
   blood that sprinkles its foul conscience and makes it clean, the life
   that, being in the blood, quickens and hallows every thing. Let this be
   the preaching word of the preachers and the repenting and praising word
   of guilty souls, and the gospel is safe, even for eternal ages; because
   it is a gospel in power. Let any one contrive to make it safe, by any
   other guard of orthodoxy, when it is not in power, and he will not be
   long in making the discovery that it is gone already. Hither, last of
   all, then, we return, and here we raise, in deep sorrow and shame, our
   confession.

   O, thou God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, into what strange
   places, and how far away, hath our foolish We return to God. conceit
   been leading us. We thought we must needs make out for thy dear
   Son--dear also to us because he hath come to bring us life--some wisely
   framed doctrine, bearing the stamp of our own wise thought and
   science--not so familiar and so merely practical as thy choice words of
   sacrifice. But we have wearied ourselves in the greatness of our way.
   We have raised long controversies, and held learned councils, and
   contrived exact articles; and though we have seemed to settle many
   things wisely, yet nothing is either settled or wise; but whatever we
   devise turns dry, looks empty, disappoints the craving of our wants,
   creating after all only such consent as consists in a common discord.
   Commanded by thee to build our altar of "whole stones" and "lift up no
   tool of iron upon them," we have thought to improve its look, and make
   it stronger, by squaring them carefully and hewing them into shapes
   more scientifically exact; and now that we have done it, we. perceive
   that we have only cut them into our own stale forms, and made them
   "stones of emptiness." Mortified in our conceit we return, O God, to
   thee, and to thy free word in Christ. We are ashamed that we could go
   so far to find so little, and the more that, when we return, every
   thing seems to: be found already. Thy cross, taken as our altar, O thou
   Christ of God, and thou thyself the offering once for all, for our
   sins--what other and more sure confession do we need? We renounce the
   foolishness and poverty of our inventions; only be thou our sacrifice,
   and let us be offered up with thee in thy offering. We could not dare
   to put our sins upon thee, but since thou hast taken them on thyself to
   bear them, let us also come and take hold of thy sorrows and pains, to
   suffer with thee. Having boldness to enter thus into the holiest, by
   thy blood and priesthood, need we more to keep our unity in the truth,
   and is there more of truth for us to have, than to go in and out
   together with thee, and behold, with faces bowed, the wings of thy
   cherubim overspreading the mercy-seat of thy peace? Truly there is no
   formulary that can tell so much of thy gospel, as to call thee Lamb of
   God that taketh away the sins of the world! For if we come to confess
   our sins upon thy head, we have our fearing, guilt-stricken heart made
   strong in the confidence, that they are truly taken away. Being thus
   made consciously clean, is not thy great renewing power upon us, and
   what more is there to be found?

   Coming back then to thy own formulary, O God, and having it for our
   sufficient confession, let our Christ himself be the mold of our
   doctrine, the medium of our prayers, the soul of our liberty, the
   informing grace and music of our hymns--wisdom, righteousness,
   sanctification, and redemption. Be thy saints gathered speedily. O
   Lord, into these; gathered away thus from their distractions into thy
   clear unity; away from their own contrived poverties of meaning, into
   thy riches and the glorious liberties of thy truth. And so let the
   better ages of thy promise come; even as they meet us in the vision of
   thy prophet--a fair river of healing, deepening, spreading wide in its
   flow, and making every thing to live whithersoever the river cometh;
   because it issues, O Lord, from under Thine Altar.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [1]18:25

   Exodus

   [2]12:46   [3]13:7-8   [4]23:7   [5]29:36-30:10   [6]29:37
   [7]30:30-33   [8]30:34-38   [9]32:30   [10]34:6-7

   Leviticus

   [11]8:15   [12]12:8   [13]14:52   [14]16:1-34   [15]17:11

   Numbers

   [16]8:21   [17]16:46   [18]35:33

   Deuteronomy

   [19]25:1

   1 Samuel

   [20]3:14   [21]13:12   [22]15:10-22

   1 Kings

   [23]8:32

   1 Chronicles

   [24]29:21-22

   2 Chronicles

   [25]7:5   [26]29:1-36   [27]29:24   [28]30:1-27   [29]30:18
   [30]34:1-33

   Ezra

   [31]10:1-15

   Job

   [32]1:5

   Psalms

   [33]40:1-17   [34]50:1-23   [35]51:1-19   [36]62:12   [37]85:10

   Proverbs

   [38]17:15

   Isaiah

   [39]1:10-18   [40]5:23   [41]6:7   [42]50:8   [43]53:11

   Jeremiah

   [44]7:21-23   [45]9:24   [46]18:23

   Ezekiel

   [47]43:20-26   [48]45:20

   Daniel

   [49]9:24   [50]12:3

   Amos

   [51]5:21-24

   Micah

   [52]6:6-8

   Haggai

   [53]2:6

   Matthew

   [54]7:17   [55]8:17   [56]23:23   [57]25:6

   John

   [58]1:29   [59]1:29   [60]5:27   [61]6:51   [62]11:50   [63]12:32
   [64]16:8

   Romans

   [65]2:9   [66]2:12   [67]2:12-15   [68]2:16   [69]3:22   [70]3:22
   [71]3:22   [72]3:25-26   [73]3:28   [74]4:3   [75]4:20-22   [76]4:25
   [77]5:10   [78]5:11   [79]5:18   [80]5:18   [81]7:11   [82]8:26-27
   [83]10:3   [84]11:22

   1 Corinthians

   [85]6:11

   2 Corinthians

   [86]5:11   [87]5:17-18   [88]6:1-18

   Galatians

   [89]1:4   [90]2:20   [91]3:13   [92]3:13-14

   Ephesians

   [93]5:25

   Colossians

   [94]1:20-22

   1 Timothy

   [95]2:6   [96]3:16

   Titus

   [97]2:14

   Hebrews

   [98]2:17-18   [99]6:10   [100]8:6   [101]9:9   [102]9:13-14
   [103]9:14   [104]9:14   [105]9:22   [106]10:6-9   [107]10:19-21
   [108]12:36-37

   James

   [109]2:13   [110]5:6   [111]5:9

   1 Peter

   [112]2:24   [113]2:24   [114]3:18

   1 John

   [115]1:7   [116]1:9   [117]1:9   [118]4:9   [119]4:9-10

   Revelation

   [120]1:5
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Greek Words and Phrases

     * o diabolos: [121]1
     * huperentunchanei huper hemon: [122]1
     * Bastazete: [123]1
     * aionios: [124]1
     * dike: [125]1
     * dedome huper: [126]1
     * deiknumi: [127]1
     * diaion: [128]1
     * dikaion: [129]1
     * dikaios: [130]1 [131]2 [132]3 [133]4
     * dikaiosune: [134]1 [135]2
     * dikaioo: [136]1
     * elabe: [137]1
     * endeixin: [138]1 [139]2
     * endikeo: [140]1
     * endikos: [141]1
     * endikos : [142]1
     * k: [143]1
     * katadikazo : [144]1
     * nosos: [145]1
     * orge: [146]1 [147]2 [148]3 [149]4
     * pneuma: [150]1
     * sunantilambanetai.: [151]1
     * charizomai: [152]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * propter: [153]1
     * Diis violatia expiatio debetur: [154]1
     * Dominus omnium: [155]1
     * Usus loquendi: [156]1
     * ab extra: [157]1 [158]2 [159]3
     * ab intra: [160]1
     * articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae: [161]1
     * articulus stantis, vel cadentis ecclesiae: [162]1
     * cultus: [163]1 [164]2 [165]3 [166]4
     * debitum: [167]1 [168]2
     * declaratio pro justo: [169]1
     * dies irae: [170]1 [171]2 [172]3
     * in terrorem: [173]1 [174]2 [175]3
     * inordinatum: [176]1
     * ipsissima verba: [177]1
     * ipso facto: [178]1 [179]2
     * justissima tellus: [180]1
     * justitia: [181]1 [182]2 [183]3 [184]4 [185]5 [186]6 [187]7
     * lex talionis: [188]1
     * magnificat: [189]1
     * poenam: [190]1
     * precones: [191]1
     * rectus: [192]1 [193]2
     * satisfactio activa: [194]1
     * usus loquendi: [195]1 [196]2
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [197]i  [198]ii  [199]iii  [200]14  [201]15  [202]16  [203]17  [204]18
   [205]19  [206]20  [207]21  [208]22  [209]23  [210]24  [211]25  [212]26
   [213]27  [214]28  [215]29  [216]30  [217]31  [218]32  [219]33  [220]34
   [221]35  [222]36  [223]37  [224]38  [225]39  [226]40  [227]41  [228]42
   [229]43  [230]44  [231]45  [232]46  [233]47  [234]48  [235]49  [236]50
   [237]51  [238]52  [239]53  [240]54  [241]55  [242]56  [243]57  [244]58
   [245]59  [246]60  [247]61  [248]62  [249]63  [250]64  [251]65  [252]66
   [253]67  [254]68  [255]69  [256]70  [257]71  [258]72  [259]73  [260]74
   [261]75  [262]76  [263]77  [264]78  [265]79  [266]80  [267]81  [268]82
   [269]83  [270]84  [271]85  [272]86  [273]87  [274]88  [275]89  [276]90
   [277]91  [278]92  [279]93  [280]94  [281]95  [282]96  [283]97  [284]98
   [285]99  [286]100  [287]101  [288]102  [289]103  [290]104  [291]105
   [292]106  [293]107  [294]108  [295]109  [296]110  [297]111  [298]112
   [299]113  [300]114  [301]115  [302]116  [303]117  [304]118  [305]119
   [306]120  [307]121  [308]122  [309]123  [310]124  [311]125  [312]126
   [313]127  [314]128  [315]129  [316]130  [317]131  [318]132  [319]133
   [320]134  [321]135  [322]136  [323]137  [324]138  [325]139  [326]140
   [327]141  [328]142  [329]143  [330]144  [331]145  [332]146  [333]147
   [334]148  [335]149  [336]150  [337]151  [338]152  [339]153  [340]154
   [341]155  [342]156  [343]157  [344]158  [345]159  [346]160  [347]161
   [348]162  [349]163  [350]164  [351]165  [352]166  [353]167  [354]168
   [355]169  [356]170  [357]171  [358]172  [359]173  [360]174  [361]175
   [362]176  [363]177  [364]178  [365]179  [366]180  [367]181  [368]182
   [369]183  [370]184  [371]185  [372]186  [373]187  [374]188  [375]189
   [376]190  [377]191  [378]192  [379]193  [380]194  [381]195  [382]196
   [383]197  [384]198  [385]199  [386]200  [387]201  [388]202  [389]203
   [390]204  [391]205  [392]206  [393]207  [394]208  [395]209  [396]210
   [397]211  [398]212  [399]213  [400]214  [401]215  [402]216  [403]217
   [404]218  [405]219  [406]220  [407]221  [408]222  [409]223  [410]224
   [411]225  [412]226  [413]227  [414]228  [415]229  [416]230  [417]231
   [418]232  [419]233  [420]234  [421]235  [422]236  [423]237  [424]238
   [425]239  [426]240  [427]241  [428]242  [429]243  [430]244  [431]245
   [432]246  [433]247  [434]248  [435]249  [436]250  [437]251  [438]252
   [439]253  [440]254  [441]255  [442]256  [443]257  [444]258  [445]259
   [446]260  [447]261  [448]262  [449]263  [450]264  [451]265  [452]266
   [453]267  [454]268  [455]269  [456]270  [457]271  [458]272  [459]273
   [460]274  [461]275  [462]276  [463]277  [464]278  [465]279  [466]280
   [467]281  [468]282  [469]283  [470]284  [471]285  [472]286  [473]287
   [474]288  [475]289  [476]290  [477]291  [478]292  [479]293  [480]294
   [481]295  [482]296  [483]297  [484]298  [485]299  [486]300  [487]301
   [488]302  [489]303  [490]304  [491]305  [492]306  [493]307  [494]308
   [495]309  [496]310  [497]311  [498]312  [499]313  [500]314  [501]315
   [502]316  [503]317  [504]318  [505]319  [506]320  [507]321  [508]322
   [509]323  [510]324  [511]325  [512]326  [513]327  [514]328  [515]329
   [516]330  [517]331  [518]332  [519]333  [520]334  [521]335  [522]336
   [523]337  [524]338  [525]339  [526]340  [527]341  [528]342  [529]343
   [530]344  [531]345  [532]346  [533]347  [534]348  [535]349  [536]350
   [537]351  [538]352  [539]353  [540]354  [541]355  [542]356  [543]357
   [544]358  [545]359  [546]360  [547]361  [548]362  [549]363  [550]364
   [551]365  [552]366  [553]367  [554]368  [555]369  [556]370  [557]371
   [558]372  [559]373  [560]374  [561]375  [562]376  [563]377  [564]378
   [565]379  [566]380  [567]381  [568]382  [569]383  [570]384  [571]385
   [572]386  [573]387  [574]388  [575]389  [576]390  [577]391  [578]392
   [579]393  [580]394  [581]395  [582]396  [583]397  [584]398  [585]399
   [586]400  [587]401  [588]402  [589]403  [590]404  [591]405  [592]406
   [593]407  [594]408  [595]409  [596]410  [597]411  [598]412  [599]413
   [600]414  [601]415  [602]416  [603]417  [604]418  [605]419  [606]420
   [607]421  [608]422  [609]423  [610]424  [611]425  [612]426  [613]427
   [614]428  [615]429  [616]430  [617]431  [618]432  [619]433  [620]434
   [621]435  [622]436  [623]437  [624]438  [625]439  [626]440  [627]441
   [628]442  [629]443  [630]444  [631]445  [632]446  [633]447  [634]448
   [635]449  [636]450  [637]451  [638]452  [639]453  [640]454  [641]455
   [642]456  [643]457  [644]458  [645]459  [646]460  [647]461  [648]462
   [649]463  [650]464  [651]465  [652]466  [653]467  [654]468  [655]469
   [656]470  [657]471  [658]472  [659]473  [660]474  [661]475  [662]476
   [663]477  [664]478  [665]479  [666]480  [667]481  [668]482  [669]483
   [670]484  [671]485  [672]486  [673]487  [674]488  [675]489  [676]490
   [677]491  [678]492  [679]493  [680]494  [681]495  [682]496  [683]497
   [684]498  [685]499  [686]500  [687]501  [688]502  [689]503  [690]504
   [691]505  [692]506  [693]507  [694]508  [695]509  [696]510  [697]511
   [698]512  [699]513  [700]514  [701]515  [702]516  [703]517  [704]518
   [705]519  [706]520  [707]521  [708]522  [709]523  [710]524  [711]525
   [712]526  [713]527  [714]528  [715]529  [716]530  [717]531  [718]532
   [719]533  [720]534  [721]535  [722]536  [723]537  [724]538  [725]539
   [726]540  [727]541  [728]542  [729]543  [730]544  [731]545  [732]546
   [733]547  [734]548  [735]549  [736]550  [737]551  [738]552
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

References

   1. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=18&scrV=25#vi.iii-p17.26
   2. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=12&scrV=46#vii.ii-p39.3
   3. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=13&scrV=7#vii.ii-p39.5
   4. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=23&scrV=7#vi.vii-p11.7
   5. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=29&scrV=36#vii.ii-p30.11
   6. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=29&scrV=37#vii.ii-p31.3
   7. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=30&scrV=30#vii.ii-p45.2
   8. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=30&scrV=34#vii.ii-p45.4
   9. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=32&scrV=30#vii.ii-p31.5
  10. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Exod&scrCh=34&scrV=6#vi.iii-p18.3
  11. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Lev&scrCh=8&scrV=15#vii.ii-p30.3
  12. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Lev&scrCh=12&scrV=8#vii.i-p30.3
  13. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Lev&scrCh=14&scrV=52#vii.i-p30.5
  14. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Lev&scrCh=16&scrV=1#vii.ii-p43.2
  15. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Lev&scrCh=17&scrV=11#vii.i-p29.2
  16. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Num&scrCh=8&scrV=21#vii.i-p30.7
  17. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Num&scrCh=16&scrV=46#vii.ii-p32.3
  18. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Num&scrCh=35&scrV=33#vii.ii-p30.12
  19. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Deut&scrCh=25&scrV=1#vi.vii-p11.4
  20. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Sam&scrCh=3&scrV=14#vii.ii-p30.13
  21. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Sam&scrCh=13&scrV=12#vii.ii-p35.2
  22. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Sam&scrCh=15&scrV=10#vii.ii-p35.4
  23. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Kgs&scrCh=8&scrV=32#vi.vii-p11.5
  24. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Chr&scrCh=29&scrV=21#vii.ii-p40.3
  25. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Chr&scrCh=7&scrV=5#vii.ii-p40.5
  26. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Chr&scrCh=29&scrV=1#vii.ii-p40.7
  27. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Chr&scrCh=29&scrV=24#vii.ii-p30.4
  28. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Chr&scrCh=30&scrV=1#vii.ii-p40.7
  29. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Chr&scrCh=30&scrV=18#vii.ii-p30.8
  30. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Chr&scrCh=34&scrV=1#vii.ii-p32.5
  31. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Ezra&scrCh=10&scrV=1#vii.ii-p32.7
  32. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Job&scrCh=1&scrV=5#vii.ii-p41.3
  33. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=40&scrV=1#vii.ii-p36.2
  34. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=50&scrV=1#vii.ii-p36.2
  35. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=51&scrV=1#vii.ii-p36.2
  36. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=62&scrV=12#vi.iii-p17.2
  37. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Ps&scrCh=85&scrV=10#vi.iii-p16.4
  38. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Prov&scrCh=17&scrV=15#vi.vii-p11.8
  39. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=1&scrV=10#vii.ii-p36.6
  40. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=5&scrV=23#vi.vii-p11.9
  41. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=6&scrV=7#vii.ii-p30.15
  42. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=50&scrV=8#vi.vii-p11.2
  43. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Isa&scrCh=53&scrV=11#vi.vii-p10.7
  44. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Jer&scrCh=7&scrV=21#vii.ii-p36.8
  45. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Jer&scrCh=9&scrV=24#vi.iii-p17.4
  46. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Jer&scrCh=18&scrV=23#vii.ii-p30.9
  47. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Ezek&scrCh=43&scrV=20#vii.ii-p30.14
  48. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Ezek&scrCh=45&scrV=20#vii.ii-p30.5
  49. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Dan&scrCh=9&scrV=24#vii.ii-p30.6
  50. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Dan&scrCh=12&scrV=3#vi.vii-p10.5
  51. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Amos&scrCh=5&scrV=21#vii.ii-p36.9
  52. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Mic&scrCh=6&scrV=6#vii.ii-p36.11
  53. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Hag&scrCh=2&scrV=6#v.iii-p28.3
  54. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=7&scrV=17#iv.i-p12.2
  55. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=8&scrV=17#iv.ii-p11.3
  56. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=23&scrV=23#vi.iii-p17.6
  57. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Matt&scrCh=25&scrV=6#vi.iii-p17.20
  58. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=1&scrV=29#v.ii-p15.2
  59. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=1&scrV=29#vii.i-p38.2
  60. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=5&scrV=27#vi.iii-p17.28
  61. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=6&scrV=51#vi.vii-p28.8
  62. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=11&scrV=50#vii.ii-p49.3
  63. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=12&scrV=32#vi.iii-p17.12
  64. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=John&scrCh=16&scrV=8#vi.iii-p17.16
  65. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=2&scrV=9#vi.iii-p18.5
  66. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=2&scrV=12#vi.iii-p17.22
  67. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=2&scrV=12#vi.i-p10.2
  68. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=2&scrV=16#vi.iii-p17.24
  69. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=3&scrV=22#vi.vii-p15.2
  70. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=3&scrV=22#vi.vii-p15.9
  71. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=3&scrV=22#vi.vii-p41.3
  72. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=3&scrV=25#vi.vii-p5.3
  73. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=3&scrV=28#vii.ii-p56.3
  74. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=4&scrV=3#vi.vii-p17.3
  75. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=4&scrV=20#vi.vii-p17.3
  76. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=4&scrV=25#vi.vii-p17.7
  77. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=5&scrV=10#vii.ii-p53.2
  78. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=5&scrV=11#vii.ii-p2.3
  79. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=5&scrV=18#vi.vii-p15.5
  80. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=5&scrV=18#vi.vii-p17.5
  81. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=7&scrV=11#vi.iii-p17.14
  82. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=8&scrV=26#iv.ii-p10.3
  83. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=10&scrV=3#vi.vii-p15.7
  84. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rom&scrCh=11&scrV=22#vi.iii-p17.8
  85. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Cor&scrCh=6&scrV=11#vi.vii-p17.11
  86. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Cor&scrCh=5&scrV=11#vi.iii-p17.10
  87. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Cor&scrCh=5&scrV=17#v.ii-p20.2
  88. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=2Cor&scrCh=6&scrV=1#iv.iv-p21.2
  89. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Gal&scrCh=1&scrV=4#v.ii-p18.2
  90. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Gal&scrCh=2&scrV=20#vi.vii-p28.4
  91. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Gal&scrCh=3&scrV=13#vii.ii-p49.5
  92. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Gal&scrCh=3&scrV=13#v.ii-p19.2
  93. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Eph&scrCh=5&scrV=25#vi.vii-p28.5
  94. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Col&scrCh=1&scrV=20#vii.i-p44.2
  95. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Tim&scrCh=2&scrV=6#vi.vii-p28.6
  96. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Tim&scrCh=3&scrV=16#vi.vii-p17.9
  97. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Titus&scrCh=2&scrV=14#vi.vii-p28.7
  98. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=2&scrV=17#v.ii-p21.2
  99. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=6&scrV=10#vi.vii-p16.9
 100. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=8&scrV=6#vii.i-p14.2
 101. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=9&scrV=9#vii.i-p14.4
 102. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=9&scrV=13#v.ii-p22.2
 103. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=9&scrV=14#vii.i-p4.2
 104. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=9&scrV=14#vii.i-p42.2
 105. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=9&scrV=22#vii.ii-p49.7
 106. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=10&scrV=6#vii.ii-p36.4
 107. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=10&scrV=19#vii.i-p43.2
 108. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Heb&scrCh=12&scrV=36#v.iii-p28.2
 109. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Jas&scrCh=2&scrV=13#vi.iii-p16.6
 110. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Jas&scrCh=5&scrV=6#vi.vii-p12.5
 111. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Jas&scrCh=5&scrV=9#vi.iii-p17.18
 112. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Pet&scrCh=2&scrV=24#v.ii-p16.2
 113. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Pet&scrCh=2&scrV=24#vii.i-p41.2
 114. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1Pet&scrCh=3&scrV=18#v.ii-p17.2
 115. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1John&scrCh=1&scrV=7#vii.i-p40.2
 116. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1John&scrCh=1&scrV=9#vi.iii-p31.4
 117. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1John&scrCh=1&scrV=9#vi.vii-p16.7
 118. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1John&scrCh=4&scrV=9#v.ii-p15.4
 119. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=1John&scrCh=4&scrV=9#vii.i-p39.2
 120. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3?scrBook=Rev&scrCh=1&scrV=5#vii.i-p45.2
 121. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-p19.2
 122. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-p12.3
 123. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-p12.3
 124. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-p15.1
 125. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.9
 126. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p28.3
 127. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.13
 128. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.4
 129. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.14
 130. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p12.3
 131. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.3
 132. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p16.2
 133. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p16.5
 134. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p12.2
 135. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.8
 136. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p12.6
 137. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-p13.2
 138. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p18.2
 139. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p22.2
 140. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.11
 141. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p16.3
 142. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.10
 143. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.5
 144. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.12
 145. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-p13.3
 146. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-p38.2
 147. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-p38.3
 148. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-p12.2
 149. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-p16.3
 150. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-p3.2
 151. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-p11.2
 152. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p28.2
 153. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p11.3
 154. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-p11.2
 155. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p9.2
 156. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-p11.2
 157. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-p15.3
 158. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-p16.2
 159. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-p19.1
 160. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-p19.2
 161. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p4.2
 162. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p44.1
 163. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-p15.2
 164. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-p24.2
 165. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-p12.2
 166. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-p12.3
 167. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p8.1
 168. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p8.3
 169. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p20.2
 170. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-p37.2
 171. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-p38.1
 172. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-p8.2
 173. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-p17.2
 174. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-p35.1
 175. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p33.2
 176. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p9.1
 177. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-p28.2
 178. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-p25.2
 179. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-p47.1
 180. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p13.15
 181. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p8.2
 182. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p11.1
 183. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p11.2
 184. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p11.4
 185. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p12.1
 186. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p12.2
 187. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p13.1
 188. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-p5.2
 189. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p44.2
 190. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p11.5
 191. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-p9.2
 192. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-p10.2
 193. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-p13.2
 194. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-p15.1
 195. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-p11.3
 196. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-p20.1
 197. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#i-Page_i
 198. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#i-Page_ii
 199. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#i-Page_iii
 200. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_14
 201. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_15
 202. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_16
 203. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_17
 204. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_18
 205. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_19
 206. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_20
 207. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_21
 208. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_22
 209. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_23
 210. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_24
 211. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_25
 212. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_26
 213. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_27
 214. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_28
 215. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_29
 216. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_30
 217. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_31
 218. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_32
 219. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_33
 220. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_34
 221. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iii-Page_35
 222. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv-Page_36
 223. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv-Page_37
 224. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_38
 225. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_39
 226. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_40
 227. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_41
 228. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_42
 229. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_43
 230. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_44
 231. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_45
 232. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_46
 233. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_47
 234. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_48
 235. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_49
 236. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_50
 237. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_51
 238. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_52
 239. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_53
 240. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_54
 241. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_55
 242. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_56
 243. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_57
 244. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_58
 245. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_59
 246. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_60
 247. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_61
 248. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_62
 249. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_63
 250. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_64
 251. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_65
 252. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_66
 253. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_67
 254. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_68
 255. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_69
 256. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_70
 257. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_71
 258. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_72
 259. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_73
 260. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.i-Page_74
 261. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_75
 262. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_76
 263. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_77
 264. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_78
 265. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_79
 266. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_80
 267. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_81
 268. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_82
 269. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_83
 270. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_84
 271. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_85
 272. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_86
 273. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_87
 274. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_88
 275. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_89
 276. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_90
 277. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.ii-Page_91
 278. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_92
 279. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_93
 280. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_94
 281. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_95
 282. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_96
 283. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_97
 284. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_98
 285. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_99
 286. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_100
 287. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_101
 288. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_102
 289. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_103
 290. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_104
 291. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iii-Page_105
 292. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_106
 293. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_107
 294. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_108
 295. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_109
 296. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_110
 297. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_111
 298. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_112
 299. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_113
 300. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_114
 301. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_115
 302. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_116
 303. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_117
 304. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_118
 305. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_119
 306. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_120
 307. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_121
 308. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_122
 309. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_123
 310. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_124
 311. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_125
 312. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_126
 313. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#iv.iv-Page_127
 314. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v-Page_128
 315. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v-Page_129
 316. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_130
 317. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_131
 318. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_132
 319. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_133
 320. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_134
 321. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_135
 322. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_136
 323. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_137
 324. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_138
 325. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_139
 326. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_140
 327. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_141
 328. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_142
 329. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_143
 330. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_144
 331. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_145
 332. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_146
 333. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_147
 334. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_148
 335. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_149
 336. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_150
 337. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.i-Page_151
 338. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_152
 339. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_153
 340. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_154
 341. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_155
 342. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_156
 343. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_157
 344. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_158
 345. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_159
 346. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_160
 347. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_161
 348. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_162
 349. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_163
 350. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_164
 351. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_165
 352. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_166
 353. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_167
 354. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.ii-Page_168
 355. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_169
 356. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_170
 357. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_171
 358. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_172
 359. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_173
 360. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_174
 361. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_175
 362. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_176
 363. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_177
 364. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_178
 365. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_179
 366. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_180
 367. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_181
 368. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_182
 369. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_183
 370. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_184
 371. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iii-Page_185
 372. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_186
 373. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_187
 374. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_188
 375. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_189
 376. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_190
 377. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_191
 378. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_192
 379. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_193
 380. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_194
 381. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_195
 382. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_196
 383. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_197
 384. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_198
 385. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_199
 386. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_200
 387. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_201
 388. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_202
 389. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_203
 390. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_204
 391. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_205
 392. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_206
 393. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_207
 394. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_208
 395. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_209
 396. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_210
 397. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_211
 398. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_212
 399. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_213
 400. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_214
 401. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_215
 402. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_216
 403. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_217
 404. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_218
 405. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_219
 406. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_220
 407. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_221
 408. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_222
 409. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_223
 410. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_224
 411. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_225
 412. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_226
 413. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_227
 414. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_228
 415. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_229
 416. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_230
 417. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#v.iv-Page_231
 418. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi-Page_232
 419. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi-Page_233
 420. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_234
 421. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_235
 422. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_236
 423. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_237
 424. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_238
 425. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_239
 426. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_240
 427. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_241
 428. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_242
 429. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_243
 430. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_244
 431. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_245
 432. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_246
 433. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_247
 434. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_248
 435. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_249
 436. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_250
 437. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_251
 438. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.i-Page_252
 439. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_253
 440. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_254
 441. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_255
 442. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_256
 443. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_257
 444. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_258
 445. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_259
 446. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_260
 447. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_261
 448. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_262
 449. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_263
 450. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_264
 451. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_265
 452. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.ii-Page_266
 453. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_267
 454. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_268
 455. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_269
 456. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_270
 457. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_271
 458. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_272
 459. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_273
 460. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_274
 461. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_275
 462. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_276
 463. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_277
 464. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_278
 465. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_279
 466. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_280
 467. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_281
 468. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_282
 469. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_283
 470. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_284
 471. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_285
 472. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_286
 473. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_287
 474. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_288
 475. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_289
 476. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_290
 477. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_291
 478. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_292
 479. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_293
 480. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_294
 481. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_295
 482. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iii-Page_296
 483. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_297
 484. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_298
 485. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_299
 486. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_300
 487. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_301
 488. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_302
 489. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_303
 490. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_304
 491. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_305
 492. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_306
 493. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_307
 494. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_308
 495. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_309
 496. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_310
 497. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_311
 498. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_312
 499. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_313
 500. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_314
 501. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_315
 502. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_316
 503. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_317
 504. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_318
 505. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_319
 506. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_320
 507. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_321
 508. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.iv-Page_322
 509. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_323
 510. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_324
 511. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_325
 512. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_326
 513. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_327
 514. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_328
 515. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_329
 516. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_330
 517. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_331
 518. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_332
 519. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_333
 520. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_334
 521. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_335
 522. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_336
 523. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_337
 524. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_338
 525. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_339
 526. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_340
 527. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_341
 528. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_342
 529. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_343
 530. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_344
 531. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_345
 532. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_346
 533. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_347
 534. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_348
 535. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_349
 536. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_350
 537. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_351
 538. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_352
 539. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_353
 540. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_354
 541. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_355
 542. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_356
 543. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_357
 544. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_358
 545. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_359
 546. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_360
 547. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_361
 548. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_362
 549. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_363
 550. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.v-Page_364
 551. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_365
 552. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_366
 553. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_367
 554. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_368
 555. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_369
 556. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_370
 557. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_371
 558. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_372
 559. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_373
 560. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_374
 561. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_375
 562. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_376
 563. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_377
 564. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_378
 565. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_379
 566. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_380
 567. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_381
 568. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_382
 569. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_383
 570. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_384
 571. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_385
 572. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_386
 573. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_387
 574. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_388
 575. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_389
 576. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_390
 577. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_391
 578. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_392
 579. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_393
 580. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_394
 581. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_395
 582. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_396
 583. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_397
 584. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_398
 585. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_399
 586. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_400
 587. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_401
 588. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_402
 589. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vi-Page_403
 590. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_404
 591. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_405
 592. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_406
 593. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_407
 594. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_408
 595. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_409
 596. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_410
 597. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_411
 598. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_412
 599. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_413
 600. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_414
 601. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_415
 602. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_416
 603. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_417
 604. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_418
 605. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_419
 606. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_420
 607. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_421
 608. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_422
 609. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_423
 610. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_424
 611. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_425
 612. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_426
 613. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_427
 614. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_428
 615. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_429
 616. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_430
 617. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_431
 618. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_432
 619. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_433
 620. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_434
 621. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_435
 622. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_436
 623. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_437
 624. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_438
 625. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_439
 626. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_440
 627. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_441
 628. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_442
 629. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_443
 630. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_444
 631. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_445
 632. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_446
 633. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vi.vii-Page_447
 634. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii-Page_448
 635. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii-Page_449
 636. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_450
 637. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_451
 638. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_452
 639. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_453
 640. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_454
 641. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_455
 642. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_456
 643. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_457
 644. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_458
 645. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_459
 646. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_460
 647. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_461
 648. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_462
 649. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_463
 650. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_464
 651. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_465
 652. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_466
 653. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_467
 654. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_468
 655. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_469
 656. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_470
 657. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_471
 658. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_472
 659. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_473
 660. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_474
 661. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_475
 662. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_476
 663. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_477
 664. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_478
 665. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_479
 666. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_480
 667. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_481
 668. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.i-Page_482
 669. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_483
 670. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_484
 671. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_485
 672. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_486
 673. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_487
 674. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_488
 675. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_489
 676. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_490
 677. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_491
 678. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_492
 679. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_493
 680. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_494
 681. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_495
 682. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_496
 683. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_497
 684. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_498
 685. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_499
 686. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_500
 687. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_501
 688. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_502
 689. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_503
 690. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_504
 691. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_505
 692. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_506
 693. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_507
 694. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_508
 695. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_509
 696. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_510
 697. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_511
 698. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_512
 699. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_513
 700. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_514
 701. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_515
 702. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_516
 703. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_517
 704. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_518
 705. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_519
 706. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_520
 707. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_521
 708. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_522
 709. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_523
 710. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.ii-Page_524
 711. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_525
 712. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_526
 713. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_527
 714. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_528
 715. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_529
 716. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_530
 717. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_531
 718. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_532
 719. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_533
 720. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_534
 721. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_535
 722. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_536
 723. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_537
 724. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_538
 725. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_539
 726. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_540
 727. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_541
 728. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_542
 729. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_543
 730. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_544
 731. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_545
 732. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_546
 733. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_547
 734. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_548
 735. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_549
 736. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_550
 737. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_551
 738. file:///ccel/b/bushnell/vicarious/cache/vicarious.html3#vii.iii-Page_552