HE PROBLEM OF 
 ATONEMENT 
 
Class 
 
 Book _._. 
 Copyright iN°. 
 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF 
 ATONEMENT 
 
 By 
 
 W. ARTER WRIGHT, Ph. D., D. D. 
 
 Author of 
 "The Moral Condition and Development of the Child." 
 
 Columbus, Ohio: S. F. HARRIMAN. 
 
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 TO WHOM I HAVE MINISTERED AND IN COLLABORATION 
 WITH WHOM THEBE CONCLUSIONS HAVE BEEN WROUGHT 
 OUT IN CONGREGATIONS LOCATED FROM THE ATLANTIC 
 OCEAN TO THE PACIFIC, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 
 DEDICATED BT THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. 
 What Is Required: The Problem Stated, - 13 
 
 Chapter II. 
 The Limitations of Atonement, - - 57 
 
 Chapter III. 
 The Vicarious Principle, 81 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 The Cross a Revelation, - - - - 106 
 
 Chapter V. 
 The First Step — Propitiation, - - - 119 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Substitution, ------ 170 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 The Dynamic of Atonement — Spiritual In- 
 fluence, ------- 217 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 The Objective Result — Justification, - 238 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 The Subjective Result — Sanctification, - 261 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 The Believer's Atonement, ... 280 
 
 5 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The work of Christ, commonly called the Atone- 
 ment, is the work which lies at the center of human 
 history. It illustrates what is ever going on at 
 the heart of the world. No life in a world like 
 ours is ever possible that does not manifest the 
 vicarious principle. Hence we are to study the 
 act of Christ under the term the " Cross" as not 
 only an act of historic importance, by which man 
 and God were once provided with a basis of recon- 
 ciliation, but also as an act illustrative of the liv- 
 ing relations between his Church and the world. 
 "As was he, so are we in this world." 
 
 Two attitudes of mind concerning the work 
 of Jesus may be assumed. The first is that taken 
 under the spontaneous impulse of worship, or a 
 reverential feeling — that his work was altogether 
 unique, unshared by any of his followers. It has 
 been thought lacking in reverence to suppose that 
 any other person could do a work having the same 
 relations to salvation as his. Being the only Be- 
 gotten Son of God, his work must be distinguished 
 from that of all creatures. Hence none but those 
 who viewed him from the Unitarian standpoint, 
 it was thought, would ever represent another's 
 7 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 work as the same in kind as his, even while con- 
 ceding that his in its degree may be far removed 
 from that of any one else. This, probably, has 
 been the attitude of mind of a vast majority of 
 his followers. 
 
 The other attitude is the outcome of a second 
 thought. It is that Jesus is most exalted in hav- 
 ing attributed to him the exemplification of some 
 of the great principles that may be universal in 
 the world ; that others may follow him in the path- 
 way of his influence, and take up his work where 
 he laid it down, and carry it on in its universal 
 sweep in the world; that he may have not only 
 disciples, but followers. Specifically the atoning 
 principle which he came into the world to exem- 
 plify may be manifested by all who share his love 
 for men, by all who will respond to the call of 
 the All-Father to seek the lost and lift the fallen. 
 Others may bring about the righteousness in men, 
 which in the last analysis is that which propitiates 
 the Father and his children. 
 
 It must be admitted that the words of Jesus 
 favor this latter attitude of mind. He called his 
 disciples to follow him; to love one another as 
 he loved them ; that they should do greater works 
 than he had done; and that in many ways they 
 should reproduce his work in the world. His 
 power to reproduce workers on this high plane 
 shows him greater than to imagine that he alone 
 could do such work. His greatest work in the 
 world is the reproduction of Christ-ones (Chris- 
 tians). 
 
 8 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It would be difficult to discover another ele- 
 ment that has not been mentioned in the dis- 
 cussions concerning the atonement in the long 
 centuries. This general theme has been the great 
 subject for men's study and thought during all 
 the ages, not only Christian ages, but all world 
 ages. It is probable that it will be the theme for 
 all ages to come. Any age that does not take up 
 this theme and think it through again will have 
 dropped into the period of moral and mental de- 
 cline. 
 
 While no new elements may be discovered, yet 
 conviction on the subject is constantly to be pro- 
 duced. So much has been said, so many sources 
 have been exploited, secondary as well as funda- 
 mental elements have been discussed, that a new 
 evaluation must ever be made, while the subject 
 tends to become more and more complicated by 
 the numberless disputants. It will ever be in- 
 cumbent upon us to study the subject again, for 
 the purpose of eliminating the irrelevant as well 
 as with the object of elaboration. 
 
 One can not but feel that the subject has been 
 complicated as well as enlightened by the work of 
 theologians. They have often built their system 
 from a false point of view, the view that repre- 
 sents God as a Judge or a Ruler simply. The 
 implications of law courts have been wrought into 
 this doctrine until it is much more complicated in 
 theological treatises that seek to explain it than 
 it is in the Bible or life itself. Much of this 
 material must be renounced or left to one side by 
 9 
 
INTEODUCTION. 
 
 estimating the problem from the viewpoint of the 
 Fatherhood of God, which is inclusive of all that 
 is true in that which views God as Judge or Sec- 
 tor. It is our belief that the subject admits of 
 much more simple statement, even though the im- 
 plications are multitudinous: for sin, atonement, 
 reconciliation are fully illustrated by the life we 
 all live. 
 
 One can not read very far in the literature of 
 the atonement before he comes to the impression 
 of a sort of frame-up, such as has been connected 
 with the ideas of imputation of guilt or of right- 
 eousness, substitution of Christ, whether for pur- 
 poses of suffering or award. The impression on 
 the mind that is bold enough to acknowledge its 
 own impression to itself, is that of unreality. 
 Nothing like it is noted in life, except in certain 
 rare cases, and all literature has been ransacked 
 to find these unnatural cases. The final effect is 
 that the popular mind pushes atonement to one 
 side as not very important in the world in which 
 we live, so different from the world in which these 
 writers exercise their ingenuity. Atonement, a 
 world-wide principle, permeating all the life we 
 live, should be emancipated from this fictional air 
 of unreality. 
 
 Moreover, there is a work of disseminating 
 and popularizing the teachings of choice scholars 
 that remains to be done. Judged by numbers, the 
 popular conceptions of the atonement are medi- 
 eval; the finding of late studies are almost un- 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 known except in certain rather limited circles. 
 Certainly this is a subject of such central impor- 
 tance in the religious life of the people that any 
 increment of truth which may come to it by dili- 
 gent research ought to be given to all the people 
 as soon as it has been made fairly credible. 
 
 The accretions that grow up around current 
 doctrine and teaching of the atonement often 
 control in the thought of Christians rather than 
 those statements which are the well-reasoned and 
 accepted teachings of religious scholars. The 
 phrases that have been developed in evangelistic 
 and devotional meetings have a very uncertain 
 meaning often. If an attempt were made to re- 
 duce them to some logical statement, they would 
 probably be found quite outside the sphere of 
 revelation. The phrase, "the blood of Jesus," is 
 much abused in the cheaper songs of religious 
 gatherings as well as in the speech of the people. 
 These aberrations will need continual checking 
 and correcting by ever-renewed study and state- 
 ment of the doctrine of atonement. 
 
 It would be almost a calamity for us to have 
 some treatment on the atonement that should, 
 from a doctrinal point of view, be regarded as 
 the last word that need be or could be said on 
 that subject. As a body of truth it would soon 
 become traditional, indisputable, and negligible. 
 Because we could not in any way improve it, we 
 would neglect to think the subject through again 
 from bottom to top and from side to side. The 
 11 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 subject would become a dead, inert core of truth, 
 and around it would grow the accretions of cur- 
 rent phrase and popular interpretation, and in a 
 few decades we would wake up to the fact that 
 the truth concerning atonement had become lost 
 in tradition and ignorant, unthinking apprehen- 
 sion. "A cohesive Church must have a coherent 
 creed. But it must be a dogma the Church holds, 
 not one that holds the Church. The life is in the 
 body, not in the system. It must be a dogma re- 
 visable from time to time to keep pace with the 
 Church's growth as a living body in a living 
 world. The study of theology must go and go 
 forward. Solution of the great problems must 
 be both attempted and encouraged by vital faith." 
 (Forsyth: "Person and Place of Jesus Christ," 
 213.) 
 
 12 
 
The Problem of Atonement. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 WHAT IS REQUIRED— THE PEOBLEM 
 STATED. 
 
 The problem of the Atonement is the re-estab- 
 lishment of fellowship between God and man; 
 this, and nothing more. Accidentally, not ety- 
 mologically, the word itself may present the prob- 
 lem: at-one-ment. Whatever other problems 
 there are in salvation — and there are many — they 
 belong to other phases of the co-operation of God 
 and men. If Fellowship and Communion can be 
 established, all other desired results may come 
 in their order. 
 
 Creation's problem was the establishment of 
 fellowship through the development of a nature 
 that could harmoniously live its life with God. 
 But now we have a problem of a very different 
 and more difficult kind — a difficulty not of na- 
 ture, but of moral disposition, a difficulty estab- 
 lished through a misuse of volition or freedom. 
 Sin is moral alienation, not merely because it 
 meets the disapproval of God, but because it be- 
 gets a centrifugal disposition in man, causing him 
 to flee from God. His confidence in the mutual re- 
 13 
 
THE PROBLEM OP ATONEMENT. 
 
 lationship is destroyed, and his self-assertive atti- 
 tude relative to God is established. 
 
 Sin and its action are in the way of fellow- 
 ship: how can they be overcome and removed 
 from the way? 
 
 I. What does God require? 
 
 II. What does man's nature and condition re- 
 quire! 
 
 Our answer to these questions must constitute 
 our problem. Has God's alienation from man 
 resulted in a settled attitude of opposition and 
 vengeance, so that he would not welcome a re- 
 established fellowship? If this were the situa- 
 tion, there would be no atonement-problem; for 
 one of the parties would be implacable, and noth- 
 ing could result from any effort. 
 
 We are assured by revelation, and the assur- 
 ance is the working basis of all teaching and effort 
 looking toward salvation, that sin does not alien- 
 ate God from man. He is grieved ; he is thwarted 
 in his plans, but he still continues to love men. 
 (John 3:16.) What demand, then, does God 
 make upon man? Does he demand that man shall 
 make complete restitution before he can be in 
 fellowship with him? Shall man have to repair 
 the damage that has been done? If he did, the 
 problem would again be insoluble: for neither 
 man nor God can do that. The damage is an 
 eternal fact, inerasable; it will have to stand, so 
 far as the past is concerned. 
 
 What, then, is God's demand? Upon the an- 
 14 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 swer to the question is the parting of the ways 
 among theologians. Our way is the one that we 
 can see ; he that has better vision may take some 
 other path.* 
 
 God's demands cover the future, and not the 
 past; they cover the mutual relations of himself 
 and his children, and are not a demand for the 
 satisfaction of his own nature, when viewed alone 
 out of relation to his children. His heart bleeds 
 with the outrages of an irrecoverable past, but 
 nevertheless, he turns in magnanimity and love 
 and offers to forget it all (in a moral sense) if 
 man will but turn and live righteously. Analyzed, 
 the demand seems to be: 1) a turning from sin, 
 
 *Shedd, in hia "History of Doctrine" (TT, 204"), decides the 
 whole question of theory of the atonement by his definition. He 
 says it "denotes the satisfaction of Divine ."justice for the sin of 
 man, by the substituted penal sufferings of the Son of God." 
 This narrows the atonement down to a very close line; but it is a 
 preparation for the rejection of any atonement save the fact or 
 the necessity of such an atonement as is acceptable to the author. 
 To so narrowly define a subject that all conclusions save the 
 author's are rejected in advance by definition we hold to be but 
 a "begging of the question." It leaves no room even for the 
 consideration of other views or other sides of the question. 
 
 A more modern view is presented by Dr. Burton. "Atone- 
 ment," he says, "is accomplished when men, abandoning their 
 unloving way of life, turn with repentance to Jesus' way of 
 life; forgiving as he forgave, loving as he loved. Apart from 
 such repentance there is no forgiveness. The supreme signifi- 
 cance of the death of Jesus as of his life is in its revelation of 
 the will of God, and consequently of the ideal of life. It is 
 redemptive for those who accept the truth thus revealed. Men 
 are reconciled to God when, accepting the revelation made in the 
 life and death of Jesus, they enter into the fellowship of his 
 death and become partakers of his life. This is to eat his flesh 
 and drink his blood. Thus he ransoms them from sin. Thus 
 he brings them into covenant relation with God." ("Biblical 
 Ideas of Atonement," 144.) 
 
 15 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 a change of mind, of attitude, of purpose; a re- 
 pentance; a conversion; 2) the acceptance of a 
 righteous or new nature as a guarantee of right- 
 eousness for the future. This second demand, so 
 often overlooked as a necessity of the atonement, 
 is quite as essential as the first. The problem in 
 the concrete is to beget in man that life which 
 John's Gospel defines as knowing God. 
 
 There have been various elements brought 
 into the atonement theory, such as the satisfac- 
 tion of the Divine Nature concerning sins already 
 committed, a meeting of the needs of moral gov- 
 ernment, which, it is claimed, forbids forgiveness 
 without the infliction of penalty as the price of 
 forgiveness. But we believe that these demands 
 are unfounded, that they grow up from legalistic 
 considerations, borrowed from the forum, and not 
 from the family, which make the atonement prob- 
 lem, if allowed, insoluble. They have been raised 
 up as legal barriers to forgiveness, and have in 
 turn been removed by legal fictions, which is the 
 only possible method by which they could be re- 
 moved. For if God is actually alienated in feel- 
 ing from man, then Christ can not remove that 
 barrier; for Christ is in perfect harmony in 
 feeling and attitude with the Father. What 
 the Father would not do, the Son can not do. 
 To attribute two wills on this subject to the 
 Deity is anarchy in the Godhead. It creates 
 difficulties a thousand-fold greater than it 
 removes. 
 
 We shall take up these subjects one by one 
 16 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 later, but just now we inquire, What is the de- 
 mand in the nature of man which the atonement 
 must meet? 
 
 Unquestionably the barriers in man are the 
 greater. Man's consciousness of sin and its ill- 
 deserts has broken down his confidence in the re- 
 lationship with the Divine. He knows that he de- 
 serves ill; he expects that God will visit it upon 
 him. Further, the nature of sin itself is self- 
 assertion relative to God, and this principle man 
 has taken into his being. The problem of the 
 atonement, then, relative to man is twofold: 1) 
 Such an exhibition of Divine love as will take 
 away his fear of God and establish the confidence 
 which his own action has destroyed. 2) That God 
 shall grant him a new nature that can keep the 
 new law of love. If these conditions can be met, it 
 seems possible for the Divine family again to be 
 re-established. Phillips Brooks holds that "there 
 is no principle involved in the atonement that is 
 not included in its essence in the most sacred re- 
 lations between man and man." 
 
 Dinsmore says concerning a "sure instinct of 
 our nature :" " There can be no forgiveness where 
 love does not work in such a way as to satisfy 
 the strictest demands of conscience and meet 
 every requirement of perfect repentance." 
 ("Atonement in Literature and Life," 178.) 
 What are these requirements? What does con- 
 science demand of love? What are the require- 
 ments of repentance? 
 
 To answer the latter first, the first require- 
 17 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ment of repentance is restitution. No one can 
 believe that repentance has done its perfect work 
 while the sinner is enjoying the fruits of his 
 iniquity and the wronged one is suffering the loss 
 of it. Does repentance require restitution in the 
 case of man's sin? As far as possible. But if 
 there is no restitution possible, then what must 
 be done? In case man is morally bankrupt, that 
 fact must be acknowledged and declared. This is 
 confession. The only farther requirement of re- 
 pentance that is conceivable is such a turning 
 away from sin that it will not be repeated. This 
 repentance must mean, if it be adequate to meet 
 the demands of conscience. 
 
 What does conscience demand of love? Does 
 any conscience demand that before I accept for- 
 giveness from my Father he must suffer the pen- 
 alty that was due me from him? We think it 
 does not. It only demands that there shall be an 
 exhibition on his part of love so clear that I can 
 trust it. My conscience would protest, as we be- 
 lieve, against my heavenly Father bearing the 
 penalty that was due me from sin. 
 
 What does conscience demand of me before 
 God can forgive ? Simply that my life should be 
 yielded to God in obedience. It demands this 
 utterly; but has nothing to say concerning a suf- 
 fering that is in no sense a restitution. Confes- 
 sion of bankruptcy obliterates any ground of de- 
 mand for suffering and pronounces its infliction 
 a fruitless cruelty. 
 
 18 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 It may help our thought if we turn aside for 
 a moment and see how our problem has been 
 estimated by some of the most original and pene- 
 trating minds. The following quotations con- 
 cerning the view of Dante are from Dinsmore, 
 "Atonement in Literature and Life:" "He ac- 
 cepted the prevalent notion of his time that 
 Christ's death on the cross was a price paid to 
 divine justice, remitting the eternal penalties of 
 sin to all who by baptism and repentance identi- 
 fied themselves with the Son of God." To com- 
 plete his reconciliation with God man must pass 
 the gate of justification, for which three steps are 
 necessary: confession, contrition, satisfaction; 
 the latter is the work of Christ supplemented by 
 "the sinner's own expiatory deeds." Further, 
 the sinner must practice virtue, "so as both to 
 satisfy divine justice and heal the wounds sin 
 has made in his soul. ' ' The picture of the atone- 
 ment for memory, provided by drinking the wa- 
 ters of Lethe, is, of course, a personal picture, 
 and not one that enters into the Christian con- 
 ception. 
 
 Of man's condition demanding atonement, 
 Dante says: "And here must I bear this load for 
 it (sin) till God be satisfied." "Of such pride 
 the fee is here paid. " " Such coin does every one 
 pay in satisfaction." "And to his dignity man 
 never returns, unless where sin makes void, he 
 fill up for evil pleasures with just penalties ! Al- 
 though the arms of divine mercy are so widely 
 19 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 extended, still God can not receive the sinner to 
 himself until the void has been filled. Christ, who 
 is the representative of both parties, by his death 
 offers a satisfaction. He might have paid all the 
 debt, but he lets man have some part in the work 
 by enjoining upon him the expiation of all the 
 temporal penalties of sin." Thus we see that 
 Dante shrinks from the statement of substitution 
 as the solution of the problem. But while the 
 pains of Christ are not sheerly substitutionary, 
 only being a partial satisfaction, yet they fulfill 
 the further office of establishing the repentant 
 sinner in righteousness. "They (expiatory pen- 
 alties) are both a satisfaction rendered to a vi- 
 olated moral order and are remedial to the peni- 
 tent by confirming him in right habits of thought 
 and action." 
 
 It can hardly be denied that this statement of 
 the problem is far from any agreement either 
 with Scripture or the extreme satisfaction views 
 that tradition has brought down to us. 
 
 The problem of the atonement is often made 
 absurd by the elimination of the moral element. 
 Dr. Forsyth says: "We have to be saved into 
 faith before we are saved by it. The power of 
 sin is such that we can not believe to saving pur- 
 pose except we are redeemed into that power. 
 We can not believe even when we wish to." 
 ("Positive Preaching," 344.) 
 
 "We are justified by faith," says Paul. But 
 Dr. Forsyth would say that we can not have faith 
 until we are justified. In other words, we can not 
 20 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 be saved until we believe, and we can not have 
 faith until we are saved. Of course, the answer 
 to this riddle is : God gives us faith because he is 
 going to save us; and then saves us because we 
 have the faith that he has given us. This theory 
 of redemption is built on the sovereignty of God. 
 Man's co-operation is not necessary to salvation 
 at all — that is, his free and real co-operation is 
 not necessary. It includes, of course, a sort of 
 automatic co-operation which, not depending on 
 his own choice or action, has no moral quality in 
 it. He is reduced to an automaton, arranged and 
 manipulated by God. 
 
 If this theory could be true, then there is no 
 utility in our seeking the moral foundations of 
 salvation. It is purely a question of Divine Sov- 
 ereignty; God can do what he pleases, and will 
 do it whenever and however it pleases him. For 
 such a conclusion the whole plan of redemption 
 seems but a stage play, no part of which grows 
 out of moral necessity. God could have redeemed 
 man some other way if he had cared to. All the 
 reality and tragedy of the actual plan seem to be 
 a mere gratuity. In that case it seems to us that 
 God ought to have redeemed man in some way 
 that was not so costly. 
 
 That is a strange, if not a useless, conception 
 of faith as a moral factor of salvation which says, 
 "We can not believe even when we wish to." If 
 some other potency is given to a "wish" than 
 that which we ordinarily express by choice, then 
 we have suppressed part of the facts in the case. 
 21 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 We may wish one thing, bnt wish something else 
 more, and hence choose the something else. If 
 this was what is meant, then the problem was not 
 candidly stated. But unless something more is 
 said, the "wish to" represents the soul's choice — 
 in this case the moral choice. Now, if some in- 
 tellectual feat is too difficult for the soul that has 
 made the moral choice of it, that intellectual feat, 
 however important from the standpoint of intel- 
 lectual gifts, has no adverse value in the soul's 
 redemption. If I choose the Lord Jesus in my 
 heart, I am sure of him, whether some contortion 
 of mere belief is possible to me or not. In other 
 words, faith is pre-eminently a moral act, a moral 
 choice. It is irrelevant in a doctrine of redemp- 
 tion to place some problem of belief in its way 
 when the moral choice has been made. 
 
 Sinfulness and atonement are closely related. 
 In a sense atonement is the cure for sin. What 
 the cure is in its nature, then, ought to receive 
 some light from a correct apprehension of what 
 the disease is. It is said that our age has not a 
 deep sense of sin. Can we discover the cause of 
 this! Shall we conclude that it is merely because 
 man has a dull religious consciousness? This 
 would hardly agree with what the age is produc- 
 ing in many lines. 
 
 It may be that sin has been wrongly appre- 
 hended. The works of our older theologians show 
 that sin has been regarded as largely a matter of 
 the workings of the flesh. Fleshly lust of differ- 
 22 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 ent kinds has been spoken of as though it con- 
 stituted the very being of sin. This is doubtless 
 a mistake. Sin is not in the flesh at all. The con- 
 science of this age, which has apprehended much 
 more of the light of truth than other ages, fails 
 to feel condemned for the " movements" of the 
 flesh, when those " movements" are entirely in 
 the line of the laws of na ture as revealed through 
 scientific disclosure. Sin is something that per- 
 tains entirely to the spirit, the choice, the will. 
 If this can be clearly apprehended we may hope 
 that the conscience will again respond to the sense 
 of sin. But the "movements of the flesh" we will 
 regard as presenting temptations to the spirit, 
 and many of them are open to physical rather 
 than moral treatment. Acceptance of the atone- 
 ment will not cure criminality in one in whom 
 the basis of his evil doings is a pressure on the 
 brain, a bad tooth, a growth in the nostril, etc., 
 as is known to be often the case. It is only when 
 the wicked choice is isolated and stands by itself 
 that it may be a subject of moral remorse. 
 
 Man's laws are operative only externally and 
 violently, as we may say; God's laws, on the other 
 hand, are operative internally, inevitably, auto- 
 matically, and ofttimes, in the beginning, imper- 
 ceptibly. We have been used to viewing the oper- 
 ations of sin and its punishment under the forms 
 of law of human sanction, by which we have seen 
 only an external relation, a more or less capri- 
 cious vindication, which by edict could be set 
 aside. If we will undertake to see sin and the 
 23 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 atonement under the methods in which God oper- 
 ates, we may come nearer the truth than we have 
 through the analogy of human law. 
 
 Human sinfulness has come upon all men, not 
 by an edict that God sent forth in which he cursed 
 all mankind for the sin of one, but rather through 
 the operation of the social law, which sees man- 
 kind as an organism, and sin as a virus intro- 
 duced into it, finding its way from individual to 
 individual by the law of social relation or per- 
 sonal contact. Under the former conception it 
 could not be escaped by any moral attitude toward 
 it, and hence lost its character as sin containing 
 personal guilt. Under the latter conception it 
 may be resisted by moral choice, and spreads by 
 moral consent in so far as it is a moral con- 
 tagion. Atonement seems to have the same na- 
 ture. Christ did not atone for all men in the 
 sense of a mere legal relation, whose benefits 
 come to all without moral consent; but he did 
 start a morally saving power which spreads un- 
 der moral and social conditions and is available 
 for all, if morally accepted. 
 
 By this view sin is no less dreadful, nor atone- 
 ment less helpful, but the conditions of both be- 
 come moral in their influence and operation. 
 
 Mankind has sinned. This is a fact so uni- 
 versal that it is not much modified if we think 
 of it as a race act, as in the traditional doctrine 
 of the Fall, or whether we think of it as the un- 
 exceptional experience of all members of the race. 
 The former view does not, indeed, from the point 
 24 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 of view of humanity's origin through a process of 
 evolution, seem to be an enlightening explanation. 
 But the fact of sin is so general that the picture 
 of the Jewish account of the Fall in the Garden 
 of Eden is a fairly accurate representation. 
 
 Such a picture, it is true, implies that sin is 
 a universal experience. This is going farther 
 than we are justified in going from observation. 
 Moreover, the problem of the atonement does not 
 rest upon any a priori position that every man 
 has sinned. We need not burden the discussion 
 with a prophecy that there never will be a man 
 who keeps God's moral law. The sinful condition 
 of mankind is a situation requiring a helpful re- 
 lief to every man, whether he personally has con- 
 sciously disobeyed God or not. Every man needs 
 assistance to come into the Divine fellowship and 
 to grow into the Divine likeness, even though he 
 may be groping after God the best that he can 
 in such an environment as the present, and may 
 be justified in his sight. In such social surround- 
 ings, influenced and retarded by those who are 
 disobedient to God, and enveloped in the igno- 
 rance of his own unassisted powers, every man 
 needs the God-man to enlighten him, as well as to 
 cleanse him from the stain of sin. 
 
 So we do not need to commit ourselves to a 
 Race Fall. There has been practically, we will 
 not say necessarily, an individual fall in the his- 
 tory of all men. The problem of the atonement is 
 to bring this sinner back to his Divine Father. 
 
 All men sin. This is a statement of fact, not 
 25 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 a statement of necessity. That all men sin some- 
 times, is no more verifiable than that all men do 
 right sometimes. That they sin is no greater 
 proof of a sinful nature that necessitates them to 
 sin than that they sometimes do right is a proof 
 of a righteous nature that necessitates them to 
 do right. Indeed, this idea of a constraining na- 
 ture back of the deed takes away the moral quality 
 of our deeds and does away both with sin and 
 moral righteousness. The word ' ' necessity ' ' does 
 not belong in a moral scheme, even though the 
 observable facts might seem to yield to the ex- 
 planation of a mechanical law. So we prefer to 
 deal with sin as an empirical fact, not as a mat- 
 ter which outflows from a fallen nature. Man's 
 moral conflict is such that he can not unaided live 
 a Godlike life. On the other hand, no man lives 
 a life thus isolated from Divine aid except as he 
 chooses. So his sinfulness is rooted in his moral 
 choices, and not in some nature supposed to be 
 back of his volitions. There is a nature back of 
 his volitions, presenting the elements of moral 
 contest; but it is not therefore a fallen or sinful 
 nature. It is simply a non-moral, animal nature 
 needing guidance and control, and for this control 
 his higher spiritual nature is fitted and may suc- 
 ceed when accepting the assistance of the Divine 
 Spirit. Sin is seated always in this higher nature, 
 and never in the lower. 
 
 The problem of the atonement has usually 
 been treated as if it were of a past broken and 
 26 
 
WHAT IS REQUIEED. 
 
 injured by sin, that God had undertaken to even 
 up the world to a condition equal to and, some 
 assume, surpassing what it would have been if 
 sin had never entered. This makes the problem 
 a very different one from what it would be if the 
 past damage is discounted and we henceforth try 
 to arrange for a future that may be saved from 
 utter ruin. 
 
 To assume that the past damage can be atoned 
 for, that the universe can be made as good as new, 
 is, as we think, a belittling of the nature of sin. 
 Sin is an everlasting fact of tremendous impor- 
 tance. Even God can not undo its damage. It 
 has gotten into the construction of the world, and 
 the past is a partial wreck, and the fact can not 
 be unmade. ' ' Of this alone is even God deprived ; 
 the power of making that which is past never to 
 have been." (Aristotle.) The proposition of the 
 atonement which is rational and possible, is the 
 bringing the world into such a relation to God 
 that the future may not be a wreck — an establish- 
 ing of man in his present relations to God, such 
 that he shall enter the future prepared to co-oper- 
 ate with God for a righteous and happy world. 
 
 That idea of forgiveness of sin which credits 
 it with the power of wiping sin out, must have 
 arisen when sin was regarded as involving per- 
 sonal relations only, and such personal relations 
 between man and God as are conceived to obtain 
 between man and man. Probably our personal 
 relations to God are never so superficial as this 
 estimate pictures. But if, allowing this super- 
 27 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ficial view for the moment, sin is merely a per- 
 sonal affront to God, it is conceivable that its for- 
 giveness might wipe it all out — its effects as well 
 as its memory and record. But sin is something 
 deeper than that; it enters into the constitution 
 of the universe; it makes an impression on spir- 
 itual and material substance which in its very 
 nature is inerasable. It is altogether reverent to 
 say that God himself can not make these impres- 
 sions not to have been ; for that statement means 
 the same as to say that he has willed not to. 
 
 Hence, forgiveness can not do more than ad- 
 just the personal relations between man and God, 
 which will cover the record, so far as God's new 
 relations are concerned. Concerning the con- 
 sequences of sin which are wrought into the spir- 
 itual and physical substance of the world, and 
 the laws which govern the sequence of cause and 
 effect, all that appears possible is that the amel- 
 iorative forces shall operate for such restoration 
 of man and the hurt universe as the nature of 
 those forces would suggest to us. It is idle to 
 define forgiveness as an entire wiping out of the 
 consequences of sin. If that be the definition, then 
 there is no such thing known as the forgiveness of 
 sin. We will necessarily have to return to this 
 subject when we come to the Limitation of the 
 Atonement, and the Nature and Ground of For- 
 giveness. We press it no further at this point 
 than is necessary to show that it modifies the 
 entire problem. 
 
 An atonement that seeks to repair the past is 
 28 
 
WHAT IS EEQUIEED. 
 
 one in which punishment is regarded as the vin- 
 dication of law rather than the reformation of 
 the sinner. Human society through much of its 
 history has regarded punishment in this former 
 light ; but it is now turning away from that view 
 and seeking to reform the sinner through his pun- 
 ishment or imprisonment. The barrenness of 
 past criminal practice and the fruitfulness of 
 present is a vindication of the modern notion. 
 
 In a forceful passage Fairbairn sets forth the 
 two ideas under the contrast of a "Lord" and a 
 "Servant." We give the passage here, although 
 it presents points that we wish to discuss later. 
 He says: " ' Lordship' of the heroic order is not 
 a difficult thing to attain, for men of marked 
 moral inferiority have attained it: Alexander, 
 who was a youth of ungoverned passion; Caesar, 
 who was a statesman more astute than scrupu- 
 lous; Napoleon, who was but colossal obstinacy, 
 loveless, and athirst for blood. But the pre- 
 eminence that comes of being the ' servant of 
 all' only Jesus has attained. . . . The 'lord' 
 governs as a ruler, persons to him are nothing, 
 order and law are all in all. The violated 
 law must be vindicated, the man who breaks 
 it must be broken. But the 'minister' serves 
 as a Saviour; persons to him are everything; 
 law and order are agencies for the creation of 
 happy persons and the common weal. The law 
 which 'lordship' enjoins is in its ultimate analy- 
 sis force, and is, when violated, vindicated by the 
 strength it commands ; but the end or law which 
 29 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 the ministry obeys is benevolence or, in its ulti- 
 mate analysis, love, and it is vindicated only when 
 it can, by the creation of a happy harmony be- 
 tween the person and his conditions, overcome 
 misery and its causes. . . . The 'lord' prevails 
 by his power to inflict suffering, the ' minister ' 
 by his power to save from it; but the saving is 
 a process of infinite painfulness, while the inflic- 
 tion is easy to him who has the adequate strength. 
 The 'lord' has only so to marshal his forces as 
 to work his will, but the 'minister' has to seek 
 the person he would save, bear him in his own 
 soul, quicken the dead energies of good within 
 him by the stream of his own life, burn out the 
 evil of the old manhood by the fire of consuming 
 love. " (" Philosophy of the Christian Religion, ' ' 
 407.) 
 
 If any one had supposed on first view that 
 this problem of establishing a basis for a future 
 righteous universe was less than that of vindica- 
 ting a past one from the outrages of sin, this pas- 
 sage will set him right. Any exertion of power 
 is a slight matter compared with the sacrifices 
 of love. Whatever power might have done in 
 legal vindication of a past, nothing less than love 
 will solve the problem of man's future allegiance 
 and loyalty. 
 
 The wrath of God is often mentioned in the 
 
 Bible. Is it a purpose of the Bible to make known 
 
 that God is angry with his children, or is this 
 
 mention in some way related to current belief, 
 
 30 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 either from heathen conceptions or otherwise? 
 This is a basic question in our study. The atone- 
 ment is represented constantly as necessary, be- 
 cause it was necessary to propitiate the favor of 
 God. That God is opposed to sin is everywhere 
 asserted. That can not be emphasized too often 
 nor too strongly. Anything that would minify 
 the opposition of God to sin is condemned in ad- 
 vance. But conceding that God hates sin, does 
 he hate the sinner? Is it a just distinction to 
 maintain that he hates sin and is placable toward 
 the sinner? 
 
 It seems almost, if not quite, self-evident that 
 God must sever his fellowship with the sinner. 
 While the sinner sins, he assumes an attitude that 
 makes fellowship with him on the part of God 
 impossible; unless we call reproof and pleading 
 a sort of fellowship. But how does God feel re- 
 garding re-established fellowship? Does he de- 
 sire it, or is his broken fellowship irrevocable? 
 Does his condemnation go so far as to destroy 
 any desire for a renewal of relations of com- 
 munion with the sinner? Is not the testimony 
 of Rom. 5 : 8 explicit and direct in answer to 
 this question? "God commendeth his own love 
 toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
 Christ died for us." We are inclined to believe 
 that the Biblical representation is that of an un- 
 broken solicitude on the part of God for the sin- 
 ner's fellowship and for his welfare — of course, 
 under restored conditions of holiness. We dare 
 to apply the parable of the Prodigal Son at this 
 31 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 point: the attitude of the father in that parable, 
 while his son was away, is the attitude of God 
 while man was a sinner. If this be true, then the 
 problem of the atonement is the problem of the 
 necessary means to be used in restoring the fel- 
 lowship. How shall man be brought to a changed 
 mind is the problem. We do not have to face 
 the difficulty of how to placate the wrath of God. 
 There is nothing in the way on his part that will 
 prevent fellowship, unless it be in the interest of 
 some third party. 
 
 Some have thought of the interest of this party 
 in the necessities of government; that forgiveness 
 on the ground of repentance would leave govern- 
 ment without dignity and sanction, without force ; 
 in short, that men might sin and nothing would 
 happen any more than if they should not sin. 
 
 Josiah Royce in a late number of the Hibbert 
 Journal (April, 1913) has set forth a doctrine of 
 atonement which consists essentially in the re- 
 payment of the Community or Kingdom of God. 
 By it "the community is renewed, the spirit has 
 triumphed, and the traitors (who destroyed the 
 unity of the Community) are glad that the ir- 
 revocable deed which they condemn has been made 
 a source of a good which never could have existed 
 without it." This at-one-ment of the Community 
 is in no sense a contradiction or even an addition 
 to our view. It is only a fragment of it. If Royce 
 would bring into clearness the idea that God the 
 Father is included in the Community, it would 
 be identical. We need only add that in our view 
 32' 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 God so identifies himself with his children, his 
 family, his community, his Kingdom, that rela- 
 tions properly adjusted to him bring us into fel- 
 lowship with the Community or Kingdom. ''In- 
 asmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these 
 my brethren, ye did it unto me." 
 
 With one part of Royce's statement, that the 
 "irrevocable deed" of the "traitors" is a "source 
 of good," we have no sympathy. We deal with it 
 more explicitly elsewhere ; but here we stop only 
 to say that sin is no necessary part of God's right- 
 eous program. 
 
 In our study of the limitation of the atonement 
 we may find that forgiveness need not, and prob- 
 ably does not, imply the removal of all penalty, 
 if it implies the removal of any. This inescapable 
 penalty leaves government with the full sanction, 
 while reconciliation with God is a problem apart. 
 Indeed, the questions are quite separable: re- 
 newed fellowship with God, and removal of sin's 
 consequences. In any case the necessities of gov- 
 ernment are secured by the changed character 
 from a sinful purpose to a righteous purpose. 
 The sinner can not be forgiven unless he will 
 accept, as a gift, the righteous nature that will 
 keep the law and uphold the government. Gov- 
 ernment, then, is not endangered so much by for- 
 giveness on such terms as it is by the continuance 
 of alienation and rebellion. 
 
 So we are unable to see that the interests of 
 any third party are involved in the immediate 
 reconciliation of the Father and his child by the 
 « 33 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 child giving up his rebellion. No change is needed 
 in the mind of God ; his love has not been de- 
 stroyed. It is ready to be displayed as soon as 
 the sinner will put himself in an attitude where it 
 can do so consistently. We can discover nothing 
 in the nature of God that needs removal by some 
 sacrifice or payment of penalty. The " wrath of 
 God" is relative, and not absolute; its only atone- 
 ment needed is the change of the sinner's mind. 
 
 Theologians have passed all limits of thought 
 and just conceptions when they have affirmed that 
 the Father was angry with the Son. This may 
 be the inevitable conclusion of any earnest doc- 
 trine of substitution ; but if so, it is the reductio 
 ad absurdum of that doctrine. If substitution 
 requires such a conclusion, then we must formu- 
 late our doctrine of atonement with this absurdity 
 omitted. No possible evidence could establish it ; 
 for it transcends a law of morals as fundamental 
 as any law of mentality. But happily we dare 
 to believe that any supposed evidence for it is 
 equivocal; other constructions of alleged Scrip- 
 ture proof are possible and credible. "What tact 
 is shown by the apostles in their never speaking 
 of Jesus as bearing the Divine wrath! Our sins 
 he has borne on the tree. God has made him to 
 be sin. He became a curse. The punishment lay 
 upon him. He is set forth for a manifestation of 
 the righteousness of God in his blood. That the 
 apostles, using such strong expressions, yet never 
 make mention of the Divine wrath towards the 
 34 
 
WHAT IS BEQUIBED. 
 
 Atoner, has its root in the feeling that anger sig- 
 nifies a state of indignant feeling that we dare 
 never attribute to the mind of the holy God to- 
 wards the holy Jesus. . . . Punishment may 
 fall upon the innocent along with the guilty, anger 
 can be directed only against the guilty. The in- 
 nocent children of a murderer must, in accordance 
 with the Divine order of the world, bear a portion 
 of the punishment of their father; that God is 
 angry with them, no intelligent man would dream 
 of saying. And the idea of the Father being 
 angry with the Son, who drinks the bitter cup in 
 obedience to the Father! Angry at his deed of 
 self-sanctification, John 17 : 19 ! . . . Not only 
 the language of science, but that of edification 
 ought once for all to free itself from such inepti- 
 tudes of expression which have an effect the op- 
 posite of edification in the case of thinking per- 
 sons, especially of those who think in accordance 
 with Scripture." (Gess, "Christi Person und 
 Werk," iii, 442.) 
 
 What may be called the New Criminology is 
 based not on arguments for the rights of the 
 State, but openly in the interest of the good of 
 the criminal. Anything bearing on the future of 
 this man, and having to do with the possibility 
 of him becoming a good citizen, and having an- 
 other chance, makes its strong appeal to the pub- 
 lic mind. For example, we are besought to teach 
 the criminal a trade that will be available and 
 useful when he is freed; we hear of arguments 
 35 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 for paying him wages that ho may support his 
 family, if he has one, or may have something to 
 start on when he goes again into liberty. We 
 hear of no counter arguments on behalf of the 
 State, such as that he has wronged it and deserves 
 nothing from it. No such assertions would make 
 any appeal at present to the public mind. The 
 new criminology is based not upon the abstract 
 idea of justice, as was the old criminology, but 
 upon the ground of social welfare, which is the 
 idea of justice made concrete and broadened. In 
 the end this is justified by its effects on the State. 
 If the criminal is changed into a good citizen, the 
 State will be benefited and "vindicated" in a 
 much higher way than it has been by the opera- 
 tion of the old and narrow views of justice. 
 
 The argument admits of a wider application 
 than that of the civil state. The universe is vin- 
 dicated by that atonement and administration of 
 justice which makes bad men good men. It is an 
 empty "vindication" which merely inflicts suffer- 
 ing without accomplishing any change of charac- 
 ter. We are of opinion that a doctrine of the 
 atonement formulated in the atmosphere of the 
 New Criminology will have a different aspect 
 from the one which was formulated under the 
 spirit of the old Criminology: for the atonement 
 is nothing more than the application of a social 
 justice as conceived by men to the problem of 
 crime. 
 
 Dr. J. A. Leonard, of the Ohio State Reforma- 
 tory, has instituted what he calls the Bankruptcy 
 36 
 
WHAT IS EEQUIRED. 
 
 Court in the Reformatory, which is a very inter- 
 esting working experiment in some of the funda- 
 mental principles involved in the problem of 
 atonement. There is in the institution a system of 
 merits which have some relation to parole and ul- 
 timate release. But some poor fellows have such 
 a bad record that they never can overcome it, so 
 many demerits that they will never get to the 
 place where they can have any merits. Such fel- 
 lows are without any incentive for improvement. 
 For them the Bankruptcy Court is instituted. If 
 for thirty days one has a clean record, he may 
 come and have a hearing before this Court, and if 
 acted upon favorably, his bad record in the Re- 
 formatory is wiped out forever. Then he is 
 placed in a position where he may establish a rec- 
 ord of merits, which leads to a standing in the 
 Reformatory and gives him an equal opportunity 
 with those who have had a good record. This may 
 lead to parole and ultimate earlier discharge from 
 custody. 
 
 Here in living operation are the principles in- 
 volved in our problem: a record invincible; a 
 change of mind, or repentance; a forgiveness, 
 affording a basis of righteousness, while the 
 broader problem of salvation is being worked out. 
 Behind it all a superintendent, who takes upon his 
 own heart the welfare of each criminal, sympa- 
 thizing with them in their weakness, planning for 
 their betterment, on occasion turning from their 
 gaoler to be their suppliant to lead a new and 
 better life. Of course, this last factor is more 
 37 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 than any scheme of salvation or atonement, and 
 has its analogue in the love of the Father, whose 
 love was unto the death. 
 
 The old Criminology was based on the idea of 
 the vindication of government. The majesty of 
 law was vindicated by stern and dreadful punish- 
 ment in which repentance played no part. Mack- 
 intosh, speaking in the House of Commons no 
 longer ago than March 2, 1819, said, "I hold in 
 my hand a list of those offenses which at this 
 moment are capital, in number two hundred and 
 twenty-three." Who will now defend this harsh 
 view of the vindication of government? By what 
 infinitesimal amount was government more ma- 
 jestic because of the infliction of such harsh pun- 
 ishments ? Did it thus prevent the commission of 
 crime ? Did it secure a greater proportion of good 
 citizens ? Did it make good men out of bad men ? 
 Did it prevent good men from becoming* bad? 
 Did it not miss entirely that greatest glory that 
 any government can ever have — the glory of win- 
 ning men from evil to good, or transforming evil 
 men into righteous? 
 
 It was in the days of such harsh and futile 
 views of dealing with criminals in the civic world 
 that the Satisfaction theory of atonement was 
 produced in the theological world. That theory 
 obscures the greatest glory of God as the other 
 obscured the highest potential glory of human 
 government. 
 
 We have now a new theory of government, 
 essentially different in its view of governmental 
 38 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 function — a view that seeks not an ostentatious 
 vindication of the majesty of law and government, 
 but a government operating in accordance with 
 the laws of human nature which seeks to rescue 
 men from criminal character. Compared with 
 Divine administration it operates without assured 
 and infallible knowledge of repentance and inner 
 human purpose. Hence, as compared with any 
 method that God may use, it is compelled to intro- 
 duce the principle of Probation, not as an element 
 of punishment, but to demonstrate the reality of 
 change of mind and the adoption of a new and 
 upright inner purpose. But for this distinction, 
 this new Criminology might be used as a full illus- 
 tration of the Divine method and the elements in- 
 volved in atonement. 
 
 The following is a sample card that is now 
 being placed in the hands of an offender who is 
 turned over to the direction of a Probation Officer, 
 who shall deal with him in the interest of the State 
 against which he has sinned: 
 
 Commonwealth op Massachusetts. 
 
 The Court has placed you on probation under 
 bonds to give you an opportunity to reform with- 
 out punishment, and the Probation Officer has be- 
 come your bondsman to save you from prison on 
 the following terms and conditions: 
 
 That you diligently pursue some lawful employ- 
 ment; 
 
 That you be of good behaviour and keep the peace 
 toward all persons ; 
 
 39 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 That you report to the Probation Officer at such 
 times and places as he may require; 
 
 That you pay to the Court the costs you have 
 made the county when the Court requires ; 
 
 That you notify the Probation Officer immediately 
 of any change in your address. 
 
 If your promise is willfully violated or neg- 
 lected you will be surrendered to the Court. 
 Probation Officer. 
 
 Under the operation of such a system the State 
 is not being humiliated and degraded. It has the 
 great vindication that by such means a consider- 
 able proportion of criminals, who under the old 
 system were lost to society, are being restored to 
 social efficiency and saved to the State and to 
 themselves. 
 
 An important suggestion in the treatment of 
 criminals was made some five years ago by Roland 
 B. Molineaux in the provision for a " Court of 
 Rehabilitation." (See Charties and the Com- 
 mons, September 28, 1907.) Along the line of 
 this suggestion Ohio as well as Oklahoma are 
 proposing the adoption of such a court. A 
 judge and jury has deprived a man of his liberty 
 for crime; a judge and jury shall decide his 
 case before he is restored to liberty. The mere 
 lapse of a few months behind prison walls 
 does not in itself change him from a criminal 
 to a good citizen. Mere punishment does not 
 change character. Without an uplifting motive 
 the prison discharges into the community again 
 a man as criminal in character as when it received 
 40 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 him. Some motive or hope must be held before 
 such a one, with the understanding that whether 
 society shall regard him citizen or criminal will 
 depend upon himself. Society would be glad to 
 welcome him back into the ranks of her citizens 
 if he will provide her a sufficient safeguard for 
 so doing, after he has been adjudged a criminal. 
 The court of rehabilitation in the form of judge 
 and jury is ready to try his case and determine 
 whether he shall be rehabilitated as a citizen. He 
 must prepare himself by a change of mind and 
 life ; he must bring and argue his own case before 
 the court, and its verdict may restore him to 
 liberty. Such an arrangement, which has been 
 commented upon favorably by the press of the 
 country, shows clearly that the mind of society 
 concerning the criminal has greatly changed. En- 
 lightened society does not seek punishment as a 
 vindication and safeguard of government. It 
 seeks only reformation, a change of mind, and 
 restoration to citizenship. The only justifiable 
 criticism of such a scheme will be that which seeks 
 to point out provisions which shall provide for the 
 manifestation of a changed mind and the demon- 
 stration of a new character. These attained, and 
 further infliction of pain or privation of liberty 
 is without foundation. (Cp. "The Survey," July 
 27, 1912, pp. 586, 587.) 
 
 There can be little doubt that into our tradi- 
 tional doctrine of atonement in some of its forms 
 the Pharisaic doctrine of forgiveness only on the 
 41 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ground of the debt being paid has filtered through. 
 "According to the Pharisaic theology forgiveness 
 of sin was impossible without payment of the debt 
 by some one ; if not by the offender, then by some 
 one for him, who, by reason of his innocence, did 
 not need on his own account to die the death that 
 was the penalty of sin, (but) whose submission 
 to it would compensate for its remission to the 
 guilty. An outward mechanical idea of guilt and 
 forgiveness and religion generally underlies this 
 scheme. We have here, too, the real root of the 
 Catholic doctrine of merit of the saints being 
 available to cover the shortcomings of others. 
 The Pharisees taught the vicarious righteousness 
 of the patriarchs and saints of Israel." (Somer- 
 ville, "St. Paul's Conception of Christ," 81, note.) 
 
 This we believe to be a false view, both in its 
 direct application of substitution of suffering 
 and its indirect application of the substitution of 
 righteousness, a foundation for immorality under 
 ecclesiastical sanction. Society could forgive the 
 past if as a condition the sinner could guarantee 
 a good life in the future. In other words, society 
 is not benefited in any degree by the mere suffer- 
 ing of a penalty, when that penalty is only vin- 
 dictiveness and unrelated to security for future 
 conduct. 
 
 Jean Valjean, an upright mayor, having been 
 a good citizen for many years, can not now secure 
 society by imprisonment any better than he is do- 
 ing by his useful and exemplary and ministering 
 life. His trial and condemnation may be a sad ne- 
 42 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 cessity, because human law can not be made for 
 each individual case, and impartiality in adminis- 
 tration of law is necessary for its sanction. But if 
 power is given to a judge to suspend a sentence, 
 and exercised in his case, every interest of society 
 is conserved that ever can be. Divine government 
 is not under the embarrassments and limitations 
 which made this case so pathetic. A man in At- 
 lanta, Ga., murdered a man many years ago. He 
 was not apprehended, but escaped and went into 
 a new community, and under a new name settled 
 down to a good life. He married and brought up 
 a family, and in every way, unrelated to this past 
 deed, was a good citizen. After twenty-five years 
 his identity as the murderer was discovered. 
 He was apprehended and tried, found guilty and 
 executed. We think that every one must feel that 
 this is a case where law defeats itself in its effort 
 to protect society. Society by his execution was 
 robbed of a useful citizen, whose good life was 
 as much a protection from crime as his execution, 
 while the revulsion of feeling against the me- 
 chanical exactions of law was more a menace to 
 government than any leniency in his case could 
 have been. The administration of pardon in his 
 case would have been more a sanction to govern- 
 ment than his execution. The element that is 
 lacking here is such a provision of atonement as 
 would have brought the man to confession of 
 crime, and such a basis in law as would have made 
 pardon possible when a new character had been 
 demonstrated. 
 
 43 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 How will the fruits of the atonement relate 
 themselves to a future award or judgment? It 
 seems to be conceded by some, at least to some 
 degree, that the sins that are remitted are rather 
 those whose penalties will be paid at the judg- 
 ment than those which are involved in the present 
 earth-life and its physical conditions; that the 
 latter penalties do not seem to be escaped. 
 
 This implies the idea of a Judgment Day, when 
 the records will be brought forth and the awards 
 made on the ground of the deeds that were done 
 in the earth-life. Probably that notion fitted the 
 time of Christ better than it does our present day. 
 It was an idea inescapable then, because igno- 
 rance of physical and moral laws did not bring 
 the conviction of absolute certainty in the results 
 of righteousness and iniquity. We now know 
 enough of the workings of the forces of the world 
 to see, as they could not then, that the laws of 
 nature, both physical and spiritual, are so ad- 
 justed that every deed has its recompense auto- 
 matically ; that it is never escaped. Some of the 
 illustrations of this are easily recognized; others 
 are not so. Rich sinners seem by the use of 
 wealth to escape for the present the consequences 
 of evil deeds. But we are coming to think that 
 this is more seeming than real. Of course, he 
 can not escape the operations of physical laws. 
 And the workings of moral laws are not so much 
 disturbed as they seem; but their effects may be 
 rendered unfelt for the time. But this temporary 
 insensibility is not eternal, and moreover, the be- 
 44 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 numbed sense is itself a most fearful punishment. 
 Perdition is destruction of function. So that the 
 purpose of the Judgment Day seems for an- 
 nouncement and clear revelation rather than for 
 award. Living or dead the laws of God are not 
 escaped. Men whose outward circumstances are 
 happy are not themselves as happy as they seem. 
 So it would seem that if the atonement is to 
 relieve us of penalty, it must do so now. Its re- 
 lease from moral consequence can not be realized 
 if it is deferred to a future world. 
 
 The problem of the atonement has tradition- 
 ally been treated as a legal problem. In the broad 
 sense of law this is justifiable; but it is in the 
 sense of social law, and not of that law which 
 grew up in the forum which so imperfectly inter- 
 prets God's great laws of the universe. So great 
 is this distinction that we prefer to say that the 
 Cross illustrates a social need, and not a legal 
 one, knowing that this distinction would disap- 
 pear if our view of law was broad enough. Dale 
 (' 'Atonement," 392) says: "It belonged to him 
 to assert, by his own act, that suffering is the just 
 result of sin. He asserts it, not by inflicting suf- 
 fering on the sinner, but by enduring suffering 
 himself." "We feel that this author has not made 
 out in his previous discussion that justice de- 
 mands that "suffering" is the just result of sin — 
 abstract suffering, suffering by somebody, a cer- 
 tain quantum of suffering irrespective of personal 
 deserts. If he has made out a case at all, it is 
 45 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 in the form, "The soul that sins, it shall die." 
 It is not abstract suffering that is demanded by 
 justice, it is the suffering of the sinner. If this 
 is the case, then all possibility of transferring 
 that suffering to some one else than the sinner, 
 and then concluding that the law is satisfied be- 
 cause a certain amount of suffering has been en- 
 dured, is untenable. 
 
 On the other hand, there is a social constitu- 
 tion of the race that makes vicarious suffering 
 inevitable. We do not recognize that it is a de- 
 mand of justice; we recognize it as an unques- 
 tionable empirical fact. It grows out of the fact 
 that we are in creation bound together into an 
 organism. No man liveth to himself; he is tied 
 by vital cords with all others who live, who have 
 lived, and who will live. It is evident under this 
 social law or fact that if one sins, all suffer. The 
 mother suffers for the sin of her daughter, the 
 father for the sin of his son, a community for 
 the sin of one of its citizens, etc. Jesus could not 
 enter into the human organism and not suffer for 
 sin, the sin of the world, the sins of past history, 
 and the sins of his own time. His example in 
 voluntarily taking upon himself suffering through 
 sympathy would have its uplifting and healing 
 effect upon all that come after him and shall know 
 the story of his life and death. This is a per- 
 fectly clear implication of the Incarnation. 
 
 This does not, in our judgment, exhaust the 
 meaning of Christ's death; but it is a much 
 clearer element than the legal one so much dwelt 
 46 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 upon. We shall find other elements growing out 
 of the positive purpose of his mission and from 
 the fact that he was the special representative of 
 the Father in an appeal to men, etc. 
 
 Dr. Shedd, whose "History of Soteriology" 
 is more a special plea for the Satisfaction theory 
 than an impartial history, says : ' ' All true scien- 
 tific development of the doctrine of the Atone- 
 ment, it is very evident, must take its departure 
 from the idea of divine justice. This conception 
 is the primary one in the Biblical representation 
 of this doctrine." He thinks that Scripture 
 phrases "direct the attention of the theologian to 
 that side of the divine character and that class 
 of divine attributes which are summed up in the 
 idea of justice." ("Hist, of Doctrine," ii, 216.) 
 This method of establishing a doctrine of the 
 atonement consists essentially in replacing social 
 law by that of the forum, and the love of a Father 
 for his children by an abstraction called justice 
 conceived in non-social relations. It is the effort 
 of a Father to become reconciled with his children 
 in which the heart of the Father is not allowed 
 as a deciding factor. It is not surprising that 
 with such elements prescribed in the start a very 
 successful effort was made in establishing a ju- 
 dicial or satisfaction theory of atonement. 
 
 The reconciliation, which we conceive as the 
 atonement problem, is primarily and fundamen- 
 tally a personal reconciliation. "The intensely 
 personal nature of this reconciliation has not been 
 47 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 overstated — scarcely, indeed, can it be repre- 
 sented in too strong a light. . . . The reconcili- 
 ation is not a matter of relation to law or gov- 
 ernment ; it is primarily and essentially a matter 
 of relation between persons, God and man. . . . 
 It is the personal relation that needs to be set 
 right, and it is through being right with God that 
 men are to be made right with the government of 
 God. ' ' ( Clarke, < ' Outline of Christian Theology, » ' 
 322.) 
 
 Reconciliation has usually been studied from 
 the point of view of law and government. This is 
 probably the reason that it has with equal in- 
 variability been solved in legal and mechanical 
 ways that do injustice to the persons involved. 
 There is no third party to be satisfied with the 
 terms of reconciliation. If the Father is willing 
 and man is willing to enter into terms of renewed 
 fellowship, it is hard to see what consideration 
 can hinder the re-establishment of that fellowship. 
 The " Price paid?" To whom? Blood shed? 
 For what purpose? If the two parties, man and 
 God, are reconciled to live again in communion, 
 who or what shall say them nay? 
 
 The problem of reconciliation, then, is purely 
 a personal problem, and many things have been 
 dragged into the problem that darken the case 
 rather than enlighten it. 
 
 It has been persistently represented that the 
 
 Cross was necessary to the reconciliation of God 
 
 with the world. Dr. Orr says: "On God's side 
 
 also there were obstacles to forgiveness and fel- 
 
 48 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 lowship. Though God loved the world, its sin had 
 still to be dealt with. There was a guilt that had 
 to be put away, a wrath that rested on the sinner 
 (John 3 : 36), a condemnation that had to be lifted 
 off (Rom. 8:1). The work of reconciliation on 
 God's side is accomplished on the Cross — the 
 grandest expression of his love (Rom. 5:8; 
 1 John 4:9). God also is reconciled to the world. 
 We are no more enemies (Rom. 5:10) in the ob- 
 jective sense (cf. Rom. 11:28). What remains 
 is for man to appropriate the reconciliation thus 
 brought to him, and to be himself reconciled to 
 God (2 Cor. 5:20). ("Side-lights on Christian 
 Doctrine," 138.) 
 
 To us there seems an absolute lack of sequence 
 of thought in this passage. 1. In what sense does 
 the death of Jesus reconcile God to man? There 
 seems to be on the face of it nothing of a nature 
 calculated to do so. On the contrary, if God was 
 ever angry at wickedness, this is the time when 
 his anger would reach its limit. 2. God has, in- 
 deed, to deal Avith sin; but surely in a way that 
 will guarantee its cessation. How can that be so 
 well done as by a repentance that causes man 
 to turn from it and hate it, and a regeneration 
 that guarantees power to overcome it? 3. What 
 import do words have that speak of a reconcili- 
 ation being wrought in God, which has yet to 
 be appropriated by man? By the Cross God 
 either is or is not reconciled. If reconciled, that 
 is a complete transaction; his wrath has no fur- 
 ther operation. Man may, indeed, be subjec- 
 49 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 tively benefited by recognizing it and acting upon 
 it, but that will have nothing to do with God's 
 reconciliation if another fact has already accom- 
 plished it. Moreover, Dr. Orr's statement lays 
 an indestructible foundation for the doctrine of 
 universal salvation to which we call attention. 
 
 A deed which pays a debt or meets a legal de- 
 mand must be accounted a complete discharge for 
 the debt or the crime. There can not in justice 
 be any further consideration or reference to the 
 obligation. The person for whose benefit the deed 
 was performed is now free. If satisfaction for 
 the demands of the law is made at all, then Scrip- 
 ture and common notions of justice would lead 
 to the conclusion that the satisfaction is made for 
 all men, and hence all men will be saved. Satis- 
 factionists have ever confronted this argument 
 and conclusion, and have sought to meet it by an 
 appeal to the question of fact, "If Christ died to 
 save all, why are not all righteous and full of 
 faith?" This plea has been made in the interest 
 of a part of humanity, the elect, for whom it is 
 claimed that Christ exclusively died. But one 
 may with equal logic reply: If Christ died to save 
 the elect, why are not the elect fully righteous 
 and full of faith? The question presses, because 
 it has ever been taught in connection with the 
 same school of thinkers that we will never be free 
 from sin until we are released from the limita- 
 tions of a corruptible and ensnaring fleshly na- 
 ture. John Owen, who urges the above argument, 
 also declares that one sin will damn. In our own 
 50 
 
WHAT IS KEQUIKED. 
 
 strength no flesh is justified before God. Then 
 all our sins are to be covered by Christ's satis- 
 faction, or they are not provided for at all. This 
 reasoning will shut out the elect from salvation 
 as sure — if we must appeal to the fact of life — 
 as it will stop short of providing for universal 
 salvation. It only shows that atonement on a 
 moral basis can not incorporate the satisfaction 
 principle. Universalism on the basis of that prin- 
 ciple is more logical and more honoring to God 
 than any limitation of the saved. 
 
 Atonement is not to be secured by any abro- 
 gation or change of law. It is doubtless the phys- 
 ical laws concerning evil that manifest the nature 
 of sin. This manifestation of the evil of sin must 
 be a fundamental cause of repentance. If repent- 
 ance is to play such a basic place in atonement as 
 we believe, there must be no playing fast and 
 loose with the conditions that induce it. If the 
 laws of physical being may be manipulated easily, 
 now producing one result, and now another, re- 
 pentance will become a game of safety merely. 
 We will lose conviction concerning the unalterable 
 and fundamentally evil nature of sin. We find 
 physical laws unbending, even in the presence of 
 a changed mind — the same for the saint as for 
 the sinner. It is necessary that they should be 
 so in the interests of moral government. "I be- 
 lieve that no modification of the law as a law, in 
 accommodation to man's condition as a sinner, is 
 conceivable that could either give the assurance 
 of the pardon of sin or quicken us with a new life ; 
 51 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 and that all idea of bridging over, by a modified 
 law, the gulf which we have been contemplating 
 is untenable." (Campbell, " Nature of Atone- 
 ment," 25.) 
 
 It is worth while to note, however, that while 
 one suffers for his violation of law he may at the 
 same time become reconciled to the law-giver. 
 Hence the inexorability of law is no barrier to 
 reconciliation and atonement, while, as we see 
 above, it is an indispensable condition. 
 
 As we are not to receive atonement through 
 a narrowly interpreted legal operation, so we are 
 not to attain a merely legal standing under law. 
 Paul says: "When the fullness of time came, God 
 sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under 
 the law, that he might redeem them that were 
 under the law, that we might receive the adoption 
 of sons." (Gal. 4:4, 5.) The purpose and prob- 
 lem of atonement is not to rescue sinners from 
 the condemnation of some objective rules of con- 
 duct; pay the penalty for their transgression, if 
 that may be done; and start them out again in a 
 justified relation to law, to walk a straight chalk- 
 line to some legally justified destination, amid the 
 cold conditions of mere sinlessness; but rather 
 to enfold them in the warm and sympathetic in- 
 fluences of a Divine family. "Therefore, when 
 we contemplate the Son of God in our nature, 
 dealing on our behalf with the condemnation of 
 sin, and the demands for righteousness, which are 
 in the law, we are to understand that he is not 
 thus honoring in humanity the law of God for the 
 52 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 purpose of giving us a perfect legal standing as 
 under the law, but for the purpose of taking us 
 from under the law, and placing us under grace — 
 redeeming us that we may receive the adoption 
 of sons. So that not a legal standing, however 
 high or perfect, but a filial standing is that 
 which is given us in Christ." (Campbell, op. cit. 
 59.) 
 
 This will not contradict the other thought, that 
 we are not to find atonement by a change of law: 
 for the purpose of that change would be to give 
 us a standing under law, even if our necessities 
 required a new law under which we could stand. 
 We will attain not the place of an accused, legally 
 acquitted, but the broader relationships of mem- 
 bership in the great family of God. 
 
 The atonement is the product of a social rather 
 than of a legal necessity. Not the rights of ab- 
 stract law, a mental and disembodied system, but 
 the anguish of the children of the Divine family 
 moved the atoning forces to the rescue. "There 
 is in the Vatican Museum a marble group, the 
 work of some ancient Greek sculptor. It tells in 
 stone a story of love and sacrifice. The two sons 
 of a priest, playing by the shore, were set upon 
 by two huge serpents which came out of the sea. 
 The father, aroused by the screams of his chil- 
 dren, hurried to their rescue. He grappled the 
 monsters undauntedly and struggled with desper- 
 ate energy to free his sons from their coils, but 
 in vain. They wound their slimy forms around 
 the father and boys, crushed them to death, and 
 53 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 dragged them into the depths of the sea." 
 (Ascham, "Help from the Hills," 230.) 
 
 So our Father could not see his children in the 
 toils of the serpent without rushing to their res- 
 cue. And as the father in the Laocoon, so our 
 Father could not escape being enfolded in the 
 coils of the same serpent — not in the sins, but in 
 the consequences of them — as his children. But 
 unlike the Laocoon father, he does not fail of 
 rescue. The serpent has his triumph ; but the ex- 
 hibition of love is mighty enough to rescue the 
 children. They yield themselves in love to one 
 who was willing to suffer and die for them. 
 
 We conceive the work of the Redeemer as a 
 single, undivided act, the outcome of a definite 
 pre-incarnate decision from before the foundation 
 of the world. His whole career was a unity, al- 
 though one that had its development; but it was 
 a harmonious and altogether consistent develop- 
 ment. We do not conceive that he faced a differ- 
 ent problem at any time in his life from the total 
 problem of his incarnation. When Gethsem- 
 ane came he, indeed, came nearer to a certain 
 culmination, a certain crisis, but the work before 
 him was consonant with that which he had been 
 engaged in all through his career. His death 
 was but the culmination, the goal of his incarna- 
 tion determination, and had in it no different 
 benefit than the total of his life-work. It was not 
 an act apart from all the rest, having a special 
 and specific benefit for mankind. However much 
 higher it may have risen in courage, in suffering, 
 54 
 
WHAT IS REQUIRED. 
 
 in endurance, it was for the same purpose that 
 his total incarnation history was — the bringing 
 back of man to his Father. Sabatier says, con- 
 cerning this point: ''Jesus began to give his life 
 when he entered upon his ministry ; he ended giv- 
 ing it on the cross. The external acts are differ- 
 ent ; the cause which produces them, namely, faith 
 and love, is the same from one end to the other. ' ' 
 ("The Doctrine of the Atonement," 38. He is 
 commenting on Mark 10:45.) 
 
 This view of Christ's atoning work, as greater 
 than the suffering on Calvary because it included 
 that and all the rest of his ministering and suffer- 
 ing life, is not open to those who do not accept 
 the pre-existence of Christ. They must be shut 
 up to the estimate of each act just as it occurs 
 in his life. His birth from that point of view was 
 not the result of his own volition. This distinc- 
 tion will enable us to see the full value of the doc- 
 trine of his pre-existence in the exaltedness of his 
 being, while at the same time it will enable us to 
 see the broader sweep of the pre-temporal choice 
 over any action or volition of his historical life. 
 "His whole life was not simply occupied with a 
 series of decisions crucial for our race, or filled 
 with a great deed then first done ; but that life of 
 his was itself the obverse of a heavenly eternal 
 deed, and the result of a timeless decision before 
 it here began. . . . His sacrifice began before 
 he came into the world, and his cross was that of 
 a lamb slain before the world's foundation. 
 There was a Calvary above which was the mother 
 55 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 of it all. His obedience, however impressive, does 
 not take divine magnitude if it first rose upon 
 earth, nor has it the due compelling power upon 
 us. His obedience as man was but the detail of 
 the supreme obedience which made him man. . . . 
 He consented not only to die, but to be born. It 
 was all one obedience. And it was free." (For- 
 syth, op. cit. 271.) 
 
 
 56 
 
Chapter II. 
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 Ofttimes the problem of atonement is exagger- 
 ated. Primarily, at least, it is but the reconcili- 
 ation of two persons — God and man. The evil of 
 the past life, an objective fact, is not thereby re- 
 paired. There is the awful product of sin, stand- 
 ing, it may be, as an everlasting warning. It can 
 not be undone; it is not indispensable that its 
 devastation be removed in order for an at-one- 
 ment. 
 
 Reconciliation does imply forgiveness of the 
 sinner. The separating feeling must be removed. 
 But we often speak of the forgiveness of sins, the 
 blotting out of sins, etc., as though something hap- 
 pened to undo those past deeds. This is a careless 
 generalization. The sins remain as committed — 
 more than a mere record or a memory. If a mem- 
 ory, we may conceive that they may be forgotten ; 
 yet at-one-ment is not dependent upon that as an 
 intellectual fact. The sins themselves, if we think 
 of them objectively at all, can never be changed, 
 now that they are done. Their results, outside of 
 the personal relations involved, are not neces- 
 sarily removed by the fact of reconciliation, al- 
 though among God's forces in nature and spirit 
 57 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 there are remedial agencies, tending to repair 
 and reconstruction. 
 
 Restitution is a duty, a consequence of recon- 
 ciliation, but hardly a condition demanded on 
 which it rests. If we become loyal again, we will 
 remove, as far as possible, all the results damag- 
 ing to him whom we wronged. But his forgive- 
 ness will precede this effort, and not wait for it. 
 Then there are many senses in which we are quite 
 unable to restore matters brought about by our 
 sins. Our God, against whom we have sinned, 
 stands injured forever. This is the awful nature 
 of sin; it can never be undone. 
 
 There are certain authors who seem to hold 
 that reconciliation is impossible without a full 
 restitution or a plan by which the evil of sin is 
 entirely removed or repaired. Dinsmore says: 
 " Forgiveness is not reconciliation. The latter is 
 a far more comprehensive word. Complete rec- 
 onciliation, we have learned, is impossible unless 
 both the injured and the injurer see that good has 
 come out of the evil done, or else have so strong 
 a faith in an overruling Providence as to believe 
 that the evil is caught up into God's redemptive 
 purpose and will be made to serve his ends." 
 ( ' ' Atonement in Literature and Life, ' ' 192. ) This 
 might be true if sinful deeds were the subject of 
 reconciliation. One could never be reconciled con- 
 cerning a deed unless it produced good, and not 
 evil. One might be reconciled with it, finally, if 
 its last effect were compensatory for its first ap- 
 parent evil. However, we are not dealing with 
 58 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 deeds, but with persons. Reconciliation with a 
 person might be similar to that with a deed, if the 
 attitude of the person were unchanging, as that 
 of a given deed always must be. But a person 
 may repudiate a deed, come to abhor it, apologize 
 for it, change his mind concerning it, and because 
 of this facility of change of attitude in a person, 
 reconciliation with him is possible. Both parties, 
 recognizing the endlessly evil nature of a deed 
 committed by one of them, yet may be reconciled 
 when the sinner is repentant. Forgiveness of the 
 sinner on the ground of repentance may produce 
 reconciliation with him without one ever being 
 reconciled with his deed. Reconciliation with the 
 sinner looks to the future ; reconciliation with his 
 deed looks to the past. Repentance is the word 
 which spells the difference between present char- 
 acter which may be justified and past deeds which 
 can not. 
 
 The question whether sin is forgivable in the 
 sense of the removal of its consequences seems 
 hardly to have received its final answer. George 
 Fox has a celebrated passage which breathes a 
 hope of complete recovery. He says : "And I saw 
 that there was an Ocean of Darkness and Death; 
 but an infinite Ocean of Light and Love flowed 
 over the Ocean of Darkness; and I saw in that 
 the infinite Love of God." Robert Browning's 
 optimistic lines seem to allow the immediate loss, 
 while breathing the certainty of final triumph of 
 God's love over evil: 
 
 59 
 
THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 My hope is that a sun will pierce 
 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 
 
 That after Last returns the First, 
 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched; 
 
 That what began best can't end worst, 
 
 Nor what God blessed once prove accurst. 
 
 Some make out a pretty good case of the idea 
 that sin automatically brings its own punishment. 
 Even ardent preachers of repentance, when they 
 come to preach from such a text as, " Whatsoever 
 a man soweth, that shall he also reap," make out 
 a pretty strong case against the remission of any 
 sin. One says: "God does not save us from the 
 consequences, but he educates us by them. Time 
 wall bring around the harvest of your own acts. 
 . . . Tragedy is not washed out by tears. We 
 may err in judgment and repent, and yet suffer 
 the consequences of our act. It is the inevitable 
 law of God. We may err in judgment and throw 
 ourselves off a cliff. Nature does not reverse her 
 law T of gravitation to protect us from harm. It 
 is inevitable that if we break the law we must 
 suffer the consequences." 
 
 Dr. John Young ("The Life and Light of 
 Men") has made out a rather troublesome argu- 
 ment, to which Dr. Dale ("Atonement," 320) 
 makes the following concession: "I do not regard 
 the remission of sins as being absolutely identical 
 with the escape from the penalties of sin. Sin is 
 sometimes forgiven, although some of the penal- 
 ties of sin are not recalled. But the remission 
 of sin must be understood to include the cancel- 
 60 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ling at least of the severest penalties with which 
 unforgiven sin is visited." 
 
 This seems to admit that repentant sin may 
 itself be punished to a degree, but not so severely 
 as unrepentant sin. That distinction might shed 
 some light ; but the question still remains : Is the 
 whole penalty of sin ever removed through for- 
 giveness? That various passages of Scripture 
 might be quoted in the affirmative is possible ; but 
 were they written with this specific question in 
 mind, and if their answer should be accepted, 
 could we not marshal other texts in contradiction 1 ? 
 If we look for our answer to actual observation 
 of life, our answer will probably be in the nega- 
 tive. 
 
 Is not the following discrimination enlighten- 
 ing? Forgiveness of sin restores the sinner to 
 fellowship with the Father. That is as far as it 
 directly goes. Whatever is involved in remittance 
 of penalty by this restored fellowship must be a 
 consequence of forgiveness ; but it is possible that 
 in many cases Grod leaves his child to suffer the 
 consequences of his action, while he takes him to 
 his heart with sympathy. Forgiveness does not 
 restore a part of us which has been lost by sin, 
 as an arm, or an eye, or a mental ability, or even 
 a spiritual power once lost. It does not undo the 
 consequences of sin by which we lost years of de- 
 velopment under the laws of life. ' ' The bird with 
 a broken pinion never soars so high again. ' ' The 
 wasted life of a man is not restored by a forgive- 
 ness which he may receive when he is old. Indeed, 
 61 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 it is hard to bring to our minds any restoration 
 through forgiveness. 
 
 God takes us up to his heart and fellowship; 
 we make a new start, and may make rapid prog- 
 ress in gaining what was lost — even Nature shows 
 great restorative powers ; but this seems to be the 
 limit. We never become under the blessing of 
 forgiveness just what we might have been, with 
 the same exertion as we now make. 
 
 Adam as represented by Milton ''was not 
 chiefly solicitous for his own salvation (charac- 
 ter). The horror of his deed was the woe entailed 
 upon unborn generations." Dante was troubled 
 about an atonement for the conscience and the 
 memory. For the memory, we must hold, there 
 is none ; for the conscience there is reconciliation 
 by insight into the workings of character's change 
 through repentance and regeneration. 
 
 Dinsmore places before us the hypothetical 
 case of the Prodigal Son having a younger 
 brother, whom he had led away with him, but who 
 did not return with him. Could there be a recon- 
 ciliation until that boy returned? 
 
 Atonement, taken in all its implications, in- 
 cludes the new mind and nature. This will impel 
 the Prodigal to go and rescue his younger brother, 
 if he can ; to undo any evil he may have done. But 
 the atonement, as we know it, does not guarantee 
 that the evil will be undone, even when we have 
 done our best. We may never be able to escape 
 regret for the evil that we did. It is hardly true 
 to the facts that reconciliation requires it. Dins- 
 62 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 more affirms (op. cit. 224) that "any explanation 
 of how at-one-ment with God is achieved that 
 leaves out of account cosmical evil and all that it 
 means to us is woefully provincial. ' ' This is go- 
 ing farther than anything we know from Scrip- 
 ture or from any other source justifies us. Cer- 
 tainly the following statement places forgiveness 
 on a wrong basis: "In the 'Paradise Lost' God 
 forgives Adam because he knows his own divine 
 purpose is not thwarted. Were he impotent in 
 the midst of a ruined world, defeated in his cher- 
 ished designs, while sin rioted in wild triumph, 
 then perfect forgiveness and reconciliation would 
 have been a very different matter. ' ' We dare to 
 say that such a calculating forgiveness would 
 have been unworthy of God, and also that God 
 has actually forgiven man amid the wreck of sin 
 to which history testifies. 
 
 "God forgives sin, but Nature never does." 
 This was the impassioned exclamation of an evan- 
 gelist while preaching from the text, "Whatso- 
 ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ' ' The 
 truth that seemed to be contained in the state- 
 ment obscured the inconsistency of making such 
 a distinction between what God does and what 
 Nature does : for Nature is nothing but the method 
 of God's activity. It can contain nothing that is 
 foreign to his will or work. 
 
 The justification for the statement is the effort 
 to correct the too sweeping portrayals of evan- 
 gelical preachers for many a decade that God's 
 forgiveness unmakes the fact and consequences 
 63 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 of sin. Such sweeping statements of the effect 
 of forgiveness have been so oft indulged in that a 
 hearer would suppose that a godly or righteous 
 life were of little significance if only an oppor- 
 tunity for forgiveness were afforded before this 
 life should close. It is a grave, practical question 
 whether such preaching has not rendered an 
 actual contribution to unrighteousness in giving 
 the impression that its effects may be utterly re- 
 moved. The moral government is represented as 
 a rather flabby thing, and that men may some- 
 what easily escape the penalty — all the penalty 
 of misdeeds, knowingly, triflingly, willfully com- 
 mitted. Whether such an inference is bound up 
 with the doctrine of the atonement is a question 
 of the greatest practical importance. If, on the 
 one hand, we shall find that moral government is 
 not with impunity to be tampered with, and thus 
 the sweeping statements about an atonement must 
 be guarded, on the other hand we have that which 
 more than compensates in the greater sanctions 
 of the moral law, which it is not the will of God 
 to undermine by the provisions of reconciliation 
 with man. 
 
 Herbert Spencer said, "Nature accepts no ex- 
 cuses." He evidently has in mind that cosmic 
 structure in which there is an exact sequence of 
 cause and effect. In that structure the only atone- 
 ment known is the atonement of changed action. 
 God is different from that "structure" in that he 
 may notice a changed mind as a factor in changed 
 personal relations. But it is going beyond the 
 64 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 known to affirm that God has arranged that a 
 changed mind shall have any effect, aside from 
 accompanying changed action, in the sequence of 
 cause and effect. 
 
 Somerville rightly arraigns the doctrine of im- 
 munity from the penalty of sin through atonement 
 in the following thorough fashion : ' ' Since the re- 
 vival of Pauline doctrine at the Eeformation it 
 has been customary to speak of the death of Christ 
 as a vicarious punishment inflicted upon him, in- 
 stead of upon us, by the Father, in order to satisfy 
 his justice in remitting our sins. Theologians 
 have magnified the significance of his death as a 
 divine infliction by representing it as designed to 
 take the place of the death that would otherwise 
 have been visited by God on sinners themselves. 
 But the difficulty about this explanation, in its 
 only intelligible form, is that the intended effect 
 has not followed; for men, believers and non- 
 believers alike, do in point of fact die still, and 
 Christ's death has not exhausted God's judgment 
 on sin, and has not relieved any from death as 
 the punishment of it in their own persons." 
 ("Paul's Conception of Christ," 89.)* 
 
 *Professor Borden P. Bowne says: "The moral life is seen 
 to involve two elements: relations of will and a set of organic 
 consequences." Forgiveness is the complacent adjustment of 
 the relations of will. One may be forgiven by another for an 
 evil deed. "But this would not end the matter; for in the 
 other field of law and outcome, forgiveness does not cancel con- 
 sequences. The spendthrift may be forgiven, but property is 
 gone. . . . We can begin again, but never at the beginning; 
 we must start from where we are." ("Studies in Christianity," 
 150, 152, 170.) 
 
 65 
 
THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 "If the meaning of sin is moral ruin, we shall 
 never be punished for our sins. It becomes clear 
 that we are punished by our sins." (Ascham, 
 "Help from the Hills," 229.) And John Young 
 ("Life and Light of Men") affirms that the power 
 of law is self-executing ; sin automatically has its 
 own punishment. The forgiveness of God is not 
 the disjointing of moral cause and consequence, 
 any more than it is the disjointing of physical 
 cause and consequence. Such a disjointing would 
 not spell salvation, but perdition, not only for 
 men and the earth, but for God and the heavens. 
 This wonderful world, so wisely and benevolently 
 made, pronounced good by its Creator, is not to 
 be so anarchized that it shall happen that un- 
 righteousness shall produce bliss or that right- 
 eousness shall produce misery. Such a revolu- 
 tion of moral sequences can not be effected in the 
 interest of any of God's creatures. If the prob- 
 lem of the atonement demands it, then it is better 
 that that problem forever remain unsolved. 
 Man's salvation can not be purchased by some- 
 thing worse than his perdition, and the destruc- 
 tion of the foundations of righteousness for all 
 other moral beings. 
 
 There is something irrevocable about sin. We 
 misunderstand atonement if we ever view it as 
 a means of its undoing. The following lines from 
 a non-Christian writer present a truth of world- 
 life which is a distinct factor in any problem 
 which Christianity must solve. 
 66 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 The moving finger writes; and having writ, 
 Moves on ; not all your piety nor wit 
 Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 
 Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. 
 
 ("Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," lxxxi.) 
 
 Doubtless the most marvelous picture of en- 
 during love ever painted is that by Hosea. His 
 love for his wife can not be destroyed by her in- 
 famous conduct. He follows her into the depths 
 and brings her back. But even this love can not 
 undo the loss. He brings her back not to be his 
 wife — at least not immediately. The past forbids 
 that. Invincible distinctions between right and 
 wrong forbid it. The loss is irretrievable, even 
 though love will not leave her to her sin. 
 
 This is intended to be a picture of Jehovah's 
 relation to Israel. The sequel showed that the 
 loss there was irretrievable. Israel is destroyed 
 from being the wife of Jehovah — and it was a 
 forever destruction. Israel never came back to 
 the old relations. Tennyson makes King Arthur 
 say to Guinevere: 
 
 "And all is past, the sin is sinn'd, and I 
 
 Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God 
 
 Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest. 
 
 I can not touch thy lips, they are not mine, 
 But Lancelot's: nay, they never were the king's. 
 I can not take thy hand: that too is flesh, 
 And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh, 
 67 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 Here looking down on thine polluted, cries 
 
 'I loathe thee:' yet not less, Guinevere, 
 
 For I was ever virgin save for thee, 
 
 My love through flesh hath wrought into my life 
 
 So far, that my doom is, I love thee still. 
 
 Let no man dream hut that I love thee still. 
 
 Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, 
 
 And so thou lean on our fair Father Christ, 
 
 Hereafter in that world where all are pure 
 
 We two may meet before high God, and thou 
 
 Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know 
 
 I am thy husband — not a smaller soul, 
 
 Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that, 
 
 I charge thee, my last hope." 
 
 After he is gone, Guinevere feels the same ir- 
 retrievable past: 
 
 "His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord, the King, 
 
 My own true lord! how dare I call him mine? 
 
 The shadow of another cleaves to me, 
 
 And makes me one pollution: he, the king, 
 
 Called me polluted: shall I kill myself? 
 
 What help in that? I can not kill my sin, 
 
 If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame; 
 
 No, nor by living can I live it down. 
 
 The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months, 
 
 The months will add themselves and make the years, 
 
 The years will roll into centuries, 
 
 And mine will ever be a name of scorn." 
 
 Says E. S. Lewis in Sunday School Journal, 
 April, 1913, p. 289: ''Many a sin is doubtless com- 
 mitted under the delusion that forgiveness will 
 68 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 wipe it out. In fact we know nothing of a pardon 
 that undoes the past. ' What is written is written. ' 
 The most dangerous doctrine that could be 
 preached is that sin and its consequences are ob- 
 literated by pardon. There is no warrant for this 
 either in Scripture or experience. Never forget 
 the portentous words, 'Be not deceived; God is 
 not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that 
 shall he also reap. ' These solemn words no doc- 
 trine of pardoning grace nullifies for a moment. 
 Esau repented, but his lost birthright came not 
 back. He earnestly desired to inherit the bless- 
 ing, but 'he was rejected; for he found no place 
 for a change of mind in his father, though he 
 sought it diligently with tears.' King David's 
 penitence for his awful sin found expression in 
 the most humble and tender words that ever 
 voiced the feelings of a broken heart, and God 
 answered them Avith his pardon. Yet Nathan told 
 David that because he had done this wickedness 
 the sword should never depart from his house, 
 and it never did. Though David made his peace 
 with God, the consequences of his sin marched 
 straight on to the dreadful humiliation and suffer- 
 ing of the aged king under the frightful outrages 
 of Absalom. It is a terrible thing to make light 
 of sin, and we do make light of it when we slight 
 or ignore its inevitable consequences. As long as 
 cause produces effect, and memory recalls the 
 past, and habit binds us in its strong cords, so 
 long must we realize that it is an exceeding evil 
 and bitter thing to sin against God. The sinner 
 69 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 can be pardoned, but he can never be innocent 
 again. Even the forgiven sin stands recorded on 
 the deathless page, and this record is a part of 
 the things that are." 
 
 Dinsmore affirms that "the irrevocableness of 
 the past is one of George Eliot's fundamental 
 teachings. A sin once launched into the world 
 leaves a trail of blood and tears which can neither 
 be forgotten nor effaced. A breach once made 
 can not be repaired. The reconciliation of Arthur 
 Dinnithorne and Adam Bede is only a friendly 
 union hallowed by a common sorrow. . . . Such 
 measure of reconciliation as is possible, ... is 
 won by repentance, confession, and a suffering 
 energy repairing in some degree the evil done. 
 Arthur's last words were: 'But you told me a 
 truth when you said to me once, ' ' There 's a sort 
 of wrong that can never be made up for." ' " 
 (Op. cit. 121-2.) George Eliot does not 
 
 forecast the years, 
 And find in loss a gain to match, 
 Or reach a hand through time to catch 
 The far-off interest of tears. 
 
 She does not say with Tennyson: 
 
 0, yet we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill. 
 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete. 
 70 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 Faith may, if it sees a motive, believe in the 
 larger "hope," expressed by Tennyson. We will 
 not chide the hope; we only affirm that, so far as 
 our knowledge of human life goes, no foundation 
 is laid for it in the known. 
 
 Can sin committed be made a source of good? 
 Dinsmore seems to answer in the affirmative ; for 
 he says (p. 241) : "For a true soul every fall may 
 become a fall upward, every loss may be made to 
 produce a high result in gain." He thinks that 
 Milton in "Paradise Eegained" has answered the 
 question in the same way. "The schools have 
 taught expiation by suffering, a divine wrath ap- 
 peased by torture, the pain of one accepted by 
 a legal fiction for the condemnation of many. 
 Milton opens a sunnier, healthier region of 
 thought. To make forgiveness rational, there 
 must, indeed, be a satisfaction given both to jus- 
 tice and to love; but it is no legal fiction that is 
 offered — a real amendment is made; the hurt of 
 sin is healed; its direful consequences are changed 
 to good. 
 
 "... There must be a social and cosmic 
 atonement, an actual repair of the havoc of sin, 
 else the individual whose sins have polluted the 
 stream of humanity and entailed suffering upon 
 others can never have an untormenting conscience 
 or a tranquil memory. His 'Lethe' is the insight 
 of faith into the nature of God and the complete 
 divine victory over all evil." (114.) 
 
 The question is fundamental ; the answer given 
 above seems a triumph of God in history. We 
 71 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 believe that history proves it false. Sin is an eter- 
 nal loss. The above answer rests upon the fact 
 of the advantages gained by the introduction of 
 the new forces of the incarnation. Sin's apparent 
 benefits rest on the assumption that without it 
 the incarnation would never have been a factor 
 in human perfection. This assumption, as we be- 
 lieve, is insecurely founded. 
 
 This idea that sin may be taken up into the 
 Divine plan and become the occasion, if not the 
 cause, of good is based upon the absolute sover- 
 eignty of God. But if God were an absolute Sov- 
 ereign there would be no such thing as sin, or else 
 God himself would be its Author: for where ab- 
 solute sovereignty is exercised, every thing that 
 is is its product. If there is such a thing as ab- 
 solute sovereignty, then why do we blame Judas 
 for enacting his part in the divine program? why 
 do we condemn Pilate for consigning the Christ 
 to the cross in such a cowardly and wicked man- 
 ner? Indeed, this assumption confuses all moral 
 judgments by assuming that whatever was done 
 in history was accomplished by the divine pur- 
 pose. God thus seems to be behind all moral ac- 
 tions, even those which we have been accustomed 
 to call extremely wicked. 
 
 The Biblical position concerning this question 
 seems to be: Before the creation of man God 
 was, indeed, the undisturbed and undisputed Ab- 
 solute. By his own volition he limited this ab- 
 solute sovereignty in his decision to bring into 
 being other moral beings in his own likeness and 
 72 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 image, who, if moral at all, must be free ; and if 
 free, must have a realm, either large or small, 
 where they may be sovereign. This human sov- 
 ereignty, however small the area of its exercise, 
 implies that in that area God as Sovereign is ex- 
 cluded until man by his free volition bids him 
 come in and rule. And when he accepts this in- 
 vitation he does not thereby establish absolute 
 Sovereignty or destroy man's; for God remains 
 only while man wills it, and retires when man 
 bids it. Thus it will be seen that the theoretical 
 sovereignty assumed as a starting point for 
 thought comes to an end when God brings into 
 life another being, who, to be like himself, is also 
 a sovereign. In the nature of the case there can 
 not be two absolute sovereigns in the same area. 
 God, then, does not have his way ; sin is not taken 
 up into the divine plan, but remains forever ex- 
 ternal to it; remains forever the wicked and evil 
 thing that it is; remains forever an obstruction 
 to the Divine goodness and plan. The author of 
 it must forever bear its awful burden, in so far 
 as it can not be overcome consistently with the 
 structure of the universe, the natures of God and 
 man. We believe that Judas and Pilate and the 
 Jews, in clamoring for the crucifixion of Jesus, 
 were unlimitedly and responsibly wicked and had 
 nothing to do with carrying out the Divine plan. 
 They stood in the way of it. They hindered it 
 with all their sovereign power. They, and not 
 God, are responsible for his crucifixion. Any 
 other wicked event, which God within the field of 
 73 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 his own sovereignty may so overrule as to save 
 from utter wreckage, rests its awful burden of 
 condemnation upon him who does it. God has no 
 program which involves the necessity of sin. 
 
 So wickedness remains wicked; its results 
 never are good, but always represent the thing 
 that God would not have. We can never excuse 
 the sinner with the thought that he has been the 
 occasion of good. The good would have been 
 greater if God had had his way. The fruit of sin 
 is eternally a subtraction from potential good. 
 
 Such an event as the elevation of Joseph to 
 power after his brothers had sold him into slavery 
 does not prove that sin is a source or cause of 
 good. Joseph's elevation was a result of Jo- 
 seph's virtue; only his slavery was causally con- 
 nected with the wickedness of his brothers. What 
 would have happened to them both if they had 
 not sinned is entirely hidden from our view and 
 can not enter into our argument. On general 
 principles we are amply justified in believing that 
 goodness leads to welfare and that evil is not a 
 necessary link in the program of God. 
 
 Campbell ("Nature of the Atonement," 136) 
 presents a puzzle, the analysis of which may en- 
 able us to see added light on our subject of the 
 atonement's limitation. He presents to us the 
 "supposition that all the sin of man had been 
 committed by one human spirit, and that spirit, 
 preserving its personal identity, and retaining 
 the memory of what it had been, should become 
 perfectly righteous. Had such a case been pos- 
 74 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 sible, how would the righteous God deal with such 
 a spirit? In the language of Luther, sin and 
 righteousness being met in one person, which 
 would prevail! Would the absolute repentance 
 and sorrow for the past sin, which is necessarily 
 implied in the present righteousness, be an atone- 
 ment for that past sin and leave the righteous 
 God free to receive that present righteous with 
 the favor due it, or would justice call for venge- 
 ance? This would be a perplexing dilemma, on 
 the assumption of the correctness of the theory 
 of divine justice that represents that attribute 
 of God as a necessity of the divine nature which 
 necessitates the giving to every spirit that which 
 is righteously due it — which, in this case, would 
 imply the necessity both to punish the past sin 
 and reward the present righteousness, and this 
 forever — an impossible combination." 
 
 I suppose that one element of this dilemma is 
 the assumption that an atonement is to do some- 
 thing for our past, which is not actually in the 
 problem, as we think. It may relieve the puzzle 
 a little to remind ourselves that we are dealing 
 with a person, and not with an abstraction called 
 "sins." A person's deserts are simple, and not 
 thus complex. If he is righteous, he may be 
 treated as righteous. His relation to a sinful past 
 is that of repudiation. The past is irredeemable ; 
 it can not be undone; it can not be made to be 
 right ; for it is not like a commercial transaction, 
 where a debt, a concrete thing, may be paid. It 
 is simply something which ought not to have 
 75 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 been, and nothing can now be done which can 
 make it something which ought to have been. A 
 sin is an eternal loss as soon as committed, and 
 nothing can be done with it or with the person 
 who committed it that can change it into a neu- 
 tral thing or a moral gain. So we may lay that 
 consideration to one side as an impossible prob- 
 lem. 
 
 "The mill will never grind with the water 
 that is past." (MacCallum.) 
 
 What remains that can be done? What shall 
 be done with the person ! How shall he be treated 
 in the interest of the universe, of society, of Di- 
 vine rights? 
 
 In the interest of society he should publicly 
 repudiate his sin and accept a new righteous life. 
 Without this, evil conduct will seem to have been 
 as meritorious as good conduct. Hence without 
 this he should rest under condemnation and its 
 attendant misery and pain. 
 
 By this repudiation the past rights of Deity 
 are not repaired, nor is there any possible way 
 by which they may be, so far as we can see. For- 
 giveness does not right them; punishment does 
 not repair them. It would seem that sin for God 
 is an eternal loss, and Deity himself must eter- 
 nally wear the scar that was made. But this be- 
 ing granted, what of the future ? Death or punish- 
 ment of the sinner is but a further loss even to 
 Deity, it being conceded that Deity has an inter- 
 est in the sinner. Forgiveness, on the ground of 
 repudiation of sin and an accepted new life, seems 
 76 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 to conserve all that has not been irremediably 
 lost by sin already committed. 
 
 What, then, is the work of Jesus in bringing 
 about this restoration? It is in securing the re- 
 pentance, the change of mind, which leads to the 
 repudiation and new life accepted. He accom- 
 plishes all that the case admits after sin has done 
 its wrecking. All other workings seem a conjury 
 of the imagination, arising from a false view of 
 the demands of God as just. 
 
 The ''Scarlet Letter" sets forth with great 
 power the necessity of confession in the person 
 of Mr. Dimmesdale, and of suffering in the per- 
 son of Hester Prynne. "Hester had committed 
 a sin which militated against the social well-being. 
 Society is righteous in the condemnation of the 
 sin, and can not fully forgive her until she is no 
 longer in any degree representative of it. Re- 
 pentance and confession but partially release her. 
 She is still associated with it. Its nature will be 
 judged by its painful effects upon her. If she 
 lives a life of luxurious ease, her sin will appear 
 but a soft infirmity, and not the destructive thing 
 that it is. Thus does Hester propitiate the right- 
 eous recoil of her social world from her by a suf- 
 fering, benevolent life which robs sin of all its 
 fascination and transforms her character into a 
 source of light, and not darkness, and sets in 
 motion numberless currents of good." (Dins- 
 more, op. cit. 130.) 
 
 This illustration shows vividly that reconcili- 
 ation is based not only upon the repentance of 
 77 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 the offender, but also assumes the power of the 
 offended to know the depth and sincerity of the 
 repentance. In the case of society this latter 
 power is strictly limited, and hence reconciliation 
 is based upon certain conventional and outward 
 safeguards. But God knows the heart of the sin- 
 ner ; his forgiveness may be as free and as prompt 
 as his knowledge of repentance is complete. 
 
 The idea of unlimited atonement is negatived 
 by a teaching of Jesus that forgiveness of sins 
 is morally conditioned, not only by repentance at 
 the moment, but by future conduct. "If ye for- 
 give men their trespasses, your heavenly Father 
 will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men 
 their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Fa- 
 ther forgive your trespasses." (Matt. 6: 14, 15.) 
 That this law may be applied to the future as 
 well as the present is shown by the parable of the 
 Ungrateful Servant. (Matt. 18: 23-35.) In that 
 case the servant was forgiven; but when he 
 turned upon his fellow-servant and would inflict 
 a punishment from which he by grace had just 
 escaped, the forgiveness was withdrawn by the 
 king, and he was held exactly to the full original 
 debt. This suggests that forgiveness represents 
 a sort of suspended sentence, hanging over one 
 during good behavior. Every relationship of 
 justification is manifested while we show forth 
 the spirit of Him who forgave us. No reproach 
 for a past, now inescapable, is heaped upon us. 
 But a certain humility and self-distrust is the 
 appropriate demeanor of the forgiven sinner that 
 78 
 
LIMITATIONS OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 would not be expected in the case of one who 
 had never sinned. It is very clear that trans- 
 gressions change one's status with the Father, 
 even though one may be forgiven. The comment 
 that life makes upon this is that when one falls 
 from a status of grace, he returns to the identical 
 mode of sinful life that he practiced before he 
 was forgiven and taken into Divine fellowship. 
 "We will need to say little of that limitation 
 of the atonement which has been attached to the 
 doctrine known as Calvinistic, which limitation 
 was in regard to the number of those who were 
 intended to receive its benefits. That doctrine 
 has been the cause of an age-long battle in the 
 theological field. Probably no influential thinker 
 in the world now holds it. It may be believed in 
 some belated and benighted corner of the earth; 
 but even there it will disappear when that de- 
 prived section shall come into contact with the 
 present world's thought. That doctrine has been 
 routed from the field not by exegesis, which 
 usually leaves such contests a drawn battle, but 
 rather by the estimate which the Christian con- 
 sciousness of the world places upon the character 
 of God. When clearly stated that limitation is 
 repudiated as inconsistent with God's love, which 
 must be universal if it is love at all, and incon- 
 sistent with the sense of justice which, it is be- 
 lieved, must be found in the character of God in 
 an ideally perfect degree. Whatever atonement 
 is available for one, we may well believe, is avail- 
 able for all. If we may found our hopes on God's 
 79 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 atonement at all, we need not hesitate in accept- 
 ing its universality. 
 
 The elimination of the idea of substitution 
 changes the point of view in this discussion and 
 renders much that is said inapt. If Christ suf- 
 fered instead of persons, then it is a most vital 
 point to determine just who those persons are. 
 The whole matter seems to turn on that which is 
 in the Divine Mind and purpose. But if Christ 
 died on behalf of men in an effort to bring about 
 a reconciliation of them to God, then the attitude 
 of the Divine seems more general, and the issue 
 turns more emphatically on the human response 
 to the Divine effort, or proposition, or proffer. 
 The universality or partiality of the atonement 
 still remains of immeasurable importance ; but it 
 would hardly ever occur to any one to question 
 its general character. It so throws the responsi- 
 bility upon human acceptance and appropriation 
 that it is a gratuitous difficulty to imagine that 
 God takes any responsibility for shutting any one 
 out of its benefits. 
 
 80 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 THE VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 "God so loved the world that he gave his Son." 
 It was the love of God that caused the loss to him 
 of his Son. If two persons are bound together 
 by the bond of love, then when one surfers the 
 other must also. It is impossible that one should 
 be indifferent while the other is suffering loss. 
 So the law of the vicarious must be as wide- 
 reaching as love. There is only one imaginable 
 place where it does not operate ; that place is Hell, 
 the only place known to us where love does not 
 operate. Even when the love is not reciprocal, 
 where one person loves but is not loved in return, 
 there the loving must suffer along with the loved. 
 The Cross is a perfect symbol of this vicarious 
 bond. It does not really create an obligation to 
 love; it only reveals it. That obligation rests 
 upon the fact that God is love — just as really be- 
 fore the Cross as afterwards. It only creates a 
 new condition for us. We know the love of God 
 afterwards as we did not before; we know the 
 eternal bond which binds him to us. So the ob- 
 ligation is manifested. If we could have known 
 it without the Cross, as we now know it, it would 
 be hard to see from this point of view that the 
 cross was a necessity: for we hold that we are 
 81 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 not redeemed by suffering, as a price paid to jus- 
 tice, but by love, to the manifestation of which 
 the Cross gave the supreme occasion. There may 
 be other reasons for the Cross which will be mani- 
 fested in other relations ; but we now find a suffi- 
 cient reason for it in the manifestation of the vi- 
 carious principle that God could not be bound to 
 us by love without suffering for our sins. Such 
 suffering could not be penal suffering ; it is sym- 
 pathetic. ' ' Let my reader endeavor to realize the 
 thought: The Sufferer suffers what he suffers 
 just through seeing sin and sinners with God's 
 eyes and feeling in reference to them with God's 
 heart. Is such suffering a punishment? Is God 
 in causing such a Divine experience in humanity 
 inflicting a punishment? There can be but one 
 answer." (Campbell, ''Nature of the Atone- 
 ment," 102.) 
 
 Christ suffered on account of the sins of the 
 world just because he knows the nature of sin, 
 and that there is a dire experience to the sinner. 
 To suffer so is not the imposition of an outside 
 will. He could suffer most because he was most 
 sympathetic. It is in this sense that he bears 
 our sins, and not in the sense that their penalty 
 is placed upon him arbitrarily, and by that impo- 
 sition lifted from the soul of the sinner. The 
 whole thought of substitutionary suffering shifts 
 the nature of the transaction, and so severs us 
 from Jesus Christ as to destroy the greatest con- 
 solation of the Incarnation. By this same sym- 
 pathetic bond Jesus suffers now for the sins of 
 82 
 
VICAEIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 the world; and yet it is absurd to say that he 
 must suffer eternally the penalty of sins. "In 
 Jesus of Nazareth the Eternal Word felt the 
 pangs of the Cross. But that three hours of pain 
 was not a spasm ending in unbroken joy. It was 
 symbolical of a perpetual feeling. What Jesus 
 experienced in spiritual revulsion from sin, and 
 its suffering on its behalf, is a revelation of an 
 unchanging consciousness in God. . . . There 
 was a Cross in the heart of God before there was 
 one planted on the green hill outside of Jerusa- 
 lem. And now that the cross of wood has been 
 taken down, the one in the heart of God abides, 
 and it will remain so long as there is a sinful 
 soul for whom to suffer." (Dinsmore, "Atone- 
 ment in Literature and Life," 232-3.) 
 
 The vicarious principle everywhere abounds. 
 Is it the same as the substitutional 1 ? Is it the same 
 to suffer sympathetically for a person as to suffer 
 legally in the stead of a person? Evidently there 
 is some synonymity or identity; but there is also 
 some difference. We can sometimes suffer phys- 
 ically instead of another; we can transfer their 
 inevitable suffering to ourselves. But we can not 
 transfer their moral sufferings to ourselves. If 
 one has done wrong and suffers the condemnation 
 of conscience, that suffering conscience can not 
 be transferred to any one else. It is an entirely 
 personal matter. Yet, of course, I can suffer for 
 a person because he is a sinner. I can put myself 
 under a burden of persuasion that is painful to 
 experience; I can suffer from sorrow for him. 
 83 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 In many cases I can suffer on his account, but 
 not in his stead. With this distinction in mind 
 the vicarious suffering of Jesus may be fully ad- 
 mitted, while rejecting the substitutional suffer- 
 ings attributed on the ground of imputation to 
 him of the sinner's sin as impossible and perhaps 
 immoral. 
 
 That this vicarious or sympathetic suffering 
 may touch the limits of substitutional is shown 
 in the following word of Forsyth: "Christ, in 
 identifying himself with sinful man, had to take 
 the sin's consequences, and especially its judg- 
 ment, else the identification would not be com- 
 plete and the love would come short. He must 
 somehow identify himself in a sympathetic way, 
 even with man's self-condemnation, which is the 
 reflection of his judgment of God. I need hardly 
 allude to the familiar illustrations of the shame 
 which innocent people feel through the crime of 
 a kinsman. . . . No one can forgive in full who 
 does not feel the fullness of the offense. To feel 
 the fullness of the offense as the Holiest must, is 
 to feel the wrath the Holiest feels." ("Positive 
 Preaching," 364.) 
 
 This principle not only brought Jesus to suf- 
 fering when his people were in suffering, but it 
 also brought his disciples to share his atoning 
 suffering. This point was a great difficulty for 
 his disciples when Jesus drew near to the cross. 
 They could feel that something was impending, 
 and their expectations were that the Kingdom 
 was about to be established, and that they were 
 84 
 
VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 to enter into places of power. John and James 
 were especially prompt in presenting their re- 
 quests for preferment. Jesus, on the other hand, 
 saw that the crisis meant suffering and death to 
 them, and sought to prepare their minds for it. 
 (Matt. 23:38.) 
 
 Fairbairn comments on this point as follows : 
 "But at this point as to what was to be accom- 
 plished by His death, he and they radically dif- 
 fered. They thought that by the cross he was 
 to die and they were to live, but he believed that 
 they through his death were not to live but die. 
 This idea fills his later teaching; it is the moral, 
 not simply of the apocalyptic discourses, but of 
 the parables already noticed, of his words to the 
 women of Jerusalem, and of his lamentation over 
 the city. It was the supreme Nemesis of history. ' ' 
 (" Philosophy of the Christian Religion," 422.) 
 
 The same principle must bring all the follow- 
 ers of Jesus into the place of suffering redeemers 
 until the world shall have given up its sin and 
 the consequent misery. Instead of the Chris- 
 tian's place being one of unalloyed pleasure and 
 happiness, it is one where the world's woe presses 
 upon him, because he is bound by social ties to 
 the world about him. Many resist this principle 
 and shrink from the Christian's burdens of suf- 
 fering for the world, the sacrifice of money and 
 time, and the endurance of weariness and pain; 
 but in so far as they do, they do not correctly 
 represent the great Redeemer of men. 
 
 The vicarious element in life is dependent 
 85 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 upon the fact that often sin's most dreadful curse 
 is not visited upon the one who commits it, but 
 the wreckage of it is found in the lives and for- 
 tunes of others. This becomes possible because 
 entire humanity is one organism, from the be- 
 ginning of creation to the end of time, in which 
 each individual is tied by bonds, more or less dis- 
 tinguishable, to every other individual, either in 
 giving or receiving impressions. Recent dis- 
 coveries of science show that the hereditary 
 stream of being may be willfully polluted and poi- 
 soned, but can not be cleansed by voluntary action. 
 According to Milton, Adam thus laments: 
 
 "Yet well, if here would end 
 The misery! I deserved it, and would bear 
 My own deservings. But this will not serve : 
 All that I eat or drink, or shall beget, 
 Is propagated curse. . . . 
 
 In me all 
 Posterity stands cursed. Fair patrimony 
 That I must leave ye, Sons ! 0, were I able 
 To waste it all myself, and leave ye none ! ' ' 
 
 Sometimes the sinner is less sensitive to the 
 direct effects of his action than is some one else 
 related to him. A daughter may be so giddy and 
 frivolous that her actions do not hurt her nearly 
 so much as they do her mother who is sensitive 
 and endowed with high ideals. In that case suf- 
 fering is endured chiefly by the one who is re- 
 lated. Sorrow for sin, then, is not regret for the 
 direct sufferings that come to me, the sinner ; but 
 86 
 
VICAEIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 pain for the suffering that I have caused others. 
 It would be a poor atonement that made me re- 
 pine simply under the direct consequences to my- 
 self of my own sin. An adequate atonement must 
 make me the vicarious sufferer for the wrong that 
 rests on others, for the sin that I have done, as 
 well as to bear the pain which I endure because of 
 the wrongs that others are doing. 
 
 The above illustration of the mother and 
 daughter will enable us to recognize a vicarious 
 suffering that is not at all substitutional. The 
 daughter does not suffer much just for the reason 
 that she is gay and giddy, and the voice of con- 
 science is easily drowned, and the sinful deeds 
 require time to perfect their fruit. But the 
 mother knows the nature of sin; she sees the 
 coming harvest of shame and misery which her 
 daughter must reap; she suffers intensely in all 
 her daughter's sin. She suffers because she is 
 tied up closely by sympathy and love to her 
 daughter. But she does not suffer for her daugh- 
 ter in the sense of instead of her daughter. The 
 daughter will suffer just as much as if she had 
 no mother to suffer on her account, so far as guilt 
 is concerned. And in the day when the daughter 
 comes to herself, and sees that her sin has not 
 only brought a harvest of evil to herself, but a 
 world of anguish to a good and fond mother, will 
 not her anguish for sin be all the more, just be- 
 cause such unselfish love has been exercised over 
 her? 
 
 In that day when the daughter comes home 
 87 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 sick and broken by her sin, and the mother waits 
 over her in the long days of fever and weakness 
 which have overtaken her, that is surely vicarious 
 suffering on the part of the mother; is it substi- 
 tutional suffering ? It looks like it at first glance. 
 But an analysis shows that it is not sin or sin's 
 penalty that the mother is suffering, but rather 
 love's penalty, the penalty that heals. The 
 mother pays the price of restoration, she does not 
 bear the burden of condemnation. She illustrates 
 the saying that there is no " forgiveness without 
 the shedding of blood," in the sense that sin's 
 cure is always a great price ; but there is no sug- 
 gestion here that blood must be shed before the 
 process of restoration can be begun. Life is 
 spent in the labor of restoration, and not as a 
 price to be paid before a restoring process may 
 be inaugurated. In the light of this illustration, 
 if it illustrates at all, may we not say that love 
 condemned Jesus to the cross — a love that would 
 not allow him to turn from the path of the Re- 
 deemer of men, because it was so costly — and not 
 that the wrath of God toward anybody made the 
 cross necessary? The cross was not an expres- 
 sion of condemnation ; it was an expression of how 
 far God would go in restoring man to divine fel- 
 lowship. 
 
 Chaplain Charles C. McCabe became a Chris- 
 tian when only a child, and remained faithful to 
 that early experience through a long and useful 
 life, including the scenes and temptations of a 
 soldier's life. When he returned from the war 
 88 
 
VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 he found his brother one evening in the custody 
 of the police. He said to the officer, " Do n 't you 
 know, officer, that that is my brother?" I know 
 it, Mr. McCabe," said the officer, "but I must 
 lock him up for his own safety." The chaplain 
 begged the privilege of being locked up with him, 
 and it was granted. When the brother awakened 
 from his drunken stupor and found himself thus 
 accompanied in the prison by his own brother, it 
 broke his heart, and Chaplain McCabe was thus 
 able to win his brother to Christ. Without this 
 vicarious shame and suffering, in human proba- 
 bility, he would have failed to win his brother. 
 Ordinary persuasion and influence had already 
 been exerted and had failed through the long 
 years. Thus do brothers always suffer for 
 brothers, and by voluntarily sharing their misery 
 do they win them back to righteousness, a task 
 so great as to be accomplished by a sacrifice no 
 less. As Henry James says : ' ' We meet at every 
 turn, with Hawthorne, his favorite fancy of com- 
 municated sorrows and inevitable atonements. 
 Life is an experience in which we expiate the sins 
 of others in the intervals of expiating our own. ' ' 
 Campbell (Op. cit. 115) holds that the sufferings 
 of Christ were not penal, but were rather an 
 expression of the divine Mind concerning "a 
 manifestation by the Son of what our sins ares 
 to the Father's heart. This suffering was neces- 
 sary to the perfection of his witness-bearing for 
 the Father." 
 
 The breadth and fruitfulness of this principle 
 89 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 are beautifully set forth in the following state- 
 ment of Phillips Brooks: " Atonement by suffer- 
 ing is the result of the Incarnation; Atonement 
 being the necessary and Suffering the incidental 
 element of that result. But Sacrifice is an essen- 
 tial element, for Sacrifice truly signifies here the 
 consecration of human nature to its highest use 
 and utterance, and does not necessarily involve 
 the thought of pain. It is not the destruction but 
 the fulfillment of human life. Inasmuch as the 
 human life thus consecrated and fulfilled is the 
 same in us as in Jesus, and inasmuch as his con- 
 secration and fulfillment of it makes morally pos- 
 sible for us the same consecration and fulfillment 
 of it which he achieved, therefore his atonement 
 and his Sacrifice, and incidentally his suffering, 
 become vicarious. It is not that they make un- 
 necessary, but that they make possible and suc- 
 cessful in us the same processes which were per- 
 fect in him. The vicariousness of Jesus is of the 
 sort with and has its distant repetitions and il- 
 lustrations in the sacrifices by which the men in 
 whom God is most revealed open for others the 
 way to God and the divine life. " (" Life and Let- 
 ters," ii, 477.) Hugh Price Hughes says in one 
 of his sermons: "All suffering which is not the 
 result of willful personal sin is vicarious, is 
 Christ-like, is divine, is part of the remedial proc- 
 ess by which the whole universe is being blessed, 
 is a helpful ingredient in the restitution of all 
 things. ' ' 
 
 "The Son of man also came not to be minis- 
 90 
 
VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 tered unto, but to minister, and to give his life 
 a ransom for many." Fidelity to duty, loyalty 
 to social and kindred ties, point the road to the 
 sacrificial life that Jesus lived and the painful 
 death he died. That law was illustrated and not 
 exhausted in his person. Insight into that prin- 
 ciple was sufficient, even without the foresight of 
 a seer to have made it clear to him at any point 
 of his career that the cross was the inevitable 
 goal of his career. The following incident by an 
 anonymous writer shows that the law is exempli- 
 fied in the every-day affairs of life. ' ' Eight years 
 ago I became acquainted with a young girl, a 
 member of a Catholic family. She had become 
 converted and united with our Church. Her par- 
 ents, finding threats and ridicule of no avail, 
 finally removed to a distant part of the town; but, 
 nothing daunted, the young girl walked the long 
 distance twice every Sabbath. Though terribly 
 deformed in body, she is a girl of bright intellect, 
 and had received a long-coveted offer of an ex- 
 cellent position with a munificent salary. But to 
 accept this would necessitate her leaving home 
 altogether. Caring more for the salvation of her 
 family than worldly prosperity and honor, she 
 decided to remain where she was and follow a 
 humble trade, though misjudged and even ill-used. 
 With as yet not the least sign of success she is 
 patiently plodding on, amid scorn, contempt, and 
 ridicule. She is my ideal of a noble woman, be- 
 cause she bears her trials in a patient, uncom- 
 plaining manner, making no fuss over her sacri- 
 91 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 fices, and, indeed, in her humility never thinking 
 of them as such, caring more to please her Savior 
 than herself." Here is suffering vicarious, but 
 not penal nor substitutional. Her suffering is not 
 a price paid to the principle of justice ; it is the 
 price that love pays, compelled by the social and 
 kindred ties that bind life to life and heart to 
 heart. 
 
 "I was hungry, and ye did not give me to 
 eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I 
 was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, 
 and ye clothed me not ; sick, and in prison, and ye 
 visited me not. Then shall they also answer, say- 
 ing, when saw we thee hungry or a thirst, or a 
 stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did 
 not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer 
 them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch 
 as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, 
 ye did it not unto me." (Matt. 25: 42-45.) 
 
 Fairbairn in commenting on these words says : 
 ' ' In the most authentic and sublime of the apoca- 
 lyptic discourses he affirms what we may call the 
 vicarious principle. The good or the ill of his 
 people is his ; they are one with him and he with 
 them. The smallest beneficence to the least of 
 his brethren is done to him ; the good refused to 
 them is denied to him. And we may add, this 
 idea implies its converse: if their sufferings are 
 his, his are theirs ; what he endures and what he 
 achieves, man achieves and man endures." 
 (Op. cit. 417.) 
 
 92 
 
VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 This principle is imbedded in the very form 
 of our creation. Man is constituted in the begin- 
 ning a member of his brother. What one suffers, 
 all suffer; what one achieves, all achieve. This 
 principle has been nullified, however, by sin in 
 the form of selfishness, in which one attempts to 
 withdraw from his brothers, to neglect and not 
 feel their woes, or even attempting to advance his 
 own good by their want and misery. The prin- 
 ciple, then, must be re-established by love, sym- 
 pathy, and mutual interest. These moral forces 
 must repair the rents in human nature as orig- 
 inally constituted, made by man's unnaturalness 
 and unbrotherliness. The principle was ex- 
 pressed even in the old dispensation, when it was 
 said, "In all their (children of Israel) affliction, 
 he (Jehovah) was afflicted."* 
 
 "Now, when these things were done, the 
 princes drew near unto me, saying, The people 
 of Israel, and the priests and the Levites, have 
 not separated themselves from the people of the 
 lands, doing according to their abominations. . . . 
 For they have taken of their daughters for them- 
 selves and for their sons, so that the holy seed 
 have mingled themselves with the peoples of the 
 lands : yea, the hand of the princes and the rulers 
 hath been chief in this trespass. And when I 
 heard this thing, I rent my garment and my robe, 
 
 *For a very forceful statement of the principle, see Ascham: 
 "Help from the Hills," 243-248.) 
 
 93 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 and plucked off the hair of my head and my 
 beard, and sat down dumbfounded." (Ezra 
 9:1-3.) 
 
 Any one who gives himself to Jesus Christ 
 and becomes Christlike in heart, immediately will 
 have a desire for the salvation of other men. In 
 the degree in which one appropriates the charac- 
 ter of Jesus does this desire grow in intensity 
 until it may become consuming and tend to a 
 broken heart, as has been often shown in the case 
 of great Christians. One day Henry Drummond 
 leaned up against a post in the city of Edinburgh 
 sobbing bitterly. People passed him without rec- 
 ognizing him or knowing the cause of his sorrow. 
 At last one of his friends saw him and went to 
 him and said, "Drummond, what is the matter?" 
 He replied, "My heart will break unless I can get 
 some of these men to come to Christ." He was 
 never well after. He went down in greater and 
 greater weakness until the end came, dying of 
 a broken heart for the sins of men. 
 
 The same incident occurred in the life of Hugh 
 Price Hughes. His assistant, Mr. Walters, went 
 to his room one morning and found him all alone. 
 In response to his knock came a feeble invitation 
 to come in. He found him sobbing. On inquiry 
 as to what was the matter, he replied, ' ' Oh, Wal- 
 ters, I shall die unless we have greater success 
 in our mission, unless we succeed in getting more 
 men to turn to Christ." He also went to his 
 death through increasing weakness, and the end 
 soon came. He died for men; of grief for men. 
 94 
 
VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 This is the principle that brings men of Christ- 
 like spirit to death, taking npon themselves the 
 world's woe and wretchedness, until it is crush- 
 ing and they die of a broken heart. This prin- 
 ciple was illustrated by the Savior in the Garden 
 of Gethsemane. In his case it was as much 
 greater a burden as he was greater than any one 
 of his followers ; but that there is a fundamental 
 difference in the nature of the principle involved, 
 it is difficult to see. That we may hesitate in 
 making the comparison with others may well be 
 due to the fact that we are unable fully to de- 
 scribe the breadth and depth of the Savior's 
 vision of the sin that men endure, the strength of 
 the sympathetic bond which placed him under 
 men's woe, the anguish of his disappointment 
 that men would not accept the love of God which 
 he came to reveal. If we could only see these in 
 their rightful proportions, the difference between 
 his burden and that of others would at once make 
 him the prince of Saviors and at the same time 
 would show how it is possible for his followers to 
 drink the cup of which he drank, as he promised 
 his disciples that they should. Says Dr. W. W. 
 McLane: "The love of the holy for the unholy 
 has in it always the element of pain; the love of 
 the pure for the impure has in it the element of 
 shame ; the love of the righteous for the unright- 
 eous has in it the element of compassionate and 
 vicarious suffering. The love of God himself 
 knows no exception to this law." (Homiletic Re- 
 view.) 
 
 95 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 If it were not the darkness of condemnation 
 that nailed Jesus to the cross, how may we ex- 
 plain the consciousness of Jesus when he cried 
 out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
 me?" 
 
 In venturing an answer to a confessedly great 
 difficulty, one always imperils his cause to the 
 possible weakness of his incidental explanation. 
 It might be better strategy, if establishment of 
 a contention were the only object in view, not to 
 venture any explanation, and leave others to dis- 
 cover as best they may the depth of this crucial 
 and unparalleled statement. With the purpose 
 of contributing a ray of light we give the follow- 
 ing suggestion: 
 
 All the experiences of a person dying were 
 as necessary for Jesus as that he should die at 
 all. Of all theories of the life of Jesus the docetic 
 theory is the most immoral. For God to pretend 
 to be giving his Son to the life of mankind, while 
 in fact he was all the time far removed from the 
 limitations which are normal and necessary to 
 it, is, when clearly stated, rejected by every mind 
 jealous of the moral character of God. And now 
 the necessities of his pleading embassage to man 
 has brought Jesus to the experience of cruci- 
 fixion : shall it be real, or by the interposition of 
 divine power, raising him above human experi- 
 ence, shall it be only an appearance of suffering? 
 The integrity of God is at stake in the answer 
 to that question. If it once should become a cur- 
 rent belief that Jesus did not pass through such 
 96 
 
VICAEIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 anguish as a real man would pass through in 
 such an experience, the spectacle would be put 
 down as a fraud, that would turn the sympathies 
 of the world away from the cross instead of in 
 its direction. This, then, is the point of view of 
 our answer. In the process of physical death 
 Jesus must pass through the " valley of shadows" 
 spiritually as really as any one else. The anguish 
 betrayed by his cry betokens the reality of the 
 experience rather than an exemplary expression 
 of the wrath of God. 
 
 David Smith ("The Days of His Flesh," 501) 
 rejects the idea that this cry of Jesus was due 
 to human weakness. He also rejects the idea that 
 God was really angry with him. "On the con- 
 trary, he was never so dear to God, never so 
 manifestly the Beloved Son in whom the Father 
 was well pleased." . . . "Nevertheless his des- 
 olation was a visitation of God, and he suffered 
 as the bearer of sin. ... It was needful for 
 Jesus, in order that he might redeem us, to 
 identify himself with us in our misery and make 
 it all his own. ' ' Whether this author contradicts 
 himself in these statements will depend upon the 
 sense in which he uses the words, "suffered as 
 the bearer of sin." The vital question in a 
 scheme of substitution is, Did God the Father feel 
 toward Jesus in that hour as he would toward a 
 real and incorrigible sinner? This idea we re- 
 ject, and say that the Father, while allowing Jesus 
 to pass through such an experience as a human 
 being would pass through who was thus dying, 
 97 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 felt love toward him as always. If this answer 
 be allowed, then Jesus in no sense took the sin- 
 ner's place in punishment to appease the wrath 
 of God. He took the needful place of the Elder 
 Son, the Only Begotten, in striving to persuade 
 his brethren to be reconciled to the Father. In 
 this sense he suffered to persuade us not to suf- 
 fer; in other words, that we might not suffer.* 
 
 Many will turn to the fifty-third chapter of 
 Isaiah for confirmation of the opinion that we 
 have here a picture of the Christ substituted in 
 
 *The cry on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou 
 forsaken me?" is taken by some to mean that Christ is bearing 
 the sin of the -world and hence God averts his face as if he 
 were, indeed, a sinner. From this view of substitution our mind 
 invincibly revolts. Stevens says: "The exclamation . . . 
 must not be didactically pressed into an assertion that in his 
 death God withdrew from Christ his favor and fellowship. The 
 Psalm from which it is quoted (22: 1) suggests rather the idea 
 of abandonment to suffering- than that of abandonment to deser- 
 tion bv God." ("N. T. Theol.," 134; Cp. "Christian Doctrine of 
 Salvation," 51.) Garvie, although seeming- to accept the general 
 position yet draws back in the following fashion: "To affirm the 
 subjective sense of desertion by God in Christ is not the same as to 
 assert the objective fact of that desertion. The Father did not 
 abandon his Son, although the Son felt himself so abandoned." 
 This is nothing more than to affirm that Jesus suffered the natural 
 depression which every one must when undergoing unjustly a death 
 from which it is not the will of God to deliver him. This has in 
 it nothing of substitution in the offensive sense. 
 
 Garvie even quotes Calvin as follows: "We do not indeed 
 insinuate that God was ever either opposed to or angry with 
 him. For how could he be angry with his beloved Son, on whom 
 his mind rested? or how could Christ by his intercession pro- 
 pitiate for others a Father whom he had as an enemy to him- 
 self? This we say, that he sustained the gravity of divine severity; 
 since, being stricken by the hand of God. he experienced all the 
 signs of an angry and punishing God." ("Inner Life of 
 Jesus," 418.) 
 
 98 
 
VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 punishment for the sinner. The literature on this 
 chapter is very extensive, and a detailed examina- 
 tion of its phrases would carry us beyond limits 
 either suitable to our general purpose or neces- 
 sary. We must summarize the line that our ex- 
 amination would take: 
 
 1. The burden of proof rests heavily upon 
 those who assume that this chapter is a direct and 
 exclusive picture of Jesus Christ. Many of the 
 phrases are exceedingly apt; but some are in- 
 applicable to him. The fitness of its phrases is 
 by no means a sufficient and conclusive indication 
 that Jesus is here photographed in the mind of 
 the prophet. There are many passages in history 
 descriptive of one period or person which have 
 very striking aptness in application to some other 
 person or period. 
 
 2. We are not convinced that the subject in 
 Isaiah's mind was the historical person Jesus. 
 He was describing some person or people, doubt- 
 less only ideally, who was in direct, immediate 
 historical connection with the people to whom he 
 was preaching and whom he sought to influence 
 by his picture. For this purpose a character five 
 hundred years removed would be quite ineffectual. 
 
 3. Nevertheless we are quite ready to accept 
 this chapter as Messianic prophecy in the sense 
 that it is an idealized picture of a Vicarious Suf- 
 ferer, who, as directly seen, may have been the 
 "Suffering Servant" of God in Isaiah's own 
 time, but is a picture true to the vicarious suf- 
 ferer of any time, which picture was realized in 
 
 99 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 Jesus Christ in an ideal and complete sense, such 
 as was never realized in any other person or 
 people. 
 
 4. As a picture of a Substitutional Sufferer 
 it could apply to one subject only. As a picture 
 of a Vicarious Sufferer it becomes universal in 
 its application : for vicarious suffering, as a prin- 
 ciple of life, is as broad and universal as human 
 society. On the other hand, substitutional suffer- 
 ing for sins must refer to one case only and is 
 not of universal application. 
 
 Confirmatory of our view, we find that "in pre- 
 Christian Judaism, Isaiah fifty-third had never 
 been interpreted in a Messianic sense." (Mac- 
 intosh, ' < The Person of Jesus Christ, " 19. ) How- 
 ever, in the opinion of this author quoted, "in 
 that sublime picture of vicarious pain there lay 
 truths which found a perfect echo and fulfillment 
 in Jesus' soul." If Isaiah has in mind a sub- 
 stituted sufferer, then this passage must refer to 
 Jesus, and to no one else, and all the exegetical 
 difficulties of so narrowing its reference are bar- 
 riers against substitutional atonement. These 
 exegetical barriers are so great as generally to 
 be regarded as insuperable. On the other hand, 
 there are no exegetical difficulties, and can be 
 none, to its application to Jesus as a Vicarious 
 Sufferer. This consideration lends its powerful 
 support to the atonement which we are seeking 
 to illuminate, and against the Satisfactionist's 
 view. 
 
 In what sense can we interpret the text, "He 
 100 
 
VICAKIOUS PEINCIPLE. 
 
 bore our sins on the tree?" In rejecting the sub- 
 stitutional interpretation as immoral we do not 
 incur thereby the burden of explaining all mys- 
 teries. Our explanation may or may not be re- 
 jected without any danger of establishing sub- 
 stitution as a satisfactory theory. 
 
 There is more than one sense in which Jesus 
 bore our sins, not only in his death, but in the 
 totality of his incarnation, including his life and 
 his death. Any sinless being who enters into the 
 organism of humanity, with its violations of law 
 and the consequent suffering therefrom, bears 
 the sin of all constituents of that organism. He 
 is tied to all others by living, unbreakable bonds, 
 which make their experiences his experiences. 
 He can escape their pains and penalties only in 
 the degree in which he can isolate his life from 
 all others. If he could absolutely isolate himself 
 from society and live entirely alone, he could es- 
 cape. But that no one born of a woman can do. 
 He is introduced into society by the fact of birth, 
 and remains tied up to all people by the strength 
 of his sympathy. If his nature is hard and un- 
 feeling, then, to a degree, he may escape their pen- 
 alties ; but in the degree of his love and response 
 to others' needs he feels their anguish and bears 
 all their sin and privation. 
 
 The above is the condemnation to suffering 
 of every man with an ordinary mission in life. 
 But when we suppose that this mission is extraor- 
 dinary; that it is an aggressive mission, an at- 
 tack upon sin, an effort to arrest the wave of 
 101 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 suffering that is threatening all men, then to 
 the degree that he rushes toward it to stop it, 
 to the degree that he does not retire before it, 
 to that degree he must suffer under it. It is this 
 aspect of the life of Jesus that throws a flood 
 of light upon his suffering in our behalf, while 
 no finite picture of that attempt may exhaust 
 the sweep of it. Jesus rushes in between the two 
 fighters in an attempt to stop their mutual de- 
 struction, and they both turn against him. Phari- 
 sees and Sadducees were at great enmity against 
 each other, but they both turn against him as 
 he strives to bring to both of them the principle 
 of mutual peace. Pontius Pilate and Herod were 
 personal enemies to each other, but in his pres- 
 ence they unite to destroy him. He bears the sin 
 of all by opposing the sin of all, and all the sin- 
 ners recognize in him the opponent of their sins 
 and unite against him. 
 
 This was true in so far as sin was conscious 
 and freely chosen; and how great is the bulk of 
 that suffering when we think of sin as a heritage 
 of ages! Its bulk has been growing through 
 the millennea: disease, superstition, weakness, 
 custom, prejudice, laws, and government — all 
 wrought out and perpetuated from age to age in 
 the darkness of sin — oppose and would crush this 
 great challenger of them; and he must feel the 
 weight of their opposition and vengeance. 
 
 But he is not a mere opponent of the past and 
 its inheritances. He comes with the watchword 
 of a forward movement. He would have men to 
 102 
 
VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 be reconciled to the Father. They think they 
 know something of the Father. His disturbance 
 of their notions creates an opposition that grows 
 very bitter. And so the sins of passion, of preju- 
 dice, of misunderstanding, of false faith Jesus 
 had always to bear. The moment that gathers 
 into itself all the lines of suffering and opposi- 
 tions is the experience on the cross — the culmina- 
 tion of all, but not dissociated from any of the 
 causes that made his life one of suffering. 
 
 But is this suffering now past? Was it com- 
 plete that Friday morning when hate reached its 
 limit and could do no more, having wrought the 
 death of the object of its hate? 
 
 A much more worthy picture of the Cross is 
 that which sees in it only an illustration of God's 
 relation to sin. If Jesus had withdrawn from the 
 world at that point, retiring into the safe ex- 
 clusiveness of his pre-incarnate home, having 
 done all that love could do, and having been re- 
 jected as love's token, washing his hands of the 
 consequences of that rejection, and leaving the 
 world henceforth to bear its crowning sin of cru- 
 cifying the Lord of Love, then, indeed, would 
 suffering have ceased. But the world was still 
 in its actual sin ; God was still bound to the world 
 by the bonds of love, just the same as before, 
 when he sent his Son into the world to die for it. 
 It is hard to see how the manifestation of love 
 could effect any change in love's feeling toward 
 the world, unless that manifestation had actually 
 conquered the world, which we well know it has 
 103 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 not yet done, except in a few individual cases. 
 The record of love is made, and can always be 
 pointed to as the everlasting evidence of God's 
 attitude toward sinful men; but sinful men there 
 still are, and their sin hurts the heart of God 
 still, the same as it always did. Sin's penalty 
 imposed on love is always suffering, and no for- 
 mal deed can release it, as if by a legal formula. 
 Having died for the world, Christ can not turn 
 with indifference from it. As long as he cares 
 for it he bears it on his heart and suffers for it. 
 My sin, your sin, is crucifying the Lord afresh 
 to-day just as the Jews ' sin crucified him on that 
 Good Friday morning. He is always bearing our 
 sin, as long as his patience lasts, until the hour 
 when with omniscient insight he despairingly 
 says : It is enough ; let him alone ; he is eternally 
 joined to his idols. 
 
 "Without the shedding of blood there is no re- 
 mission of sins. " As a statement of judicial sen- 
 tence requiring a bloody sacrifice, this sounds 
 rather blood-thirsty. It can hardly be defended 
 as a statement of history regarding God-imposed 
 penalty. The Old Testament records instances 
 where God forgave sins on the ground of simple 
 repentance; the Book of Jonah seems to have 
 been written for the express purpose of teaching 
 this. Moreover, the prophets on different occa- 
 sions rejected the bloody sacrifices which were 
 brought to propitiate Jehovah, repentance being 
 absent. As a statement, then, of religious prac- 
 tice it does not seem so very important. On the 
 104 
 
VICARIOUS PRINCIPLE. 
 
 other hand, as a statement of social fact it is 
 impregnable. Where was there ever wrong done 
 that did not require somebody's sacrifice to re- 
 pair? This repair is usually not within the power 
 of the sinner who did the wrong, and so it comes 
 to rest on the life and labor and sacrifice of some 
 innocent party. Society always pays the penalty 
 for the wrong done by any one of its members. 
 When it comes to the great sin of the world, that 
 social penalty must be paid by the great Father 
 himself, as the only One great enough to accom- 
 plish the repair. "Ina world where God can not 
 cease to be pure and man can not will himself out 
 of existence, to make the guilty man fit to be rec- 
 onciled with the pure and eternal God is a work 
 which may well cause suffering to the holiest and 
 most blessed being." (Fairbairn, " Philosophy 
 of the Christian Religion," 483-4.) 
 
 105 
 
Chaptek rv. 
 
 THE CROSS A REVELATION. 
 
 Jesus Christ came into the world to reveal God. 
 That purpose was more completely accomplished 
 on the cross than anywhere else, or in any other 
 experience, because it afforded the supreme test 
 of divine love. The Cross was in the first place 
 a revelation of the heart of love in God. The 
 depth of Love's revelation is commensurate with 
 the sacrifice that is undergone. Even though the 
 life of Christ was actuated by the same love as 
 his death, yet to men the manifestation is more 
 unmistakable in the latter. Man can understand 
 the language of sacrifice when he can not that of 
 teaching or other form of service. When man be- 
 holds Jesus on the cross and apprehends that 
 he is the messenger of the Father, then he knows, 
 as in no other manner, that the heart of the 
 Father is yearning for his fellowship as he never 
 knew it before. 
 
 In the second place the Cross is a revelation 
 of the sinfulness in man. Jesus was so innocent 
 of offense, so serviceful to men, so worthy of the 
 regard of men, and deserving of nothing opposed 
 to love and regard, that when men took him and 
 crucified him it was such an exhibition of cruelty, 
 of malice and wickedness, that perhaps no event 
 106 
 
CROSS A REVELATION. 
 
 of history shows more clearly the sheer evil of 
 which the human heart is capable. " There is a 
 strange and thrilling power in the cross of Jesus 
 to lift men out of sin which our theologies have 
 not always sounded to its depths. The cross in 
 itself is not a redemptive force : it is the symbol 
 of a redemptive life. The ministry of Jesus cul- 
 minating in the tragic crisis of Calvary was not 
 a sacrifice to God for human sin, but a vision of 
 God brought to men to awaken them to the enor- 
 mity of sin. The death of Jesus was the crown- 
 ing hour of such a sublime revelation of the 
 nature of God that after nineteen centuries of 
 studied attention the world scarce yet is aware 
 of its ineffable splendor. Jesus redeems because 
 he teaches ; he saves because he reveals ; he atones 
 because he touches the mystery of the world with 
 illuminating glory." (Ascham, "Help from the 
 Hills," 196-7.) 
 
 If one would know the terrible nature of sin, 
 he must study it not in its effect upon a lowly 
 or a degraded creature. The breaking of a law 
 by a poor animal would indeed bring upon it 
 some degree of misery, but it would not greatly 
 attract the attention of the world. The fall from 
 a degraded position to one still lower is enough 
 to call attention to the law of consequences; but 
 it would not startle the world with its tragedy. 
 But if one would know sin in its power, let him 
 see it in its operation upon an exalted being. See 
 a well-born man of high lineage, with splendid 
 powers handed to him by heredity; see him fall 
 107 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 into depths revolting to contemplate, and if we 
 have any just notion of what a human destiny 
 is we are startled and alarmed at the awful spec- 
 tacle. But a higher example still is before us in 
 the relation of Jesus Christ to sin. He was sin- 
 less, innocent, and yet sin brought him to shame, 
 persecution, poverty, death. Sin that could strike 
 at the absolutely deserving, and bring him to the 
 bitterest pain and shame, is a principle so utterly 
 abhorrent as to fail of all description. But the 
 revelation of its utter horror is dependent upon 
 the presence of the Son of God writhing under 
 its cruel power, and unable because of love to 
 escape its ruthless and pitiless grasp. So the 
 cross of Jesus reveals to us the awfulness of sin, 
 and the revelation has its essential part to play 
 in our salvation from its power and perdition. 
 The Cross is that revelation of God which 
 represents the climax of cost to God. All revela- 
 tion of God represents a cost to the Divine mode 
 of life. Any relation between the Divine Infinite 
 and the human finite makes necessary some modi- 
 fication, some restraint, in the Divine activity, 
 which it is not misleading to characterize as a 
 divine cost. The father, six feet tall, who under- 
 takes to keep step with the little child, three feet 
 tall, on the morning walk will need so to restrain 
 himself in the usual and normal movements of 
 his body as to represent cost to himself, possible 
 only because of love. Any revelation of God, ex- 
 cept the ambassadorial representation of some 
 messenger, so unlike him in the sweep of his life 
 108 
 
CROSS A REVELATION. 
 
 as to suggest little confidence that the messenger 
 can adequately understand him that he would re- 
 veal, must mean a cost to God. The metaphysical 
 mysteries of the. incarnation we will not attempt 
 to portray; but the Trinitarian life must have 
 been disturbed, yea, painfully disturbed, by the 
 mission of the Son to mankind. The cost of that 
 mission was infinitely increased by the necessity 
 of the deific Messenger presenting himself in such 
 form that he might get a response from human 
 sympathies, and within such limitations as to 
 awaken human hope and effort. 
 
 Thus all revelation from a God whose mode 
 of life flows on in the infinitely deific forms held 
 by Christian faith to mortal and human beings 
 as yet but little grown in divine stature, but little 
 trained to divine thinking, must be accomplished 
 by much Divine restraint and limitation. 
 
 But this divine cost in revelation is immeas- 
 urably increased when the revelation must not 
 only be made to immature beings, but to sinful 
 beings. Revelation under this condition can not 
 be merely of glory and power, even in measures 
 that will not oppress and destroy the perceptive 
 powers of men; but it must be of love, and of 
 love through sacrifice. Love's expression toward 
 sinners can only be in the forms of suffering; 
 and love's uttermost expression to sinners must 
 be in the form of uttermost suffering. Thus the 
 Cross is the uttermost stage of pain and suffer- 
 ing to which revelation of God to man, sinful 
 man, could attain. 
 
 109 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 The Cross, when properly viewed, is a revela- 
 tion of the unity of God. But it must be added 
 that the satisfaction view of the Cross is a mani- 
 festation of Tritheism. That portrayal of recon- 
 ciliation of God the Father through Jesus Christ 
 his Son, by which the death of Jesus becomes the 
 ground on which God can forgive the sins of men, 
 is a separation of the persons of the Trinity so 
 essential as to involve a difference of will, if not 
 of love. If Jesus is the second Person of the 
 Trinity, whatever would stand in the way of jus- 
 tice for the Father or a lowering of the standard 
 of righteousness or holiness with the Father 
 would be equally so with him. Anything involv- 
 ing a moral consideration must have been as 
 forceful with the Son as with the Father. For 
 Jesus to undertake the relief of man from his 
 sin or punishment — an undertaking that must 
 have been in advance of the sacrifice of himself 
 or the ground of propitiation — when the claims 
 of holiness and justice and moral government 
 were so stern as to make it impossible for the 
 Father to forgive man, or even to love him, is 
 for him to make these claims of holiness and jus- 
 tice weigh less with himself than with the Father. 
 That is to say that there was a different moral 
 standard with the Son than with the Father, as 
 well as a different will, which is a difference of 
 character great enough to be comparable with the 
 different dispositions and determinations pic- 
 tured to us among heathen gods. It is such a dif- 
 ferentiation between the Father and the Son as 
 110 
 
CROSS A REVELATION. 
 
 to produce a Tritheism instead of a Trinity. We 
 think it fundamental that there could be no dif- 
 ference in the love, the sense of justice and holi- 
 ness, and the volitions in the Father and the Son. 
 But such a Transaction as the death of Christ 
 on the cross is often pictured to be, is a fatal 
 disruption of the moral unity of the Godhead. 
 Let us rather hear Jesus say on the cross, as 
 he did say in its shadow, "He that hath seen me 
 hath seen the Father." 
 
 In many authors the sorrow of Christ is 
 spoken of as a display — that it was necessary 
 for Christ to go through a certain amount of 
 suffering, as if his problem were a mere perform- 
 ance for the eye of the world, that the world might 
 know the majesty of law and thus uphold the 
 sanctions of government. Sometimes it is spoken 
 of as for the eye of the Father. It may readily 
 be conceded that the exhibition of divine interest 
 and love is an indispensable element of atone- 
 ment; but this is by no means discounted, if we 
 hold that it is incidental to its main purpose. For 
 example, Campbell says: "But to the vindication 
 of the name of God and to the condemnation of 
 the sin of man that actual meeting of the eternal 
 love with the enmity of the carnal mind, which 
 took place when Christ came to men in the Fa- 
 ther's name — in the fellowship of the Father's 
 love, was necessary; and therefore, however much 
 it added to Christ's sufferings as bearing our sins, 
 it was permitted ; and the Father ordered the path 
 111 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 in which he led the Son so as to give full and 
 perfect development and manifestation to the 
 self-sacrificing life of love that was in Christ, 
 fullness and perfection to his declaration of the 
 Father's name." 
 
 To our mind, Christ had a mission in the earth 
 — the winning back of men to fellowship with God. 
 In accomplishing this mission he met with opposi- 
 tion, suffering, and death. He could not persuade 
 men by word that the Father loved them and 
 would forgive. He would have failed to persuade 
 them at all, if it were not for the fact that death 
 is a stronger exhibition of love than anything in 
 life can be. The love-revealing power of his 
 death is the evangel that is to be preached to 
 win men to repentance. 
 
 We borrow the words of Dr. W. W. McLane 
 in his statement of the cross as a revelation of 
 love and of God: "Love, then, the love of God 
 for sinful men is the center and soul of this scene 
 of suffering and death. The eternal life which 
 is invisible became visible in the form of Jesus; 
 the divine Father whom no man had seen was 
 declared in the Son ; the spiritual love whose suf- 
 ferings were unseen was made manifest in the 
 physical sufferings which all men could see, and 
 the greatness of that love was shown by death 
 beyond which no visible proof could be given. 
 The love of God in its patience, its long-suffering, 
 its redeeming, renewing, and saving quality is 
 commended unto us. Hitherto men had thought 
 of God as angry with the sinner, now they see 
 112 
 
CROSS A REVELATION. 
 
 that he is also grieved by sin. Hitherto man had 
 thought of God as full of wrath toward the sin- 
 ner, now they see that he is full of compassion. 
 Hitherto men had thought of God as swift to 
 punish, now they see that he himself suffers to 
 save. Now is revealed the supreme fact that love 
 which rules in the heart and soul of man making 
 the holy, who loves, suffer for the unholy, whom 
 he loves, has its source and sway in the heart 
 and love of God." 
 
 It is God who makes atonement; it was he 
 who sought reconciliation. The great means 
 which he could use for this purpose was in re- 
 vealing to man that in spite of his sin God loved 
 him. So we may regard the Cross as the great 
 means of atonement; because it was the supreme 
 revelation of God's love. 
 
 As an exhibition of God's love the Cross is 
 the most powerful force that the world has ever 
 felt. That God should submit to such a cruelty 
 in his efforts to win man is a sign of his measure- 
 less yearning over him. But the force of the 
 Cross was exerted toward man, and not toward 
 God. It is Christ pleading with men to receive 
 forgiveness, and not Christ pleading with the 
 Father to be willing to forgive. We hold this 
 without forgetting that Jesus said on the cross, 
 "Father, forgive them: for they know not what 
 they do. ' ' That saying was a mere incident, hav- 
 ing specific and limited reference to the soldiers 
 engaged in the act of crucifying him, and had no 
 general reference to the whole subject of his cru- 
 113 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 cifixion in relation to the world. The Cross is 
 God's last fathomless appeal to man to give up 
 his rebellion. If its appeal is effective, man will 
 turn and ask forgiveness. Then the Father may 
 be reconciled, indeed, and on condition of man 
 accepting a new nature which will be in harmony 
 with himself, he may remove the barriers to fel- 
 lowship and forgive the guilt of sin. This will 
 safeguard the holiness of his own nature and the 
 moral government of the world; for at a stroke 
 it removes the sin and sinner from their rebellious 
 and destructive activities. 
 
 That anything more is done, or needs to be 
 done, it is impossible for us to see. This meets 
 all the needs of the problem ; unless one accredits 
 to God the Father a vindictive enmity toward 
 men that is the exact opposite of the feeling that 
 Christ has for them. This latter involves the 
 whole question in insoluble difficulty, and is re- 
 quired by no condition of the problem. It is not 
 required that one should die in order that God 
 may forgive a repentant sinner. He may forgive 
 in absolute holiness, provided it can be so done 
 that sin will cease. It is only required that one 
 should die in order that man might repent and 
 give up his sin; this, with God's love always ac- 
 tive, is the sum and substance of the problem. 
 
 Dinsmore denies that the Cross has this power 
 of inducing repentance. "It is not infrequently 
 affirmed," he says, "that the revelation of the 
 character of God which Jesus made is the chief 
 power in leading men to repentance. This asser- 
 114 
 
CROSS A REVELATION. 
 
 tion is not borne out by our investigation. Both 
 in literature and in life the fell results of wrong- 
 doing first awaken the slumbering soul and turn 
 its steps toward righteousness. When it faces 
 in a new direction, and confronts a fresh light, 
 the sense of personal guilt increases, and repent- 
 ance is perfected; but penitence is seldom orig- 
 inated by the sight of the greatness of love." 
 (Op. cit. 204-5.) 
 
 This difference of view is partly a question of 
 words. He has stated the facts correctly. Retri- 
 bution does bring one to a halt in the career of 
 sin. It raises the question of the rationality and 
 profit of the course. But repentance from the 
 point of view of experienced retribution is a sort 
 of calculating course of safety or profit. It is 
 not a sorrow for sin, but a sorrow for sin's suf- 
 fering. If at the point of arrested sinfulness the 
 Cross did not arise, manifesting the willingness 
 of God to restore the sinner to fellowship, and 
 beget in him a real repentance, then the pain of 
 sin would but turn the sufferer to deeper hate 
 against the author of the suffering. The Prodigal 
 in his depths calculates that it would be better 
 to be a servant in his father's house than to con- 
 tinue to feed swine. He starts back home with 
 the purpose of asking for a job. This is a stage 
 of regret, induced by his personal losses; it is 
 not yet repentance, or a change of mind concern- 
 ing the matter of taking a loyal place again in 
 the home. But as he is returning he meditates 
 on his father's kindness. A feeling for the out- 
 115 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 rage his father has suffered displaces his pur- 
 pose to better his own condition, and when they 
 meet he forgets to ask for a job as a servant, and 
 only confesses his own sin. This is repentance 
 induced by love. 
 
 This view of the revealing function of the 
 Cross is pushed too far when it is ever held, as it 
 often is, that it was necessary for Christ to seem 
 to suffer and appear to pass through all the ap- 
 pearances of human weakness, but that, of course, 
 he could not really suffer because he was God, 
 and God can not suffer. Somerville says: "Lu- 
 theranism, holding that the natural effect of the 
 union of the Son of God with our nature was the 
 communication to the latter of the Divine attri- 
 butes of the former, saved itself from the charge 
 of reducing humanity to a mere semblance by 
 maintaining that the exercise of these divine at- 
 tributes was in abeyance during the earthly life 
 of Jesus, that they existed in him only in a con- 
 cealed or hidden form.'' ("St. Paul's Concep- 
 tion of Christ, ' ' 205.) This docetic view of Christ 
 is ever obtruding itself when men reason super- 
 ficially about the infinite attributes of Jesus. We 
 must ever be ready to denounce it as charging 
 an immorality upon God. President King says : 
 "The religious need of the humanity of Christ, 
 we should never forget, is very great. Otherwise 
 his whole life is unreal and has no true relation 
 to our life, and he could give to us no perfect rev- 
 elation of the perfect filial relation to God — no 
 true revelation of man. But more than this is 
 116 
 
CROSS A REVELATION. 
 
 true. It is supremely in the character of Christ 
 that God stands fully revealed, and this character 
 must be real — the real character of the man Jesus. 
 His true humanity is, therefore, essential to the 
 revelation of his divinity as well — to any true 
 revelation of God." ("Reconstruction in The- 
 ology," 190.) 
 
 In a docetic conception of Christ there is no 
 revelation of any character, because that which 
 we see is unreal. Even though it pictured God 
 truly, yet when we came to possess the idea that 
 the appearance was not true to reality we could 
 not accept the appearance for its full value, but 
 we would discount totally any direct impression 
 produced. For the reason that such an incarna- 
 tion would destroy the whole value of the revela- 
 tion as it appeared, the docetic view of Christ 
 and his cross is the most vicious conception of 
 the incarnation that can be held. It is not good 
 for its face value, and any value that it may be 
 supposed to have must be arbitrarily placed upon 
 it ; that by one person, and this by another. 
 
 A docetic faith may seem to many a devout 
 worshiper an exaltation of Jesus by the testimony 
 of faith over the senses. For example, Luther 
 said, "I have a better provider than all angels 
 are ; he lies in the cradle, and hangs on the breast 
 of a virgin, but sits, nevertheless, at the right 
 hand of God, the Almighty Father." (Harnack, 
 "Hist, of Dogma," Eng. Tr. vii, 173-4.) Cyril 
 held that the perfecting of Jesus was docetic, be- 
 cause moral incompleteness is incompatible with 
 117 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 sinlessness. We may recognize the worshipful 
 impulse of those who testify thus to that which is 
 a contradiction to the testimony of sense and rea- 
 son. Nevertheless they are undermining all pos- 
 sible faith. How can we expect people to con- 
 tinue to believe that which the thought can not 
 construe ? 
 
 When this docetic mental instrument for mak- 
 ing things different for faith from what they are 
 for sight and reason comes to deal with the Cross, 
 we then have as a conclusion a make-believe suf- 
 fering for the purpose of impressing a world as 
 yet uninitiated in the divine mysteries. When 
 we are more advanced we will be able to see that 
 Jesus was above all this at all times, and never 
 really hungered or was weary or ignorant of any- 
 thing or was subject to any necessity, and the 
 Cross was only Divine theatricals. This step in 
 belief was actually taken by Marcion, 150 A. D., 
 who held that the suffering of Christ was only 
 apparent, because the Logos had assumed only 
 a spectral human body. Such a construction 
 of God's dealing with us will leave us at last not 
 only without faith in God, but without love or 
 respect for him, who would thus attempt to de- 
 ceive us. 
 
 118 
 
Chapter V. 
 
 THE FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 Accepting the ground that there is alienation be- 
 tween God and man, how can there be a recon- 
 ciliation? Who shall take the first step? 
 
 It is admitted that man can not. It is hard 
 to see what material step he could take that would 
 in any degree be a ground of propitiation. It is 
 allowed on all hands that God must take the first 
 step. On the ground of God's constant love — lov- 
 ing us while we were yet sinners — it is perfectly 
 easy to see that God would and could take the 
 first step. But if God's attitude is such as is 
 pictured by those who hold to a satisfaction 
 atonement, it is hard to see how he can or will 
 take that step until he is propitiated. And as man 
 is unable to propitiate him, even if he could will 
 to do so, there seems to be an impasse on both 
 sides. Neither one can take the first step. 
 
 On the other hand, accepting the position of 
 God's constant love, while he is grieved and of- 
 fended, yet pitying and yearning for the restora- 
 tion of fellowship, it seems quite natural that he 
 should take any step that was righteous and hope- 
 ful in reconciling man. Fellowship can not be 
 perfected until man has changed his mind and 
 attitude ; but there is no impediment in the mind 
 119 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 of God against forgiving him, when his mind is 
 changed. In other words, the only problem is, 
 How to remove the rebellious mind of man. That 
 removed, and the two move directly and unim- 
 pededly toward renewed fellowship. On the as- 
 sumption of man's changed mind, contrition, 
 yielding himself in holiness to God, it is incredible 
 that God demands a sacrifice as a propitiation to 
 his anger and alienation. 
 
 The plea is made, however, that alienation be- 
 tween God and man was reciprocal; when man 
 sinned against God he became alienated by losing 
 confidence that God would now meet him in favor 
 or peace. And on the other hand, God, as of- 
 fended against, would be alienated from man and 
 could not again meet him with approval. The 
 conclusion is drawn from this that some restitu- 
 tion or sacrifice or satisfaction must be made by 
 man in order that their fellowship relations may 
 be restored, and that until such satisfaction is 
 made God is unwilling to enter into fellowship 
 with him. 
 
 The reciprocal alienation is admitted as a fact; 
 but the inference drawn from it may not follow. 
 The best analogy is a father. He disapproves his 
 son's actions. He is out of harmony with him 
 on account of his sins. But this feeling of aliena- 
 tion never goes so far that he would refuse to 
 forgive a penitent son and enter again into fel- 
 lowship with him, unless he has ceased to be a 
 father and has become a monster. An earthly 
 father might, indeed, ask or require some sign 
 120 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 that the repentance was actual; but, assured of 
 that, he would hardly refuse forgiveness, and con- 
 tinue to demand some satisfaction to be made to 
 his feelings. 
 
 So our Heavenly Father is grieved. He is 
 alienated from his child ; but it is hard to believe 
 that he is implacable, and must have some satis- 
 faction rendered to his feelings before he will for- 
 give and renew the relationship with his child. 
 The two things: repentance and acceptance from 
 his hand of a new nature that will keep his law, 
 seems to meet the requirements for restoration 
 of fellowship. To say that the Father must be 
 satisfied, and that the Son must render the satis- 
 faction, is to make a distinction in the feelings 
 of the persons of the Godhead that is incredible. 
 If the doctrine of satisfaction demanded some- 
 thing explicitly from the hands of man, it might 
 not exalt the nature of God, but it would at least 
 be logical in its demands. 
 
 It has been assumed that the sense of justice 
 as held by God requires that a certain amount of 
 suffering must follow sin before the foundation 
 for forgiveness of sin is laid. "The soul that 
 sinneth, it shall die," is a fundamental law of 
 God. God has made the world so that sin and suf- 
 fering are indissolubly connected. Now it is as- 
 sumed that before God will forgive sin, there 
 must be death and suffering. President Edwards 
 says, ' ' God could not be just to himself with this 
 vindication (an infinite punishment) unless there 
 could be such a thing as a repentance, humilia- 
 121 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 tion, and sorrow for this sin proportionable to 
 the greatness of the majesty despised. " For that 
 there must needs be ''either an equivalent pun- 
 ishment or an equivalent sorrow and repent- 
 ance." ("Satisfaction for Sin," ch. ii, 1-3.) 
 
 We will not detain ourselves with the notion 
 of an infinite sin, because committed against an 
 infinite Being. We are of opinion that man can 
 commit only a human sin. Likewise we reject 
 the notion of an infinite punishment as entirely 
 outside the range of our problem. It only re- 
 mains to note in this connection that if repent- 
 ance can atone for sin, as President Edwards im- 
 plies, it only needs to be genuine and true and 
 human. It must not be mere seeking safety after 
 wrath is excited against us. It should be sincere 
 turning away from sin and acceptance of the new 
 life implied in ceasing from sin. If repentance 
 ever is adequate, then the only repentance of 
 which man is capable is adequate. Concerning 
 the word "infinite" we need only say: If sin is 
 infinite because committed against an infinite 
 Person, then repentance is infinite when it goes 
 out toward an infinite Person. That due repent- 
 ance for sin would expiate guilt is the testimony 
 of the human heart in that its first attempt at 
 peace with God is an attempt to repent. Note 
 the example of the Ninevites when Jonah 
 preached the wrath of God and the impending 
 destruction. 
 
 But we return to the question, Is the purpose 
 of God's law of retribution maintained by the 
 122 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 death of Christ as a substitute for the death of 
 the sinner? What is the purpose of that law? 
 Is the law ever abrogated? 
 
 The substitution of Christ in the place of the 
 sinner is not a maintenance of the law — is not 
 its fulfillment, because he is not the one that sins. 
 Whatever substitution does in the way of moral 
 appeal, it does not carry out the law. It remains 
 a question still whether atonement has displaced 
 the law. Sinners still suffer for their sins, even 
 when they feel that God has forgiven them. This 
 law is a statement of the nature of our life. It 
 is not like a statute that has to be vindicated 
 by an imposed punishment after sin has been 
 committed. It is a principle that executes itself 
 in the very life of the person that sins. The death 
 which it threatens is not in the nature of an 
 award, but rather of a result, an automatic conse- 
 quence. The atonement does not set it aside. 
 The Christian who eats poison dies just the same 
 as others; his justified condition in God's sight 
 has nothing to do with the working of the law. 
 We must look elsewhere, then, for the purpose 
 and nature of the atonement. The law spoken 
 of has its place and working in the material 
 world; we must look for a basis in the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 The law of retribution in the spiritual world 
 is of the nature of awards. It is conditioned on 
 knowledge and will. The award of demerit with 
 whatever consequences should follow is not made 
 to one who in ignorance performed a certain out- 
 123 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ward deed. The physical deed in itself counts 
 nothing (as to moral deserts and awards). The 
 deed of demerit must be a spiritual act. The 
 morally evil nature of the deed must be known 
 in advance, and in the light of that knowledge the 
 will must then have consciously chosen it. Then 
 it is an act of the spirit; whether it is ever car- 
 ried out in the physical world is immaterial in 
 estimating its moral character. 
 
 Such a deed breaks fellowship with him who 
 made the arrangement and instituted the law. 
 According to the necessities of the case he will 
 now make the awards concerning it. 
 
 What are the demands or necessities of the 
 case? 
 
 Looked at from the needs of the universe, 
 physical punishment should come to him who 
 violates physical law ; that is provided in the un- 
 abrogated physical law that we have above noted. 
 But the necessities of the spiritual beings are such 
 a rearrangement of spiritual conditions as shall 
 result in reinstated fellowship. This is the funda- 
 mental good which has been destroyed. If now 
 the sinner will give up his sinful attitude, enter 
 into a covenant fellowship in which he will sin 
 no more, the destroyed good may be restored, at 
 least so far as the future is concerned. What 
 good will an awarded death or punishment of a 
 repentant sinner accomplish? It only shows an 
 implacable law-giver, and thus injures through 
 memory future fellowship relations. While, on 
 the other hand, free forgiveness will strengthen 
 124 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 future fellowship relations through memory. The 
 whole question seems to turn on the repentance 
 of the sinner: will he cease from sin and begin 
 a new life? If so, the necessities seem to be pro- 
 vided for, although the old sin and its physical 
 sequences has entered into the structure of the 
 physical world. It is difficult to see that the in- 
 fliction of penalty is a formal necessity. It is 
 inflicted for the attainment of some ulterior end. 
 Satisfactionists have claimed that it was for the 
 satisfaction of the Divine Nature; others hold 
 that it is a necessity of moral government. Miley, 
 who upholds the governmental theory, says: 
 " While divine penalty falls only upon sin, the 
 supreme reason for its infliction is in the rectoral 
 ends with which moral government is concerned. 
 Nor is the penal infliction a moral necessity apart 
 from those ends." ("Systematic Theology," ii, 
 175.) If, then, the repentance and accepted new 
 life of the sinner satisfies moral government as 
 well as infliction of identical penalty, the necessity 
 of the latter falls to the ground. 
 
 Recently we heard the following illustration 
 of reconciliation in an impassioned plea to sin- 
 ners for repentance : A father had two sons. One 
 was very wicked, and his father at last drove 
 him from his house and disowned him. In the 
 course of time the other son became sick and was 
 nigh to death. In the meantime the prodigal son 
 had reformed, and hearing of his brother's sick- 
 ness, came and desired to see him. The pastor of 
 the family made the request of the father ; but the 
 125 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 privilege was refused. Finally the father granted 
 it on the condition that he was not to meet the 
 prodigal or come in contact with him in any way. 
 The prodigal was ushered into the room where 
 his brother was, and the two brothers were locked 
 in each other 's arms in the demonstration of their 
 affection. At last the prodigal said to the pastor, 
 "I can not understand what my brother says; he 
 wants something." Bending down close to the 
 dying boy, the pastor made out that he wanted 
 his father. He called him to the bedside. When 
 he came the boy took his hand in one of his, and 
 the prodigal's hand in the other, and then, with 
 his dying strength, he asked his father to forgive 
 him. At last he consented, threw his arms around 
 his neck, and kissed him his forgiveness on the 
 cheek. Then the pastor called to the father and 
 said, "Your son is dead." 
 
 "Without any qualification the preacher made 
 this a picture of Jesus reconciling the Father and 
 the prodigals of earth. An implacable Father ex- 
 tends his hand, and his dying Son on the Cross 
 takes it in one hand, and with the other takes the 
 hand of humanity, and brings them together. 
 This was his representation of Reconciliation. 
 Is it not, although a revolting libel against the 
 Father, a fair picture of that theology which 
 teaches that God is angry, and must be reconciled 
 by the death of his Son, so that he may forgive 
 repentant sinners? 
 
 We can not place in parallel with this any 
 teaching of Jesus, for we do not remember that 
 126 
 
 
FIEST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 it ever occurred to him that the Heavenly Father 
 had to be propitiated with his children. But 
 surely the parable of the Prodigal Son, better 
 named the parable of the Heavenly Father, deals 
 with the problem of bringing Father and son to- 
 gether, and the attitude that God takes when his 
 child is willing to come back to him. How differ- 
 ent is the scene from the one we have just related ! 
 Not a word or hint of implacable alienation on 
 the part of the Father ; not a word of a price to 
 be paid by the son or by any one for the son ; not 
 a word concerning the satisfaction of justice or 
 the anarchy that will ensue in the home if the 
 Father forgives his son without a sacrifice being 
 made in his behalf ! If Jesus ever dealt with these 
 specific problems, it was in this parable. His 
 silence on these questions that have so greatly 
 troubled theologians is eloquent in its denial of 
 their conclusions. 
 
 On the other hand, there is a word derivable 
 from it that belongs to a former chapter. The 
 parable is suggestive concerning the Limitations 
 of the Atonement. The reconciliation between 
 the father and the son does not restore the wasted 
 property. The father says to the eldest son, "All 
 that I have is thine." The original division of 
 goods made at the demand of the younger son still 
 stands. Atonement, reconciliation, restores the 
 personal relations between God and the child ; but 
 the waste of sin is not undone. The years have 
 gone ; the substance is gone ; the spiritual powers 
 that have suffered by deterioration and non- 
 127 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 development remain so. The past is past; what 
 was sown is now reaped. God does not abrogate 
 the working of the laws of righteousness and re- 
 ward. He only accepts the repentant child into 
 fellowship and a new life. He must now begin 
 again and work out a new life. The observation 
 of this fact does away with many problems un- 
 solvable in the traditional doctrine. 
 
 Without contending about mere words we find 
 that certain authors so interpret Scripture as to 
 make the anger of God an insurmountable barrier 
 to God taking the first step in atonement. We take 
 as a sample the work of Dale, to whom we are 
 indebted for many steps of progress on this sub- 
 ject. He says : "It is easier for us to believe that 
 God is angry with the sinful and impenitent than 
 to believe that in any real sense he is hostile to 
 them. Anger within certain limits is not incon- 
 sistent with love. Indeed, the measure of our love 
 for others is often the measure of anger against 
 them when they do wrong. A comparative 
 stranger may tell us a lie, and we may feel noth- 
 ing but contempt and disgust; but if our own 
 child, or a friend for whom we have strong affec- 
 tion, tells us a lie, there is often intense anger as 
 well as intense grief. That God should be angry 
 with us, though he love us, is perfectly intelli- 
 gible ; and we may even find it possible to believe 
 that his anger may at last become so great that, 
 if it were revealed, the revelation would utterly 
 consume and destroy us. That he should be hos- 
 tile to men on account of sin is not so easy to 
 128 
 
FIEST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 believe ; but unless we believe it we must suppress 
 and reject a large portion of the teaching of the 
 New Testament. . . . But to deny that he can 
 be hostile to men on account of sin is to emascu- 
 late and degrade our conception of him. He is 
 not a mere "good-natured" God. His righteous- 
 ness as well as his love is infinite." ("Atone- 
 ment," 342-4.) 
 
 It is evident that we are dealing here with the 
 foundation elements in the atonement. Accord- 
 ing to our estimate of the nature and the working 
 of the anger of God will be our estimate of the 
 possibility and necessary elements of the atone- 
 ment. Accepting the word "anger," even the 
 word "hostile" for the moment, and not contend- 
 ing about words, what attitude toward reconcili- 
 ation does this anger in God work? Does it make 
 him implacable? Would he take the initiative to- 
 ward restoration of fellowship, or does he rejoice 
 in the opportunity now given of justly wiping out 
 the race, or consigning it forever to non-fellow- 
 ship with himself? There may be difficulties in 
 the restoration of fellowship; would God gladly 
 solve them? 
 
 If this latter question is answered affirma- 
 tively, then it seems clear that no sacrifice is nec- 
 essary to satisfy the nature of God. Something 
 may be necessary to satisfy justice or govern- 
 ment, but if God wants the reconciliation brought 
 about, then it is contradictory to say that a sacri- 
 fice must be made before he in his feeling is willing 
 to be reconciled to man. If this question is an- 
 129 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 swered in the negative, then the foreknowledge of 
 God becomes implicated in an absurdity. How 
 could it be that God, if clothed with foreknowl- 
 edge, created man, knowing that the time would 
 come when he would wish to undo his work in 
 creation and blot him out of existence? "We can 
 not see the answer to this puzzle. 
 
 Whatever the wrath of God may be, if it does 
 not stand in the way of reconciliation, it will not 
 support that idea of atonement which makes 
 Christ a sacrifice to the nature of God. If God 
 in his anger and grief over man's sin yet yearns 
 for re-established fellowship, as we learn from 
 the record that Jesus did, then all talk about a 
 ransom being paid to him as a satisfaction to his 
 feelings is without foundation. We do not for 
 the moment take up the question of a need of 
 a sacrifice for the sake of government; that does 
 not relate itself to his wrath, but to his justice 
 and the needs of government. 
 
 But Dale pursues the argument further with 
 a very forceful illustration, as if the concrete 
 would force our assent where the abstract may 
 fail. He says: "You have a child which is the 
 light and joy of your home ; her voice is sweeter 
 to you than any music, and her face is fairer and 
 brighter than a summer 's morning. Her thoughts 
 are as pure as mountain air ; her life is as stain- 
 less as mountain snow. She is on the threshold 
 of womanhood, and the very flower and perfec- 
 tion of her loveliness have come. And a wretch, 
 whose crime human language has no term black 
 130 
 
FIEST STEP— PKOPITIATION. 
 
 enough to describe, and human laws no punish- 
 ment terrible enough to avenge — deliberately by 
 hypocrisy, by lying, by a deep-laid scheme, 
 worked out with elaborate cruelty — betrays her 
 trust, ruins her virtue, and then flings her from 
 him on the streets of a strange city. He has no 
 compunction for his crime. If the opportunity 
 comes again he will repeat it. Tell me now — 
 What ought to be God's relation to such a man as 
 that? Ought God to be at peace with him?" (Op. 
 cit. 344.) 
 
 One suspects that the purpose of working out 
 such an elaborate horror as this is to arouse our 
 feelings that they may violently control our judg- 
 ment. There seems to be no dispute as to the 
 question here asked. God ought to be angry with 
 such a wretch. The question at issue is, What 
 should God do about it? In answer to this ques- 
 tion there should be no dispute as long as the 
 wretch remains the same wretch he has been. But 
 should God will that he shall forever remain that 
 same wretch? Is God desirous that he should 
 cease to be that wretch and become righteous? 
 If so, what means shall be used to bring about the 
 change? 
 
 The un-Christian human heart has said, Let 
 him be punished vindictively; let society wreak 
 its anger out in his pain. Any thought of refor- 
 mation has been lost sight of in the avenging pas- 
 sion. But of what good is this vengeance ? Does 
 it help righteousness even by an infinitesimal 
 degree? It is hard to see that it does. A world 
 131 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 run on that principle would only go from bad to 
 worse; there is no ameliorating agency. 
 
 What would God do in such circumstances? 
 Would he simply be angry and vindictive, wreak 
 his vengeance, and nothing more? At this point 
 the answer becomes somewhat confused. Various 
 passages of Scripture are quoted to indicate that 
 God is angry as an ultimate solution, and that 
 there is no desire on his part for the reformation 
 of this wretch, and that he will take no steps to- 
 ward it. We think we will get most light if we 
 ask, What would Jesus do in these circumstances? 
 Jesus is the revelation of the Father; what he 
 would do the Father would do. 
 
 Does any one question what Jesus would do? 
 We can not forget that he was angry with sinners. 
 He excoriated unrepentant Pharisees fearfully. 
 His wrath is unquestionable. But would he turn 
 to a repentant sinner and say that the holiness 
 of God must be vindicated before he can be for- 
 given ; that there is a resentful feeling in the heart 
 of God which must be satisfied before a sinner 
 can be forgiven? It is impossible to think this. 
 It is just as impossible to think that the Father 
 would say this. If the holiness and justice of God 
 are spoken of, it needs only to be mentioned in 
 order to be seen that holiness is the gainer the 
 moment this wretch ceases to be a wretch and be- 
 comes such an one as would not repeat his crime 
 if an opportunity were given. If by making the 
 first move and securing the repentance of this 
 sinner, and then getting him to accept a new na- 
 132 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 ture, righteousness of character become his, holi- 
 ness has everything to gain and nothing to lose; 
 society (government) is protected for the future, 
 and every interest, except the exercise of mere 
 hate, is secured. And at the same time this is not 
 to say that certain consequences of his crime, 
 fixed in the automatic working of law, will not fol- 
 low forever this man who sinned. 
 
 It is a very common statement that Christ's 
 death removes the anger of God. Many authors 
 agree in saying that Christ by his death appeased 
 whatever there is in God which the Bible calls 
 "anger." Is this true either to the Bible or to 
 life? If the doctrine of satisfaction were true 
 this would follow logically. If it is not true in 
 fact, then the doctrine of satisfaction as the prem- 
 ise of the argument must fall to the ground. 
 
 We do not question but that the Cross has 
 changed the feelings of God ; but we raise the dis- 
 tinct question, Has the fact of the death of Christ 
 accomplished in any way or to any degree a 
 change in God's feelings toward the sinner! Is 
 God any more reconciled to the unrepentant sin- 
 ner than he would have been if Christ had not 
 died? In what sense does God feel differently to- 
 ward the sinner now from what he did before 
 Christ died? In what sense is he reconciled to 
 the sinner since the Cross that he was not before? 
 Or, if the anticipation of the Cross be held by 
 any one to have availed for the sinners before 
 Calvary, then we press the question, In what 
 sense is God changed in his feelings toward sin- 
 133 
 
THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ners that he would not have been if the Cross 
 was not considered?* 
 
 We believe that God is just as angry with 
 the sinner as he ever was, or ever would have 
 been. Christ's death has not affected in the least 
 his feelings toward the impenitent sinner, unless 
 it be that he is more deeply grieved that even a 
 "love unto death" does not move him, and thus 
 is more deeply angry than if there had been no 
 cross. Christ's death in itself, apart from the 
 sinner's repentance, does not affect in the least 
 the status of a sinner before God, unless to bring 
 him to a greater condemnation. Without repent- 
 ance God and the sinner are just as alienated as 
 they ever could be. Those who accept this con- 
 clusion must forever abandon the position that 
 the Cross in itself is a satisfaction for the sin- 
 ner's sin or a payment of the sinner's debt. 
 
 God may be angry with a sinner and loving to- 
 ward him at the same time. 
 
 "Love and anger are indeed opposites, and 
 
 *Campbell has answered our question as follows: "If God 
 provides the atonement, then forgiveness must precede atonement; 
 and tha atonement must be the form of the manifestation of 
 the forgiving love of God, not its cause. ... An atonement 
 to make God gracious, to move him to compassion, to turn his 
 heart toward those from whom sin had alienated his love, it would, 
 indeed, be difficult to believe in; for if it were needed it would 
 be impossible. . . . The Scriptures represent the love of, God 
 as the cause, and the atonement as the effect. 'God so loved the 
 world, that he gave his only begotten Son.' " ("Nature of the 
 Atonement," 16, 17.) If we then should press the question, 
 Why, then, should there be an atonement if we have forgiveness 
 without it? this author answers, That we can believe in the love 
 of God when manifested in the atonement easier than we could 
 in the clemency of God without any such manifestation. 
 
 134 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 wrath may become hate and destroy love. But 
 such is not fatherly love and, by consequence, 
 can not be the love of God. ' God is love ; ' and 
 because he is love, his love co-exists with his 
 wrath against sinners, is the very life of that 
 wrath, and is so persistent that it uses wrath as 
 its instrument, while at the same time it seeks 
 and supplies a propitiation. The wrath of God 
 is the side of his love which is turned toward the 
 sin that defeats his purpose and renounces his fel- 
 lowship, and towards those who make themselves 
 one with it." (Lidgett, "Spiritual Principle of 
 the Atonement," 251.) 
 
 The Bible pictures God as angry with sin and 
 sinners; it also testifies that he loves the world 
 in its sinful condition. Are these two statements 
 compatible, and how may we understand them? 
 If compatible, what would be the attitude of God 
 toward reconciliation? Would his anger stand in 
 the way of reconciliation until some atonement 
 for sin was made? 
 
 These questions are closely related to our 
 problem; how shall we estimate them? Can we 
 discover in the human parent a condition that is 
 comparable to this? 
 
 A father is grieved and angry with his child 
 who has sinned against him. This, however, does 
 not destroy his love for his child. It is only when 
 the course of sin has been long prolonged, and he 
 has lost hope that he will ever be changed, his 
 patience being exhausted, that his anger becomes 
 implacable and he drives the child from his home. 
 135 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 What is the father's attitude toward reconcilia- 
 tion? Is his anger of that kind which refuses to 
 take the first step toward reconciliation? Much 
 depends upon what kind of a father he is ; but in 
 our judgment a father that will take this position 
 is not a fit illustration of the Heavenly Father. 
 Nevertheless, when reconciliation is effected, the 
 father may yet feel that the legitimate conse- 
 quences of sin should not be lifted. This is not 
 an impeachment of his love ; it is but an expres- 
 sion of his sense of what is for the best not only 
 for bis child, but for all his children. It does not 
 impeach love; it illustrates it. This child, al- 
 though forgiven and in fellowship, may still need 
 the discipline of the law involved. 
 
 If the suffering of Christ was not for the pur- 
 pose of propitiating the wrath of the Father, what 
 relation, then, had it to reconciliation? We hold 
 that Christ's suffering was a necessary implica- 
 tion of the revelation of the Father's love for 
 man, and was not a sacrifice made to the wrath 
 of God that would render him placable to man in 
 atonement. In the following quotation Dale pre- 
 sents the two views of Christ's suffering, allowing 
 the exegetical correctness of our view, but reject- 
 ing it on traditional grounds: "Christ's ultimate 
 object was 'to bring us to God. ' It would be per- 
 fectly consistent with the apostolic conception of 
 our Lord's death, if in these words St. Peter had 
 intended to describe its effects upon the moral 
 and spiritual life, inspiring us with penitence for 
 sin, and constraining us to trust in the Divine 
 136 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 mercy, and to return to our true home in the Di- 
 vine presence. But I doubt whether this would 
 be a legitimate interpretation of the language. 
 'That he might bring us to God' suggests the con- 
 ferring of a new dignity and privilege, rather 
 than the creating of a new disposition. It recalls 
 the idea of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Ephe- 
 sians (2 : 18), that through Christ Jew and Gentile 
 have ' access to the Father,' an idea expressed in 
 another form in the Epistle to the Romans (5:2), 
 'By whom we have access into this grace wherein 
 we stand.' The guilt which hindered our access 
 to God has been atoned for, and we are no longer 
 excluded from the honor and blessing of ap- 
 proaching him." (Op. cit. 137.) 
 
 The difference of view between holding that a 
 past sin shuts us out from the presence of God 
 until it is atoned for, and the view that God 
 is always ready to hear a penitent sinner is fun- 
 damental. If a sin must be atoned before God 
 will treat with us, then there is no apparent way 
 by which we can ever get back to God. That a 
 Second Person of the Trinity should be so differ- 
 ently disposed from the First as to undertake the 
 atonement, seems to us a violent disruption of 
 the Trinitarian Nature, a doctrine leading to 
 an inharmonious Tri theism; and man alone is in 
 no condition to make any other atonement than 
 repentance. 
 
 Why did Jesus die ? The Scriptures have dif- 
 ferent phrases answering this question. Is it pos- 
 sible for us to put a meaning into them, and the 
 137 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 same meaning into them all, a meaning consistent 
 in all cases? 
 
 He died for us. "Christ died for our sins." 
 (1 Cor. 15:3.) What do these words mean? 
 Were our sins his sins ? No ; in him was no sin. 
 Was the guilt of our sins his guilt? There is 
 no known principle in the spiritual world by 
 which guilt may be transferred from one person 
 to another. Did he die in consequence of our 
 sins? Yes; that is possible. One man may in- 
 volve another in death by his sin. If this is the 
 Scripture meaning we may construe an explana- 
 tion. What shall it be? 
 
 When one by sin involves another in death, 
 then the second man must in some way be related 
 to the first, either voluntarily or by nature or 
 accident, that his death should follow. We as 
 human beings are so tied together that one can 
 not fall without dragging others down. Is that 
 the way Jesus' death is involved in our sin? If 
 we accept it tentatively, then it is proper to in- 
 quire concerning the author of this arrangement 
 and its purpose. 
 
 We are assuming that Jesus was the eternal 
 Logos, and hence was not fundamentally involved 
 in the general consequences of sin by his nature. 
 He was outside of the historic human family, and 
 might have remained outside forever, if he had 
 not chosen to come inside. His coming into his- 
 toric unity with men was a voluntary matter on 
 the part of some one. In the volition that brought 
 him into the world, did he act independently from 
 138 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 the Father? Was his attitude toward sinful 
 humanity different from the Father's? Did he 
 love humanity, and the Father hate humanity? 
 (John 3: 16.) 
 
 The pre-incarnation determination to become 
 incarnate carried with it a necessity and obliga- 
 tion of undergoing all that came to Christ in his 
 human career. He must not shrink from any- 
 thing that any human being would have had to 
 meet in his circumstances. He must hunger for 
 food, because he was poor; he must be weary, 
 because his life was to be full of toil ; he must be 
 misunderstood and unappreciated, because his 
 task was above ordinary comprehension ; he must 
 meet the deadly enmity of men, because his work 
 was an opposition to theirs. He must at last 
 suffer desertion of his followers and death upon 
 the cross, because the enmity against him would 
 reach that pitch. 
 
 Because he was a perfect human being, his 
 sympathies with suffering humanity, snared in 
 sin and wretchedness, would load him more with 
 sympathetic sorrow than any one else could ever 
 feel. He must feel alone upon the cross, because 
 the experience through which he was passing in- 
 evitably led to that condition. The Father re- 
 quired all this, because anything else than this 
 would have been less than was normal to the con- 
 dition and task. He could not escape the "cup" 
 without drinking it : for it was all implied in the 
 mission for reconciliation that he had entered 
 upon. But it is not necessary to think that all 
 139 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 this was required to satisfy the mere feeling of 
 justice in the Father. Of course, we may use that 
 language from our point of view. It would not 
 have been just to have taken the human condition 
 and then sidetrack the consequences by some 
 miraculous interposition. He must drink the cup 
 of human suffering to the dregs, but only because 
 the human condition was a necessity for the rev- 
 elation of the heart of God to man. 
 
 We feel that it is impossible to hold that there 
 was any difference of sentiment or affection or 
 attitude or purpose in the volition of the Son and 
 the volition of the Father. The incarnation was 
 not an independent act of the Son, not an act con- 
 trary to the Father's will or feeling. There was 
 no dissension in the Trinity concerning it. 
 
 What was the purpose of this Incarnation and 
 all that is involved in it, including the death of 
 Christ ? The idea of remission of sins is involved. 
 The restoration of fellowship between man and 
 God is perhaps as general a statement as we can 
 make in answer. Did this restoration imply the 
 removal of man's guilt before the Father would 
 enter into relation? We greatly doubt that view. 
 1. It is not the picture that the Bible gives us 
 of the Father. 2. We do not see that guilt ever 
 is removed from the sinner. He may be forgiven, 
 in the sense that fellowship is established again. 
 But he is the same sinner still, so far as being 
 the one who committed the transgression. Paul 
 calls himself in his old age "the chief of sinners." 
 The only change that is possible is the change that 
 140 
 
FIEST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 repentance brings, a change of mind. Does the 
 Father require more than this? How shall we 
 know, unless we ask: Does Jesus require more 
 than this? Does not Jesus reveal the Father? 
 Does the Father demand more in the way of ex- 
 piation than the Son? To affirm this brings very 
 grave consequences. 
 
 Bishop Merrill makes much of the point that 
 the atonement was not payment of the penalty due 
 for sin, but only its suspension. The idea seems 
 to be that in case of the wicked the penalty is de- 
 ferred, probation is renewed under another 
 scheme, that of redemption; but that if they do 
 not repent, believe upon Jesus and obey him, then 
 after death the full penalty will be exacted. In 
 case of the righteous, if they accept Christ and 
 obey him, then the penalty is never exacted, and 
 the suspension becomes permanent. ("Atone- 
 ment," 133 et passim.) 
 
 If this idea is noted carefully it will be seen 
 that that which actually lifts the penalty is the 
 repentance and obedience of the sinner. The 
 death of Christ performs the necessary part in 
 making the action of the sinner possible, but it 
 is not in itself an expiation of sin. There is no 
 special ground of objection to such a view if it can 
 be shown that it serves any necessary purpose. 
 As an exhibition of divine love it would exalt 
 him and be a ground for our praise. But why is 
 it necessary to bring the death of Christ as a 
 legal consideration for any such purpose? Can 
 not God suspend the penalty of the sinner at any 
 141 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 time and until any time and under any conditions 
 attached without demanding the death of Christ 
 as a consideration or a motive? We fail to see 
 any obstruction to the divine love and wisdom 
 from the side of his own administration. We can 
 distinctly see the objections which man's unbe- 
 lief and disobedience throw in the way ; but these 
 exhaust the obstructions. In relation to himself 
 God may do as seemeth him best. We can not see 
 that the death of Christ was necessary to make 
 himself willing to remit the penalty entirely. So 
 this distinction of suspending the penalty through 
 the death of Christ serves no actual necessity, and 
 may be put aside. 
 
 When the Apostle Paul affirms that we are not 
 under law, but under grace, he makes this great 
 distinction which writers of a mere natural re- 
 ligion could not deal with. We must construe this 
 statement that we are not to be justified on the 
 basis of law. So it is futile to plead for the con- 
 ditions of legal satisfaction, if in the start we are 
 told that our pardon is not legal, but gracious 
 and filial. "If there had been a law given which 
 could have given life, verily righteousness should 
 have been by the law. " "He that believeth hath 
 passed from death unto life." We are dealing 
 here not with the dead things as of a legal rela- 
 tion which is confined to outward just relation- 
 ships, but with a vital process which enters into 
 the deeps of nature and re-creates and makes fit 
 for a companionship with God which the new 
 relation of reconciliation outwardly announces. 
 142 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 "IF Christ's satisfaction were merely rendered 
 to law so that its penalty might be withdrawn, 
 as the more extreme governmental views would 
 represent, then the appropriation of the benefits 
 of that satisfaction would naturally bear a legal 
 character also, and salvation would be defined as 
 an acceptance of the fact that Christ had dis- 
 charged our obligations for us. " ( Stevens, ' ' The 
 Pauline Theology," 256.) This is, indeed, the 
 key to salvation as presented by all satisfaction- 
 ists. It is the acceptance of a legal fiction rather 
 than the transformation of a life. 
 
 The historic atonement of Christianity gathers 
 about the suffering of Jesus. The great central 
 question which the mind of man through all these 
 Christian centuries has been trying to solve is, 
 Why did Jesus suffer? 
 
 Dale ("Atonement," 396) asks, "Is there any 
 * immorality' and 'crime,' anything to provoke a 
 'cry of indignant shame,' in the resolve of God 
 himself, in the person of Christ, to endure suffer- 
 ing instead of inflicting it?" The quoted words 
 are from Martineau. (" Studies of Christianity, ' ' 
 188.) 
 
 There does not seem to be any possibility of 
 answering this question in the affirmative. And 
 those of us who accept the deity of Christ must 
 agree that Jesus suffered by the appointment of 
 God, and that his sufferings do secure our release 
 from sufferings. These facts are admitted. But 
 this general answer to the question, Why did 
 Jesus suffer? admits of further analysis, and it 
 143 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 is in the detailed implications where present-day 
 opinion divides. Was this God-appointed suffer- 
 ing to placate the wrath of God? Was it to 
 satisfy a legal demand? Was it to reveal the 
 love of God? Was it to take the place in a legal 
 way of the sufferings of the sinner, whose penal- 
 ties are thereby ipso facto released, as by the hy- 
 pothesis of satisfaction they must be? 
 
 We are ready to conclude that Jesus suffered 
 because he came to a certain task, and men killed 
 him in its accomplishment. In this, from the 
 standpoint of human history, his fate was like 
 the fate of good men in all ages among all peoples 
 from the beginning of the world, whenever they 
 tried to right great wrongs. But further, from 
 the standpoint of divine history and purpose, it 
 was to reveal to the world the love of the Father, 
 which could not otherwise be known in complete- 
 ness, which revelation it is necessary that man 
 should know in order that he may trust a God 
 whom he has offended. It was a further conse- 
 quence of the social construction of the world, so 
 that whoever enters into human history suffers 
 for the sins of the world in proportion to his own 
 holiness and his efforts to rid the world of sin. 
 There may be other reasons, all of which, when 
 fully known, will be found fully to harmonize, and 
 each one the complement and implication of the 
 others. But other alleged reasons, such as: To 
 placate the wrath of God ; to pay a price in satis- 
 faction for a legal demand; to furnish a substi- 
 tute for the pains and penalties due to the sinner, 
 144 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 we can no longer believe. Under increasing light 
 and deeper insight and profounder study we find 
 the trend of our conviction definitely and de- 
 cidedly away from these positions which was our 
 theological inheritance. 
 
 We can find no law in our nature or discover 
 any in the Divine Nature, as manifested either in 
 revelation or in life that demands these latter 
 positions. They are the inventions of the human 
 mind under the darkness of an obscured and per- 
 verted sense of justice. Advance in human gov- 
 ernment is revealing the fact that they are dis- 
 pensable and even pernicious ideas. Dinsmore 
 says it is a "sure instinct of our nature" that 
 "there can be no forgiveness where love does not 
 work in such a way as to satisfy the strictest 
 demands of conscience and meet every require- 
 ment of perfect repentance." ("Atonement in 
 Literature and Life," 178.) We find ourselves 
 in harmony with that statement. We shall fol- 
 low it as the limit of demand, and seek to work 
 out our problem in such a way as to meet it. Our 
 objection to the Satisfaction theory is that it ex- 
 ceeds it in some respects and violates it in others. 
 The author just quoted represents the authors of 
 that theory as follows: "Anselm does not dwell 
 on the extent of the Savior's sufferings, nor on 
 his death as a substituted penalty, but this con- 
 ception naturally grows out of his thought, and 
 was seized upon and elaborated by Aquinas and 
 the Schoolmen. They taught that the vicarious 
 work of Christ was the real and absolute equiva- 
 10 145 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 lent for that which the transgressor owes to God 
 and his justice. Sin is a debt which Christ and 
 his redeemed pay to the full. The scales balance, 
 and perfect justice is done." (Op. cit. 176, 177.) 
 This author finds the sources of this notion of 
 satisfaction among the teachings of the Greeks; 
 among others in Sophocles' "(Edipus:" "There 
 is no atonement, no reconciliation with God, until 
 justice has been done. What will satisfy divine 
 justice? What will expiate sin? The answer we 
 find in CEdipus is that it is suffering endured sub- 
 missively until the heart is purified and the will 
 subdued. Sufferings thus borne propitiate the 
 moral indignation of the gods and man." (Op. cit. 
 66.) And again: "Forgiveness to be genuine 
 must be so bestowed that moral obligations re- 
 ceive no diminution. The many forms in which 
 this intuitive belief is expressed add impressive- 
 ness to the unanimity of the testimony. In Dante 
 the sanction of the eternal justice is maintained by 
 the infliction of a penalty equivalent to the enor- 
 mity of the sin, Christ bearing the eternal retri- 
 bution and sinners the temporal pains. Thus God 
 
 MAKES THE SCALES BALANCE ERE HE FORGIVES. In 
 
 "CEdipus Tyrannus" sufferings not commensu- 
 rate but adequate to demonstrate the inviolability 
 of the divine decrees are inflicted. ^Eschylus 
 presents another phase of satisfaction when he 
 describes Orestes, a righteous man, enduring vi- 
 cariously the consequences of the transgressions 
 of others and by obedience and sorrow setting at 
 rest the Furies of retributive justice. This is 
 146 
 
FIEST STEP— PEOPITIATION. 
 
 still more strongly asserted in the remarkable 
 passage at the close of "Prometheus Bound:" 
 
 Do not look 
 For any end, moreover, of this curse, 
 Or ere some god appear to accept thy pangs 
 On his own head vicarious, and descend 
 With unreluctant steps the darks of hell 
 And gloomy abysses around Tartarus. 
 
 (E. B. Browning's trans.) (Op. cit. 161.) 
 
 As these quotations are extended from extra - 
 Christian thinkers we begin to feel that, although 
 the word "atonement" is used to describe them, 
 these are plans of reconciliation in which the 
 great factor in Christian atonement is omitted, 
 namely, the love of God. Their schemes are 
 based on ideals of commercial exchange or plans 
 of government where sheer balanced rights are 
 all that come into view. As such they do not 
 illustrate, but rather darken the whole problem 
 before us. Without the love of God, which is 
 willing to suffer for what the sinner has done 
 without compensation, suffer sympathetically, 
 suffer vicariously, we see no possible basis for a 
 reconciliation between God and man. If God is 
 not willing to take the first step, and man can not, 
 the matter ends in futility. These schemes of 
 atonement are not based upon mercy at all ; they 
 are simply demands of court justice, with a 
 Heavenly Father left out, which an indifferent 
 and tactful God might devise, but hardly the God 
 that is revealed in the New Testament When 
 147 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 the scales of legal exchange are exactly balanced 
 there is no demand nor place for forgiveness ; the 
 demand for an atonement has not come. So we 
 find nothing in these ideas that may furnish a 
 foundation for Christian atonement. We must 
 begin with Christian ideas and lay a foundation 
 ere we can proceed. Nevertheless, we shall hold 
 ourselves not to something less than court jus- 
 tice; if we do not produce a system which will 
 manifest a higher and deeper justice than this 
 derived from the Greeks, it will stand self-con- 
 demned. 
 
 How can God be holy and just and forgive the 
 sinner? We conceive that the intricacy of this 
 problem grows out of the past. Wrong deeds 
 committed are in the past. If God should forgive 
 those sins in the sense that he should pronounce 
 them just and justified, then I think there could 
 be no solution of the problem. That would be an 
 annulment of his holiness. 
 
 But if we leave those sins just as they are, 
 with God's condemnation upon them, and the sin- 
 ner by repentance and confession pronounces his 
 condemnation upon them, then the remaining 
 problem is only one of determining what treat- 
 ment shall be meted out to the sinner. If he is 
 still sinful in character and purpose, then he can 
 not be treated as righteous without an annulment 
 of God 's holiness. But if he changes his mind by 
 repentance, and God changes his nature by re- 
 generating him — a change which the sinner ac- 
 cepts from God — then it is difficult to see in what 
 148 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 way God is obliged to treat him in any way save 
 that which will contribute to holiness. It is 
 readily seen that to take him into fellowship is an 
 expedient more productive of holiness of life 
 than for God to thrust him away. God and the 
 sinner are now at-one in their estimate of the past 
 deeds. There was a time when the sinner justified 
 them, defended them, practiced them, defied God 
 regarding them. But now he has accepted the 
 Divine estimate of them and renounced them by 
 confession and repentance. More can not be done 
 regarding the moral standard for the past and the 
 future. The sinner has accepted the Divine esti- 
 mate of holiness for character or being by accept- 
 ing the new nature which is offered him. By this 
 he renounces himself as he has been, he justifies 
 God in regard to himself; his new nature is the 
 best and only adequate pledge of conformity to 
 the divine standard for the future that can be 
 conceived or provided. Crimination and suffer- 
 ing can not add to these demands for holiness; 
 at-one-ment has been made. 
 
 For God to annul the sinner's debt toward a 
 third person without the consent of that third 
 person would not be just; but for him to annul 
 the debt which now never can be paid toward 
 himself and take the pain of it to himself, is en- 
 tirely within his right, and there can be no objec- 
 tion to it from any source if the new life of right- 
 eousness may be secured. 
 
 For God to demand anything further as an 
 evidence of his own holiness is not required : for 
 149 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 God has continually maintained his holiness. His 
 standard of righteousness has never changed, 
 and it is now accepted by the sinner. His char- 
 acter of righteousness is maintained when he 
 takes the pain of the sin into himself, and the sin- 
 ner accepts from his hand a nature that will do 
 the same thing. How this pain of sin has been 
 taken into himself we have seen under the thought 
 of tne Vicarious principle which rules in all life. 
 "God is not a death-loving Gorgon, to be de- 
 lighted by the smell of blood. It is a brutal bur- 
 lesque to suppose that the death of Jesus was a 
 sacrifice needed to put him in a forgiving humor. 
 Even the ancient singers of Israel knew God bet- 
 ter. 
 
 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, 
 A broken and a contrite heart, God, thou 
 wilt not despise.' " 
 
 (Ascham, "Help from the Hills," 196.) 
 
 This leaves the work of atonement as that in- 
 fluence, however produced, which secures the will- 
 ingness of the sinner to give up his sin, enter into 
 a new life and communion with God, and accept 
 the new nature. For this we must accredit any 
 work done by Jesus, whether of teaching, or life, 
 or of death, that exerts an influence in that di- 
 rection. 
 
 The major premise of the Satisfaction theory 
 of atonement is the assumption that God's anger 
 must be appeased, or his outraged nature must 
 be satisfied before he will grant forgiveness. This 
 is probably regarded as axiomatic ; for it is hardly 
 150 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 demonstrable. It may be based upon an appeal to 
 our own nature or feelings when wronged, it being 
 taken for granted that our moral nature is illus- 
 trative of the divine Nature. It is admissible 
 that apart from revelation the human spirit 
 is the only source of light that falls upon the 
 workings of the divine Spirit. But we must note 
 carefully what is the testimony of our own con- 
 sciousness under the experience of wrong from 
 another. Do we require compensation? This 
 question must evidently be answered affirmatively 
 when the wrongdoer has ability to compensate. 
 This demand is evidently finally based upon the 
 fact that any change of mind from the attitude 
 of a wrongdoer requires an adequate expression. 
 A verbal expression of contrition for a wrong 
 done, when a material expression is possible, 
 would be regarded as hypocrisy and a fraud. 
 But, on the other hand, is our spirit implacable 
 when the sinner is without ability to make com- 
 pensation? Do we insist on punishment of a mere 
 vindictive nature? This is more than doubtful. 
 Such a demand is estimated not as an expression 
 of a normal human nature, but of one that has 
 become depraved by hatred and sin. The heart 
 that forgives when nothing beyond a sincere re- 
 pentance is possible on the part of the sinner is 
 applauded by the universal judgment of mankind. 
 So we think that the witness of the human spirit 
 to the doctrine of satisfaction will be found to 
 give the most indubitable evidence against it. 
 ''The God and Father of Jesus Christ could 
 151 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 never be content to thunder the sinner down. He 
 will not by the exercise of irresistible power hurl 
 the sinner headlong to Hell. Hell, if that be all 
 there is to it, is a confession of moral inability 
 and bankruptcy on God's part, just as the old- 
 fashioned State's prison is a confession of bank- 
 ruptcy on the part of the free State. God for- 
 gives the sinner. By the sweetness and strength 
 of his grace he keeps his foothold within the will 
 of the offender. And so the sinner, awakening to 
 the dread and terror of his sin, finds his will en- 
 closed by the divine will. ... If God can not 
 do as much as this, he can do less than we. . . . 
 The law includes forgiveness as its method of ad- 
 ministration. . . . When our friends sin against 
 us, we know there is but one thing for us to do. 
 Through forgiveness we must maintain in the 
 heart of the offender the ideal he has injured. 
 ... If the innocent party refuses to forgive, 
 what has he done? Thrown up the fight for hu- 
 man perfection because of his wounds. . . . With- 
 out forgiveness the Moral Law, when recognized 
 as the relation between personal beings, denies 
 itself. ... If God, sinned against, holds him- 
 self aloof, guards himself within his majesty and 
 holiness, he resigns his right of creative guidance. 
 He gainsays himself if he waits to be propitiated. 
 The forgiveness is wrought out in silence. . . . 
 If morality were an abstract code, God would 
 stand helpless before sin. . . . Forgiveness alone 
 makes a full repentance possible." (Nash, "The 
 Atoning Life," 111-113.) 
 152 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 Whether Paul was consistent with himself in 
 all his teaching we will not at this juncture try- 
 to prove ; but it is evident that 2 Cor. 5 : 18-20 
 contains his thought in complete form, that rec- 
 onciliation of man to God is the purpose of 
 Christ's coming. God did it. He does not hint 
 that man must reconcile God, or that something 
 propitiatory had to be done before God could be 
 reconciled to man. 
 
 A study of the problem of the necessary ele- 
 ments in atonement will involve a study of the 
 science of criminology, or the reformation of the 
 sinner. Views concerning this have greatly 
 changed in recent years, though it can hardly be 
 said that universal or catholic opinion has yet 
 been attained. Ancient society dealt with the 
 criminal on the basis of vindication or self- 
 defense. Punishment was exemplary for the pur- 
 pose of inspiring fear to commit crime. It is now 
 doubted whether this principle was ever effective. 
 Brutality and severity in punishment increased 
 crime rather than deterred it, as may be seen 
 from the criminal records in English history.* 
 Thus it was not an effective preservative prin- 
 ciple. It is now believed that reformation of all 
 save the hopelessly incorrigible is the correct aim 
 
 *Society has gradually given up retributive punishments be- 
 cause people have seen that they neither awaken the feeling of 
 guilt nor act as a deterrent, but on the contrary retribution 
 applied by equal to equal brutalizes the ideas of right, hardens 
 the temper, and stimulates the victim to exercise the same vio- 
 lence toward others that has been endured by himself. (Ellen 
 Key: "The Century of the Child," 135.) 
 
 153 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 in punishment. Even as a defensive and self- 
 preservative measure society protects itself best 
 by reforming the criminal. Paley says, "The 
 proper end of human punishment is not the satis- 
 faction of justice, but the prevention of crimes." 
 
 It is probable that this old view of criminology 
 has had much to do with theological teaching con- 
 cerning methods of an atonement. Just as men 
 thought that society must protect itself by exem- 
 plary punishment, so they thought that God must 
 protect his moral universe by exemplary punish- 
 ment. Either the sinner in his own person or 
 Jesus in his stead must suffer the penalty of the 
 law, or government would be endangered. 
 
 As society is changing its mind concerning 
 the practical question, so theologians are likely to 
 have a changed estimate concerning the necessity 
 of punishment as a vindication of government. 
 This estimate is a fundamental factor concerning 
 our question — the problem of atonement. When 
 it is believed that repentance and regeneration 
 vindicate and protect the divine government suf- 
 ficiently, one of the traditional demands for the 
 1 ' Cross " as a satisfaction will have passed away. 
 Conviction may yet be divided concerning this 
 fundamental proposition. The old idea of the 
 function of justice may yet hold its place in many 
 minds. We trust we have made clear the line 
 where that division will be drawn. 
 
 In exploring the sources of a doctrine, atmos- 
 phere is everything. An atmosphere may have 
 154 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 much to justify it, aud yet incidentally there may 
 have drifted into it a doctrine which will grow 
 and spread and dominate theology long after the 
 healthfulness of the atmosphere in which it arose 
 has changed to malaria. The atmosphere in 
 which the substitution theory of the atonement 
 arose was that of Divine Sovereignty. This Sov- 
 ereignty was regarded as almost, if not quite, ir- 
 responsible from a moral point of view. What- 
 ever God willed to do was not to be questioned. 
 In justification of such a viewpoint it may be said, 
 justly, that if we had an unmistakable indication 
 that God had willed to do something, we might in 
 any age safely assume that it was right, whether 
 its justice could be discerned by us or not. But 
 such knowledge was not vouchsafed, and theolo- 
 gians were but seeking to know what a righteous 
 God would will. But without this direct knowl- 
 edge his Sovereignty was assumed to be absolute, 
 and this in spite of the assertion of man's free- 
 dom and the evident exercise of it in the produc- 
 tion of sin and suffering, all of which would have 
 to be charged to God, if he were absolute. Any 
 implication of such a sovereignty was accepted 
 prima facie as righteous and not to be questioned. 
 Moreover, this sovereignty was estimated in 
 physical rather than in moral terms, and the 
 dominance of the moral over the physical was not 
 observed. 
 
 Hence the conceptions of an Eastern sovereign 
 visiting his wrath against an offending subject 
 155 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 was the starting point of the atonement concep- 
 tion. Out of such a fundamental view the satis- 
 faction theory was a fairly logical deduction. 
 
 In the broad question of satisfaction for sin 
 we may distinguish a difference between a satis- 
 faction rendered to justice and such a satisfaction 
 as may be required to receive forgiveness. For- 
 giveness of an unrepentant and rebellious sinner 
 is hardly a demand of the law of love, nor is it 
 conceivable that any benefit can flow from it. It 
 seems more like indifference to moral action than 
 any beneficent attitude in a moral ruler. So that 
 there may be some satisfaction demanded from 
 the sinner before forgiveness can be exercised. 
 This satisfaction need not be such an adjustment 
 of the situation that moral and legal debts are 
 paid, but only such an attitude of the spirit as 
 will make forgiveness available and beneficial. 
 Repentance answers every demand of such a sat- 
 isfaction, such a denunciation of the wrong deed 
 on the part of the sinner that he and the sinned 
 against are now in perfect accord concerning the 
 wrong that was done and the righteous claims of 
 the sinned against. This is the Scriptural thought 
 contained in the words, "death unto sin." This 
 will furnish a basis of renewed fellowship and 
 communion, the only morally urgent necessity of 
 the case. 
 
 But, on the other hand, this satisfaction need 
 not go so far as to make a full restitution. When 
 it does, forgiveness means nothing. Reconcilia- 
 tion on such a basis is the demand of justice, and 
 156 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 forgiveness is emptied of its graciousness. Says 
 Nash: "If the divine forgiveness is conditioned 
 on propitiation, then it ceases to be free forgive- 
 ness. It is not forgiveness in the full sense. If 
 propitiation is first made, then forgiveness must 
 follow as a matter of fair dealing. If God did 
 not forgive, he would be unjust. God does not, 
 then, forgive freely. His forgiveness is earned. ' ' 
 ("The Atoning Life," 111.) 
 
 The force of this distinction has been felt, but 
 incorrectly stated, by those satisfactionists who 
 have drawn back from the idea of full legal satis- 
 faction. They have seen that God did not exact 
 the full identical payment of the debt, but has 
 accepted a substitute for the payment. To this 
 view has been given such names as "substitute 
 for penalty," "accepted substitute," etc. It has 
 been supported by the general principle that God 
 might in the exercise of his sovereign will make 
 anything that pleased him an accepted substi- 
 tute for the penalty which Justice required. Thus 
 the distinction is based upon an arbitrary choice 
 rather than upon an inevitable and discernible 
 principle. It is but one step from this position 
 to the one which allows God to do away with any- 
 thing whatever as a substitute for penalty and 
 forgive sinners freely without condition. 
 
 None of these ideas are fully logical. If the 
 demand is made on grounds of justice, nothing but 
 complete payment of the legal debt satisfies that 
 demand. But if, on the other hand, the demand 
 is for nothing more than supplying a necessary 
 157 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 element in the operation of forgiveness, then the 
 satisfaction is rendered not by God to his own 
 sense of justice, but by man in assuming an atti- 
 tude which allows God to forgive. Every arbi- 
 trary element is eliminated from the transaction, 
 and only inevitable conditions are respected. 
 
 Of the reconciliation of such abstract attri- 
 butes as Justice we do not take serious account. 
 This has been a method of treating the subject 
 that has influenced theologians through long ages. 
 But we hold it to have no validity whatever. One 
 author, writing on the basis of the satisfaction 
 theory, says (we need not give the reference, for 
 he speaks after the manner of countless others) : 
 "God was gracious, and mercifully inclined to 
 reconciliation prior to any step being taken in 
 that direction. His love of pity yearned for the 
 restoration of the alienated, and moved the plan 
 that would satisfy the demands of justice and 
 holiness. Of his predisposition to reconciliation 
 there can be no question. No sacrifice was neces- 
 sary to induce that. ' ' Happy would it have been 
 for our preaching if we had never been instructed 
 to go any further than this. It did not seem to 
 occur to many that the additions which they made 
 to this were in irreconcilable contradiction to it. 
 If no satisfaction were needed to gain God's pre- 
 disposition to reconciliation, what, then, does de- 
 mand it? The following quotation will answer: 
 "If unbending justice demanded satisfaction in 
 order to the outflow of his compassion, then the 
 legal obstructions to forgiveness must be re- 
 158 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 moved; and the removing of them is the turning 
 away of his wrath, well and forcibly expressed as 
 the reconciliation of the Father." Where is this 
 "Unbending justice?" It could not be in the 
 Father, for we have seen by this author that no 
 sacrifice was needed to " induce his predisposition 
 to reconciliation." No; it was some imperson- 
 ated justice that seems to stand between the free 
 forgiveness which is in the heart of God and the 
 sinner. 
 
 This hypostatizing of Justice as an obstruc- 
 tion to the free exercise of the Father's sponta- 
 neous desire and disposition is thoroughly mis- 
 leading and indefensible. Whose justice is it 
 that stands in the way? If anybody's, it must be 
 the justice of God. Then we have one of God's 
 attributes by hypothesis separated from himself 
 and standing in the road of his action as a com- 
 plete being, so that he can not act as he would. 
 This is absurd. The situation is: One element 
 in the Divine Nature so opposes other elements 
 in his Nature that he can not act in the line of 
 his primal impulsion. In other words, consider- 
 ing now the action of his total Being, he can not 
 act in the line of love and mercy and reconcili- 
 ation. It is false, then, to say that God desires 
 reconciliation or that "his love of pity yearned 
 for the restoration of the alienated." 
 
 But this representation is untenable. He de- 
 sired what he was predisposed to. His nature, as 
 ours, acted in totality and was not distracted by 
 contending elements. Justice is not something ex- 
 159 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ternal to himself to which he must give heed in 
 contradiction to his own desires. His justice is 
 not different from his love. It demands nothing 
 that his love does not demand. We can not think 
 of God as acting thus by sections. His whole 
 Being acts in thorough harmony with itself. 
 
 Moreover, he is not, as we are, bound to some 
 external standard or consideration. There is 
 nothing above him more just than he is himself. 
 He can act freely from the impulses of his own 
 Nature without reference to anything as a stand- 
 ard beside himself, and his action will be perfectly 
 just and loving and wise toward all possible be- 
 ings. We must get done with this fiction of le- 
 gality as covering or constraining the action of 
 God. The only law that he needs to observe or 
 consider is the law of love and holiness and jus- 
 tice written in his own heart. What it says he 
 may do with no dire results to any scheme of gov- 
 ernment or laws of a universe or anything of that 
 kind. This same reasoning will also be adequate 
 to dispose of the claims of satisfaction of a gov- 
 ernment. No government has any claims of jus- 
 tice as opposed to the free working of his own 
 Nature. His Nature is the foundation of all gov- 
 ernment. Perfect justice in government will en- 
 sue from the outworkings of his own desire and 
 will. "If the Eternal Father is satisfied, then 
 must the Judge of all the earth be satisfied, — the 
 provision which secures the fulfillment of the 
 Father's heart must secure the highest ends of 
 rectoral government." (Campbell, "Nature of 
 160 
 
FIEST STEP— PEOPITIATION. 
 
 the Atonement," 90.) This idea of satisfaction 
 is partially founded in the self -consciousness of 
 the age that may at the moment be interrogated. 
 Dinsmore has called attention to the different 
 standards which different ages have erected. He 
 says: "In the time of chivalry God's personal 
 honor was shown to be appeased by either the 
 plenary or adequate suffering of Christ; in the 
 days of juster government the majesty of law was 
 declared to be vindicated; interpreted in its 
 priestly aspect, Christ's work was a full confes- 
 sion and repentance of man's sinfulness. To the 
 modern Christian, trained to think of God as a 
 Father, satisfaction comes through the expression 
 and activity of his compassion." (Op. cit. 237.) 
 The Parable of the Prodigal Son, which would 
 be better entitled the Parable of the Heavenly 
 Father, is usually regarded as the best epitome 
 in revelation of the relation between God and his 
 children. However, satisfactionist writers have 
 felt that it is an imperfect statement in essential 
 particulars, and think that it must be interpreted 
 by the aid of a sort of interlinear addition. J. G. 
 Simpson in Hastings's "Dictionary of Christ and 
 the Gospels" says: "It is obvious that even the 
 Parable of the Prodigal Son would not ring true 
 to human ears unless it was forever interpreted 
 by a transaction which gives due weight to the 
 enormity of sin that entailed the sacrifice of the 
 Father's only Son." We feel that the sin which 
 it does portray is unprovoked, has no rational 
 basis, is enacted against the thoughtful provisions 
 161 
 
THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 of wisdom and love. It is hard to see what could 
 be added to the picture that would increase the 
 enormity of the principle of sin there portrayed. 
 But the writer above quoted and others would in- 
 troduce something into the story that would be- 
 come a condition of sin's forgiveness — a sacrifice, 
 a bloodshedding, etc., something that would make 
 it possible for the father to forgive the son.* This 
 seems to us a violent and unsupported method of 
 reading Scripture. There is no hint anywhere in 
 the parable that such a thing is necessary. There 
 is no place at which such an element can be at- 
 tached. Such an interpretation would have to 
 be read into the story and is an element absolutely 
 foreign to its teachings. 
 
 Without such a violence we can imagine the 
 story enlarged to give a more complete descrip- 
 tion of the mission and sacrifice of the Christ. 
 
 The picture would be a more complete parallel 
 to our social condition if there were a number of 
 sons with the Prodigal at the stage of his desti- 
 tution and want. Then the Father entrusts the 
 Elder son to go to them with an invitation to re- 
 turn to his fellowship and home. When he ar- 
 rives where his brothers are he is not recognized 
 
 * " It pleased God to reveal to my wandering soul the idea that 
 it was his nature to love a man in his sins for the sake of helping 
 him out of them; that he did not do it out of compliment to 
 Christ, or to a law, or to a plan of salvation, but from the full- 
 ness of his great heart ; that he was a being not made (vindictive) 
 by sin, but sorry; that he was not furious with wrath toward the 
 sinner, but pitied him. . . . And when I found that Jesus Christ 
 had such a disposition ... I felt I had found a God. ' ' (Henry 
 Ward Beecher.) 
 
 lo2 ^ 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 and makes his appeal to them. They are listless, 
 indifferent, antagonistic, and on the defensive 
 when he calls attention to their conduct and their 
 destitution. He will not be rebuffed, but presses 
 the father's claim upon them until they are exas- 
 perated, and finally rise up and slay him. Then, 
 when he is dead, they examine his body and find in 
 his pocket his commission, and discover that they 
 have slain their own brother. Then the sacrifice 
 which he and their father have made makes its 
 appeal to them, and they give up their rebellion 
 and return home. The death of the brother has 
 accomplished what his life was not able to do. 
 
 If the parable should be thus supplemented 
 by implicated elements, it will be noticed that the 
 brother's death is not something which makes the 
 father's forgiveness easier, but, on the contrary, 
 makes it more difficult, from the father's point of 
 view. The brothers have but enormously added 
 to the sins which separated them before by this 
 fratricidal sin, which is the greatest of all. The 
 death of Jesus on the cross as interpreted by 
 Peter on the day of Pentecost was not the ground 
 by which his murderers were justified in their sins 
 or for their sins or from their sins; it was the 
 crowning exhibition of their sin. Peter rises to 
 the heights of moral courage when he to the face 
 of the murderers accuses them of this terrible 
 wickedness of having crucified by the hands of 
 lawless men him whom God had so unmistakably 
 approved "by works and wonders and signs." 
 He rises to the heights of boldness of announce- 
 163 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ment of grace, when, notwithstanding this wicked- 
 ness which could not be exceeded, he offers them 
 pardon through Jesus, whom they have thus slain. 
 We discover in this not a sacrifice to appease the 
 wrath of God; we can see nothing set up as a 
 condition of pardon save such a change of mind 
 toward Jesus as would make them possible re- 
 cipients of the pardon which it was in the heart 
 of the Father to give to them. 
 
 If it should seem to any one that this enlarge- 
 ment of the parable does in any particular wrest 
 it from its teaching, we will not urge the point, 
 but will turn to a parable which seems to us to 
 have in its point the mission of Jesus more liter- 
 ally outlined than any other one Biblical picture. 
 It is true that it does not deal with the question of 
 pardon. If that point shall be raised by any one 
 to indicate that there is no pardon for those who 
 thus did oppose and those who now oppose Jesus 
 in his mission, we shall hardly feel it worth our 
 while to make answer to one who is so far re- 
 moved from the evangelical point of view. That 
 there is no pardon without repentance, we not 
 only believe, but emphasize as against those who 
 seem to us to provide for escape from the conse- 
 quences of sin without moral condition. 
 
 In Luke 20 : 9-15 we read : 
 
 A man planted a vineyard, and let it out to 
 husbandmen, and went into another country for 
 a long time. And at the season he sent unto the 
 husbandmen a servant, that they should give him 
 of the fruit of the vineyard; but the husbandmen 
 164 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 beat him and sent him away empty. And he sent 
 yet another servant : and him also they beat, and 
 handled him shamefully, and sent him away 
 empty. And he sent yet a third: and him also 
 they wounded and cast him forth. And the lord 
 of the vineyard said, What shall I do ? I will send 
 my beloved son; it may be they will reverence 
 him. But when the husbandmen saw him, they 
 reasoned one with another, saying, This is the 
 heir; let us kill him, that the inheritance may be 
 ours. And they cast him forth out of the vine- 
 yard and killed him. 
 
 The parable then diverges to the question of 
 the fate of the nation, the Jews, which has thus 
 acted. The interpretation that the nation has 
 thus arrived at the end of its probation, and was 
 consequently destroyed without remedy, we un- 
 hesitatingly accept. But we do not from this 
 conclude that individuals that have been impli- 
 cated in this dreadful crime are also under the 
 eternal and unchangeable ban. 
 
 The parable as it stands is Jesus' philosophy 
 of the history of the Jews, since the time that they 
 were chosen as God's peculiar instrument for his- 
 torical purposes, and it ends with the announced 
 abandonment of them for that purpose. But in- 
 cidentally Jesus weaves in the part which he was 
 enacting in the plan of the Father. There is no 
 intimation that his death was a necessity imposed 
 by the will of the Father even in the remotest 
 relation. His death as here portrayed was the 
 result simply and solely of the wickedness of men, 
 a culminating wickedness, added to the disregard 
 165 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 of every right which God had in his people. This 
 wickedness was an absolute climax ; no other more 
 terrible element could be added to accentuate it. 
 
 The parable does not contain all or nearly all 
 of the elements contained in the life and mission 
 of Christ; but it does set in a clear and unmis- 
 takable light the cause of the death of Jesus. If 
 we should inquire what is implied in the ' ' fruit of 
 the vineyard" which the servants and the son 
 sought, we would be able to uncover the benevo- 
 lent purposes of God in relation to his people; 
 we would see that that ''fruit" was not something 
 which God sought for his own selfish enjoyment 
 and benefit, but that he sought the fruit of hu- 
 manity in humanity's perfecting and glory as the 
 only glory which could come to himself through 
 his children. "God loved the world" is the final 
 reason for sending prophet and Son to gather 
 its fruit ; and Son and prophet came to his people 
 on the same mission and for the same end. He is 
 still sending his sons to humanity for the same 
 great historic reason. 
 
 In favor of the view that an objective basis 
 of satisfaction was wrought in the atonement is 
 urged the fact that only the Son of God could 
 have wrought it. Thus Forsyth argues : ' ' If the 
 effect of Christ on us be but our reconciliation, 
 if the benefits be construed but in that subjective 
 sense, if they do not extend to redemption from 
 something more objective than our own froward- 
 ness with God, that is an effect that might have 
 been produced by a prophet and martyr of un- 
 166 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 paralleled sanctity and unquenchable love." 
 (" Person and Place of Jesus," 279.) 
 
 It is readily admitted that only God could sat- 
 isfactorily represent the attitude of God toward 
 reconciliation of man and God. But the apparent 
 effort in the above words to show that some dif- 
 ferent kind of a work was undertaken by the Son 
 than could have been undertaken by martyr or 
 prophet, finds no endorsement in that parable of 
 Jesus, where he represents one servant after an- 
 other going to receive the fruits of the vineyard, 
 and finally the Son undertakes the same mission, 
 and was just as unsuccessful as they. 
 
 Representative Satisfaction. 
 
 We are frequently presented with a view of 
 atonement which may be called satisfaction 
 through a representative. Lidgett says : ' ' Christ 
 is so related to God, and also to mankind, that 
 what he does God does, and equally what he does 
 man does." (" Fatherhood of God," 383.) With 
 the first of these affirmations we are in entire ac- 
 cord. It is a very important truth in resisting the 
 idea that the Father may have a different demand 
 concerning satisfaction for sin from that which 
 Christ may have. We speak of this elsewhere. 
 But the second affirmation, often put forth as en- 
 lightening, we frankly confess ourselves as un- 
 able to see. It is professedly a mystical relation. 
 We believe it involves a confusion between an im- 
 pression upon the race as an organism and the 
 effect upon moral individual persons. The or- 
 167 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ganism of mankind viewed as an entirety is not 
 a morally responsible agent and is incapable of 
 moral impression. It makes no choice, commits 
 no transgressions, and is entirely subject to in- 
 fluences over which, as a single unit, it has no 
 moral or other control. Through a social law 
 binding the individuals together which compose 
 it, the sin of an individual may spread until the 
 whole race is affected; but this does not occur 
 by a decision of the organism as such. It occurs, 
 so far as it is of moral quality, by the individual 
 decisions of the members of the race. To the 
 members of the race as individuals comes the 
 condemnation for the sins thus committed, but to 
 the race as a unit there is no moral condemnation. 
 Hence there is no necessity for a race atonement, 
 if we are to think of atonement as related to sin 
 and not to physical condition or disease. 
 
 Jesus is the Head of the race, — a truth which 
 we delight to insist upon. But if we regard him 
 as the physical Head, related to the whole organ- 
 ism by the creative power of God, and not as the 
 moral Head, in which sense he is related only 
 to individuals as such by moral bonds, then we 
 can discover no demands whatever for atone- 
 ment. If the race organism is diseased, there 
 may come by divine fiat a physical restitution to 
 health, or there may come to it through individu- 
 als an uplifted moral life by divine aid, which in 
 its time shall work a renewed physical condition. 
 But there is no such thing possible as a race atone- 
 ment viewed as a moral renewal. In other words, 
 168 
 
FIRST STEP— PROPITIATION. 
 
 sin is a connotation of individual persons as such ; 
 it is not an act that may be performed by an or- 
 ganism called a race. And atonement, as we are 
 studying it, is a provision for sin, and not for 
 a physical or non-moral condition. The race as 
 a race never acts morally; it can never be the 
 recipient of a moral benefit. 
 
 Guilt is a personal and individual matter, or 
 it has no meaning. Consequences of sin may be 
 organic and social. Hence the vicarious principle 
 is universal; but moral substitution is impossible. 
 
 Christ is the representative of humanity in 
 the sense that he shows the normal individual 
 man; he is representative as an ideal for the in- 
 dividual to imitate ; he is representative in show- 
 ing the possibilities of human nature in per- 
 sonality. But this in no moral sense brings 
 humanity before God to be treated en masse. 
 Whenever we enter into moral relationship with 
 God we enter as individual persons, acknowledg- 
 ing, we must admit, the power of moral influence 
 from others, but not in such a sense as to destroy 
 responsibility and moral accountability. Jesus 
 is our personal and individual Redeemer — the Re- 
 deemer of us all, if we will; but he is never the 
 Redeemer of the race en bloc, and all questions 
 which relate us to him as an organism are outside 
 the problem of atonement. Christ as represent- 
 ative with the Father affords no light on the 
 question of atonement, except as he is our repre- 
 sentative as individual persons. There is not and 
 can not be Representative Satisfaction. 
 169 
 
Chapter VI. 
 
 SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 The first broad doctrinal aspect of atonement in 
 the history of Christianity was that the death of 
 Christ was a ransom price paid to Satan, in whose 
 possession man was supposed to be, for his re- 
 lease from bondage. This phase of the doctrine 
 played a great role for a thousand years. It is 
 not now necessary to make any argument against 
 it, as it has been set aside as without any founda- 
 tion worthy of consideration. 
 
 The next broad phase of the doctrine was that 
 the death of Christ is a substitute for the de- 
 served death of man; that Christ took man's 
 place in punishment, and that through this substi- 
 tution man is released from the curse of the law. 
 This has been presented with many modifications, 
 and in its various forms may be said to remain 
 until our day as the prevailing doctrine. In its 
 bald form it has generally been set aside as inde- 
 fensible from the facts of life. The arguments 
 that have been made against different implica- 
 tions have been sufficient, if brought together, to 
 destroy its entire foundation. Nevertheless it is 
 assumed as correct in principle, and different 
 writers have sought to find some modified form 
 170 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 of it in which it would be acceptable to the Chris- 
 tian consciousness of the world.* 
 
 We desire to repudiate it altogether as a prin- 
 ciple. We would distinguish the Vicarious prin- 
 ciple from the Substitutionary, affirming the first 
 and discarding the second. We believe that Christ 
 
 *It will be a convenience to our readers to have a concise view 
 of the phases through which the doctrine of the atonement has 
 passed in Christian history. The following is from Clarke's 
 "Outline of Christian Theology," p. 319 fg. : 
 
 ' ' The earliest definite theory on the subject was that Christ 
 delivered men from sin by offering a ransom in their behalf to 
 Satan, who was their rightful or actual lord. This doctrine took 
 various forms, but this more than any other was the current and 
 orthodox doctrine in the Church for nearly a thousand years. 
 
 "Anselm, in the eleventh century, introduced the worthier 
 idea that the ransom or satisfaction was paid by Christ not to 
 Satan, but to God. He argued that the enormity of sin required 
 an infinite satisfaction to God if he was to release the sinner; 
 that this satisfaction was due to God from man, and could be 
 justly offered by no other; that nevertheless it could be actually 
 offered by no one inferior to God himself; and that for this reason 
 God became man, in infinite mercy, in order to enable humanity, 
 in the person of Christ, to satisfy him for its sins. This ex- 
 planation proceeds from the analogies of civil law, and views the 
 satisfaction due to God as a debt. 
 
 ' ' At the Eef ormation this doctrine was modified by the in- 
 troduction of the analogies of criminal law. In this view, the 
 satisfaction that was due to God consisted in punishment. It 
 was now held that Christ actually took the place of sinners in 
 the sight of God, and as their substitute suffered the punishment 
 that was due to them, including, as many of the Eeformers taught, 
 the sufferings of hell. Upon him fell all the punishment of all 
 the sins of all the men for whom he died; against them, therefore, 
 penal justice could have no further claim. 
 
 ' ' By way of improvement upon the theory of penal substitu- 
 tion, which seemed to leave no room for genuine forgiving (since 
 what is punished is not pardoned), came the Governmental theory: 
 which held that Christ was not actually punished for the sins of 
 men, but that he endured suffering that God, as a righteous ruler, 
 could accept as a substitute for punishment. The sufferings of 
 Christ thus sufficiently vindicated the honor of God's law and 
 government, and forgiveness was made consistent with the main- 
 tenance of his righteous order." 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 died on behalf of men ; his death is implicated by 
 his mission in the social bonds of life; but that 
 there is any judicial transfer to him of the guilt 
 or the punishment of sin from the head of the 
 sinner we denounce as irrational and immoral 
 and un-Christian. 
 
 "We hold to the non-transferability of punish- 
 ment as a moral experience. It is true that the 
 physical pains attached to a crime by statute law 
 may be suffered by one who did not commit the 
 crime and may not be suffered by the one who 
 did. But this transfer is only an accident of our 
 double nature — the moral and physical. The 
 physical pain of a statutory penalty may be trans- 
 ferred from one person to another; but this 
 leaves unchanged the moral compensations, or 
 self -judgments of sin. They remain unchanged, 
 unchangeable. These statutory physical penalties 
 pertain to human government, but not to divine. 
 God has linked sin and its moral deserts together 
 so that they can not be transferred. The soul 
 that sinneth, it shall die. If this meant physical 
 death, some one might die in the place of the 
 sinner; but when it means moral death, and the 
 physical death is only a mirrored accompaniment 
 of the moral, there is only one way that a person 
 can die, and that is by becoming a sinner. Thus 
 a substituted physical death would not save the 
 sinner from the death that was his due. There 
 is and can be no moral substitution. All that is 
 said about Jesus becoming sin for us can refer 
 only by a figure of speech to the social and vica- 
 172 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 rious and sympathetic suffering on our behalf, 
 involved by the power of his love in his becoming 
 a real member of the human race, where no one 
 can live unto himself, and no one with the heart 
 of a savior can help but throw his life into the 
 problem of rescuing his brethren. 
 
 The Substitution theory of atonement can not 
 command our assent on the ground of its an- 
 tiquity or catholicity. From the standpoint of 
 primary position and long continuance the "ran- 
 som" theory would hold the ground against any 
 other. But no one now hesitates on that ground 
 to reject the latter as utterly untrustworthy and 
 irrational. Following it, for five centuries the- 
 ologians represented the death of Christ as an 
 act of homage to the personal dignity and majesty 
 of Grod ; this in turn gave way to the view that it 
 was rendered to the majesty of the moral order 
 of the world. The Church has 'failed to reach 
 unanimity through its controversy over the ques- 
 tions whether Christ died for the elect only or 
 for all men, and whether it was available for sin- 
 ners in some other part of the universe to us 
 unknown, and also as to whether it is in itself 
 an adequate satisfaction for sin, or whether it 
 is only an accepted satisfaction by the Father. 
 (Cf. Dale, "Atonement," 296-7.) 
 
 The oldest theories have been unhesitatingly 
 and thoroughly repudiated; no recent ones have 
 been granted catholic assent; hence we hold that 
 there should be perfect freedom in the effort to 
 discover and state any position that will make 
 173 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 its appeal to the Christian consciousness of the 
 world.* 
 
 If we shall seek even farther back than the 
 early teachings of the Christian Church and in- 
 quire what light falls upon atonement from the 
 Jewish Church, we shall find that the Jews came 
 to their final doctrine after discarding different 
 views, some of them doubtless borrowed from 
 even more primitive views as held by the people 
 round about them. "Among those elements in 
 the idea of atonement which faded out of Israel 's 
 
 * There are passages in the early Christian writers which may 
 easily be pressed into the service of the substitutionary theory, 
 if one attends merely to their verbal suggestion. Nevertheless, 
 it is extremely doubtful whether these writers had any such doc- 
 trinal formula in their mind. If allowed to stand as an expres- 
 sion of the devotional spirit, as undoubtedly their authors in- 
 tended, they are the precious inheritance of all Christians; but 
 when pressed into the service of a doctrine, which has been elab- 
 orated since their day, many will turn from them as an inadequate 
 interpretation of the Divine Mind. As illustrative of this class 
 of literature, and also for its inherent power and beauty, we here 
 reproduce a passage from an anonymous writer of the second 
 century in an epistle to Diognetus, the instructor of Marcus 
 Aurelius: "But when our wickedness had reached its height, 
 and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and 
 death was impending over us; and when the time had come which 
 God had before appointed for manifesting his own kindness and 
 power, how the love of God through exceeding regard for men 
 did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember 
 our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering and bore 
 with us, he himself took on him the burden of our iniquities, 
 he gave his own Son as a ransom for us, the Holy One for 
 transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous 
 One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, 
 the immortal One for them that are mortal. . . . O sweet 
 exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all 
 expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a 
 single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should 
 justify many transgressors!" (" Ante-Nicene Fathers," I, 28.) 
 
 174 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 consciousness, two were of special significance 
 and importance. The first is the view of the sac- 
 rifice or offering as a compensation to Jehovah 
 for an offense against his majesty and holiness. 
 This was the prevailing teaching in the earliest 
 times, but it changed its significance as the con- 
 ception grew more and more ethical and spiritual 
 and the gift came to be looked upon finally as 
 only the outward manifestation of an inward and 
 spiritual grace. Closely allied with this view was 
 the second, which saw in the animal sacrificed a 
 substitute for the man who was deserving of 
 death. This substitutionary theory of the atone- 
 ment appears clearly in the old custom recorded 
 in Deut. 21: 1-9 and in the explanation of Israel's 
 sufferings furnished by Isaiah, chapter 53, and 
 probably lies behind many of the older usages. 
 But it is wholly without influence upon the later 
 legislation regarding atonement and is incom- 
 patible with the individual's responsibility for 
 his own sins which is insisted upon by Ezekiel 
 and his successors." (Smith and Burton, "Bib- 
 lical Ideas of Atonement," 248, 249.) 
 
 According to Heb. 9 : 7 the high priest on the 
 great day of atonement presented an offering for 
 the "ignorances of the people," that is for those 
 sins which the people had committed unwittingly. 
 Some have thought that this was the only pro- 
 vision made for atonement. But atonement was 
 prescribed for other sins in Lev. 5 : 1-6 ; 6 : 1-7, 
 where after restitution has been made ceremonial 
 atonement is made by the priest for the inner 
 175 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 sin of purpose or intention. That is, there must 
 first be material restitution, and then ceremonial 
 cleansing for the spiritual misdeed. "The final 
 teaching of the priests was that atonement was 
 to be obtained through absolute obedience to the 
 divine will. The complete expression of that will 
 is found in the requirements of the Mosaic law. 
 The faithful and exact performance of all these 
 requirements assures the nation and the individ- 
 ual of the permanent possession of the divine 
 favor. Implied in all the later teaching regarding 
 atonement was the belief that the atoning act or 
 series of acts was primarily indicative of a 
 change of attitude on the part of the one making 
 atonement. This change is prerequisite to the 
 bestowal of pardon." (Smith & Burton: Op. cit. 
 250-1.) 
 
 The drift of the ideas in the Jewish teaching 
 was from atonement in material form to spiritual 
 form ; from the outward and visible to the inward 
 and unseen ; from a view which required the pla- 
 cating of divine wrath by gifts to one which re- 
 garded God as merciful, and reconciliation is 
 sought through a changed attitude of man. At 
 first atonement was in bringing presents unto 
 God, an idea that ruled among ethnic religions 
 to placate the wrath or to purchase the favor of 
 deity. In the development of this element of 
 atonement, elaborate ritual and offerings were 
 used. God was the one whose wrath must be 
 appeased. But the prophets rejected these 
 grosser ideas and taught that not "burnt-offer- 
 176 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 nigs" but penitent and contrite hearts were 
 pleasing unto Jehovah. He will maintain fellow- 
 ship only with those who are obedient, and not 
 with those who practice elaborate ritual, but 
 whose hearts are far from him. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that in the practice 
 of substitution as found among the Jews we have 
 to do with elements which came to them from 
 heathen sources or influences. We have the tes- 
 timony of Shelomoh ben Addereth to the effect 
 that the Kapparah (atonement) was a non-Jewish 
 and heretical custom, an exotic growth trans- 
 planted from some pagan faith. Briefly de- 
 scribed, it is as follows: It takes place in the 
 homes of the Jews and is essentially a private 
 ceremony. Its purpose will appear in its descrip- 
 tion. Fowls are selected — male birds for men, 
 and hens for women. White ones are preferred 
 out of deference to the Bible text which says, 
 "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be- 
 come as white as snow." The liturgy is a few 
 Biblical passages, mostly from the Psalms; the 
 last verse is Job 33 : 23 : "If there be with him an 
 angel, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to 
 show unto man what is right for him; then God 
 is gracious unto him and saith, Deliver him from 
 going down to the pit, I have found a ransom." 
 Then the bird is swung three times around the 
 head, while the offerer repeats the formula : l ' This 
 is my substitute, my commutation, and my atone- 
 ment; this fowl goes to death that I may be gath- 
 ered into a long life and a happy one, and finally 
 177 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 enter into peace." Then four deaths are theat- 
 rically inflicted on the victim : strangling, stoning, 
 beheading, and burning. The strangling is rep- 
 resented by half-throttling it; the stoning, by 
 throwing it to the ground; the beheading, by cut- 
 ting the bird's throat; and the burning, by cook- 
 ing it for the evening meal. At one time the birds 
 were given over to the poor, but this caused ob- 
 jection on the ground of the superstition that to 
 the bird had been transferred the sin of the 
 offerer. 
 
 That such customs as these, unauthorized 
 from any source which we could designate as in- 
 spired, have had their impression on the sources 
 of our teaching can hardly be ignored. What 
 means have we of eliminating them? If we 
 should find them in evident contradiction to fun- 
 damental moral principles governing the release 
 from sin, that would be a ground of suspicion 
 against them. If they are in evident contra- 
 diction to the testimony of moral convictions 
 which have grown up in us as the result of Chris- 
 tian principles, we can not help but feel that they 
 are under indictment. Such a principle is the 
 one, as we think, of the transfer of the guilt from 
 a sinful to an innocent being; or the transfer of 
 guilt from a moral being to a non-moral being, 
 as from a man to an animal. If we know any- 
 thing as the result of Christian nurture and teach- 
 ing, we know that guilt is personal and non r 
 transferable; we know that guilt can have no 
 meaning to any but in relation to a moral being. 
 178 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 Hence all such notions as the transfer of sin in 
 any real sense from a man to a goat or a chicken 
 must be rejected. If any teaching related to it 
 or growing out of it is professedly an interpreta- 
 tion of Scripture, then we must make a choice: 
 give up our comprehension of all other moral 
 truths or reject this interpretation. Both can 
 not be true. God can not be the author of con- 
 tradictions. These two views can not be brought 
 into harmony by the human mind, to which they 
 professedly appeal. 
 
 That vestiges of such outgrown views should 
 remain in New Testament times is nothing more 
 than one would expect. A mere religious fact of 
 that time is not a sufficient foundation for a Chris- 
 tian doctrine. We must inquire carefully whether 
 it is consonant with the more spiritual views that 
 were brought in by Jesus Christ. The Pharisaic 
 doctrine of atonement doubtless contained much 
 of substitutionary legalism. We are authorized 
 by the drift of prophetic late teaching and the 
 clearer moral views of Jesus to carefully search 
 out for elimination this old leaven of error. The 
 prophets as well as Jesus called upon the sinner 
 to turn from his sin and its consequent death, not 
 intimating even remotely that any sacrifice to 
 justice must first be made as a foundation on 
 which repentance and hope might be based. 
 (Ezek. 33:11.) 
 
 John the Baptist may perhaps furnish the 
 culmination of this Old Testament development 
 of the doctrine. He preached an impending ca- 
 179 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 lamity, a divine judgment; but he does not have 
 a word to say concerning sacrifice or substitu- 
 tional offering. He makes no reference to an 
 altar or a temple service. He preaches expressly 
 that there is a method of escape from the im- 
 pending divine judgment, which he characterizes 
 as an ax laid at the root of the tree, and an un- 
 quenchable fire; but each one is to escape by his 
 own individual repentance and manifestation of 
 righteousness. The baptism which he prescribes 
 is nothing more than a manifestation of accept- 
 ance of the doctrine announced and the repent- 
 ance enjoined. 
 
 What caused the death of Jesus, God or man? 
 
 On the face of it Christ died at the hands of 
 wicked men and because of their hate. It was 
 their will that he should die. His purity of life, 
 his penetrating teaching angered them to the 
 point of murder. Obviously, then, if Jesus died 
 by the appointment and special will of God, and 
 accomplished in his death a substituted penalty 
 for man, it is necessary that that shall be made 
 clear by special and unambiguous proof. Prima 
 facie, it is denied by the apparent facts. 
 
 We concede in advance that every life is a plan 
 of God and that there was a general sense in 
 which the Father had planned the life and death 
 of his Son, and that all of this accomplished a 
 divine purpose. Such a concession, however, does 
 not carry with it the idea that the death of Christ 
 was the result of a necessity imposed upon him 
 180 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 by the Father specifically, and that that was the 
 only significance of his death. That the Father 
 would accomplish through his death the reconcili- 
 ation of man by the display of his love is also 
 readily granted. But this is accomplished by the 
 workings of usual and universal principles of 
 moral influence that operate in the lives and suf- 
 ferings of all men. This does not single out his 
 death alone as accomplishing these desired re- 
 sults. These concessions do not make God the 
 Father the author of the death of Jesus in the 
 ordinary sense in which we use language. There 
 is a sense in which God's will encompasses all 
 events, actively or permissively ; but that sense 
 does not destroy the ordinary responsibility in 
 man for human action. That the Father would 
 influence men through the death of Jesus we doubt 
 not at all. Our question would penetrate the ul- 
 timate causes for that death. Was it a necessity 
 imposed by God; or a necessity imposed by the 
 wickedness and hate of men? If it was the for- 
 mer, it must be specifically shown ; for on the face 
 of it, it was the latter. 
 
 There may be violent revolt against God by 
 independent minds which dare to think and apply 
 to him the usual ethical standards when Chris- 
 tianity is represented as teaching that Jesus, the 
 innocent, undeserving of any infliction of pain by 
 another, died by the requirement of the Father, 
 to make atonement for sins for which he had 
 no responsibility. That brilliant Scandinavian 
 writer, Ellen Key, says: "I recollect my own 
 181 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 fierce hate against God, when I, at the age of 
 six years, heard of the death of Jesus being 
 caused by God's demand for an atonement." 
 ("Century of the Child," 298.) Surely a Chris- 
 tian doctrine which produces such an impression 
 on the mind of an unspoiled child must present 
 overwhelming grounds for our credence. 
 
 The thought of Jesus as to the reason and ne- 
 cessity for his death is nowhere better stated, per- 
 haps, than in John 10 : 11 : "I am the good shep- 
 herd: the good shepherd layeth down his life for 
 his sheep." Reflection upon the situation here 
 portrayed gives us not the faintest suggestion 
 of a substituted legal death. The good shepherd 
 lays down his life, in one aspect, from ceaseless 
 watching and thoughtfulness for the sheep. He 
 may lose his life in some perilous attempt at 
 rescue of a strayed or unfortunate sheep that has 
 fallen into a chasm or over a precipice. The same 
 ministry is pictured in Matt. 19 : 12, where the 
 shepherd leaves the ninety and nine safe in the 
 fold and goes after the "little one" that has 
 strayed or has been duped into error by some one 
 who "caused it to stumble." In case of attack 
 the shepherd lays down his life in defending the 
 sheep from robbers or wolves that would break 
 into the fold and destroy or carry them off. 
 
 This is a real ministry made necessary by the 
 actual incidents of life as we know them. It is 
 nothing imposed by an attitude of a heavenly 
 Father, knowledge of which is altogether hidden 
 from us, and seems to have been invented in the 
 182 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 stress of a theory by those who have failed to 
 comprehend the great fact that pulsates in the 
 heart of all history. Such a view of the death 
 of Christ rises mountain-high above that view 
 which contemplates it as a mere court procedure, 
 which might have been omitted entirely if the 
 great Judge had so chosen, making it a mere 
 acceptilatio ; it might have been omitted if the 
 great Lawgiver and Governor had not feared that 
 his government would collapse without it. This 
 ministration could not be dispensed with by a 
 mere fiat. To omit it was to omit the salvation 
 of men ; to have allowed a great world its course 
 in perdition without an effort to rescue it. This 
 is the atonement that is vital, indispensable, re- 
 vealing no implacable anger, revealing only a 
 heart of invincible love. 
 
 If the death of Christ by wicked hands was 
 not the direct and unconditional determination 
 of the Father, why was it necessary for our new 
 relations with God which we call redemption? 
 "The necessity for this seemed to him (Paul) ax- 
 iomatic. Conceiving of God as not only loving 
 and gracious, but as holy, and in his very nature 
 opposed to sin, it seemed to him a self-evident 
 condition of forgiveness that the death which ex- 
 pressed the Divine judgment upon its evil should 
 be borne in a spirit of obedience to the Divine 
 will, and that God's holiness should be thereby 
 manifested in the very event that revealed his 
 love." (Somerville, "St. Paul's Conception of 
 Christ," 88.) 
 
 183 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 The above statement seems to us more satis- 
 factory than the other one, often made, that God 's 
 condemnation of sin is revealed in the death of 
 Christ. The latter could be true if it were pos- 
 sible for Christ to occupy our place in guilt. Then 
 the Father could visit the punishment of sin upon 
 him who by some arrangement had become guilty 
 of sin. But this latter situation is inconceivable. 
 Jesus was not guilty of sin; guilt could not be 
 transferred to him by any known moral law. No 
 one has ever been able to show the possibility of 
 this transfer, although many have accepted it as 
 a truth. But the non-transf erability of guilt from 
 a sinner to a righteous man is a fundamental 
 principle of the moral universe. This principle 
 destroyed, and all would be in moral confusion; 
 nothing would be left of the culpability of guilt 
 and the ill-deserts of sin. All moral distinctions 
 would go with the moral chaos which such a loss 
 would involve. This being so, we can see no moral 
 connection between Christ's sufferings and the 
 indignation of God towards sin. Social laws may 
 involve the suffering of the innocent with the 
 guilty or for the guilty; but no known law can 
 dissolve the relation of the sinner and his guilt. 
 
 It is common for writers on this subject to 
 say: Christ's death was not a penalty for sins; it 
 was a substitute for penalty. We confess our- 
 selves too slow of thought to be able to see the 
 distinction which these words seek to convey. 
 They have been used when the idea of Christ's 
 suffering the exact penalty for the sins of the 
 184 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 world, or suffering any penalty for sins which 
 he did not commit, became untenable, because the 
 thought was repudiated by the moral sense of 
 mankind. 
 
 But now what is expressed when the words 
 "substitute for penalty" are used instead of 
 "penalty?" If it is meant that Christ's suffer- 
 ings were something different from the exact 
 penalty which justice demanded, different either 
 in kind or degree, we can easily comprehend the 
 intended meaning. But when it is said that it was 
 not a penalty at all, but the allowance is still made 
 that the law demanded a punishment for sins be- 
 fore they can be forgiven, and that Christ's suf- 
 ferings took the place of these necessitated suffer- 
 ings, and became a substitute for the penalty, 
 we can not see how the sense would be any dif- 
 ferent if we held to the old phrase, "penalty for 
 sin." It seems more like an attempt to escape 
 logical and moral responsibility by a change of 
 words than any real alleviation of the situation 
 from its objectionable features. If the point is 
 allowed that his death was not the result of a 
 legal demand, then the whole contention about 
 substitution is given up, and his death may then 
 be examined in its living and actual relations. 
 But if it was a demand of law, the distinction be- 
 tween being a penalty and a substitute for penalty 
 is verbal, and not real. 
 
 That the righteousness of God demanded the 
 death of Jesus as a substitute for the death of 
 man is a very general contention. It is claimed 
 185 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 that God must either endure the penalty of sin 
 as a substitute for man or inflict it literally upon 
 man. As a manifestation of righteousness, en- 
 during the penalty is equally effective with in- 
 flicting it. 
 
 In regard to this contention the question of 
 fact must first be raised, Did Christ endure the 
 penalties of my sins? That he endured pain re- 
 sulting from my sin is conceded ; but it is not true 
 that a forgiven man is relieved from the penalties 
 of his sin. Christ suffered that I might not sin; 
 but his suffering does not destroy the pain of my 
 sin; so far as a mental or moral effect is con- 
 cerned, his suffering should add to the poignancy 
 and bitterness of my grief on account of sin. 
 
 The righteousness of God may be either the 
 righteousness of his own nature or the righteous- 
 ness of his government. The first is not affected 
 by the Cross ; he was just as righteous before as 
 after. It is, however, a wonderful revelation of 
 the wickedness of sin. As to the righteousness 
 of his government, that is abundantly shown by 
 this death-costing effort to secure the righteous- 
 ness of his subjects. Whatever means will do 
 that will reveal and make good that righteousness. 
 In securing the repentance of the sinner and his 
 acceptance of a new nature, this seems best se- 
 cured. That repentance is secured, we dare be- 
 lieve, by the rigidity of his laws and the display 
 of his love. These are both shown, not through 
 Jesus' death as a sacrifice to justice, but through 
 nature's firmness in punishing sin, unaffected by 
 186 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 the atonement, and the display of Jesus on the 
 cross, as a revelation of that love. 
 
 The righteousness of God is shown by his con- 
 cern for it in the world. If his moral relations to 
 the world secure righteousness in the world, then 
 his own righteousness is vindicated. It then re- 
 mains to determine what is the best means to 
 secure that righteousness. Does the placing him- 
 self in the sinner's place best secure righteous- 
 ness? As a moral appeal, it seems to us that it 
 does; as a concession to legal justice, we can not 
 see that it has much force to the sinner. Unless 
 demanded by the Nature of God for the satisfac- 
 tion of his own feeling of justice, it does not seem 
 to enact the part assigned to it by the substitution 
 theory. 
 
 "He bore our sins on the tree." "He was 
 made sin for us. ' ' These are Scripture phrases ; 
 but how shall they be understood? Those who 
 accept the substitution doctrine say that they 
 mean that Christ suffered in our stead; that our 
 sins — some hold in the sense of guilt ; others, who 
 shrink from that, hold in the sense of penalty — 
 were transferred from us to him. Luther did not 
 shrink from this position in its most literal and 
 revolting form. In this commentary on Galatians 
 he says: "And this (no doubt) all the prophets 
 did foresee in spirit, that Christ did become the 
 greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, rebel, 
 thief, and blasphemer that ever was or could be 
 in all the world. For he, being made a sacrifice 
 for the sins of the world, is not now an innocent 
 187 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 person and without sins, is not now the Son of 
 God born of the Virgin Mary, but a sinner, which 
 hath and carrieth the sin of Paul, who was a blas- 
 phemer, an oppressor, and a persecutor; of Peter, 
 which denied Christ; of David, which was an 
 adulterer, a murderer, and caused the Gentiles to 
 blaspheme the name of the Lord; and briefly, 
 which hath and beareth the sins of all men in his 
 body; not that he himself committeth them, but 
 for that he received them being committed or done 
 of us, and laid them upon his own body that he 
 might make satisfaction for them with his blood. 
 . . . Our most merciful Father . . . sent his 
 only Son into the world, and laid upon him all 
 the sins of all men, saying, Be thou Peter that 
 denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer, and. 
 cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sin- 
 ner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that 
 thief which hanged upon the cross; and briefly, 
 be thou the person which hath committed the sins 
 of all men. ' ' 
 
 It is hardly possible in our day to stand for 
 such an interpretation when it is stated thus 
 baldly with all its full implications. If he bore 
 my sin instead of me in any sense, then in that 
 sense my sin is not upon me. If I am a murderer, 
 by this doctrine Christ becomes a murderer and 
 I am such no longer. If I am a thief, by this 
 doctrine he becomes a thief and I am such no 
 longer. Is this true to the facts of life and con- 
 sciousness in any sense whatever? The unrepent- 
 ant murderer is not to any degree relieved from 
 188 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 the consciousness of his crime by the fact that 
 Jesus died. Even those who have had Christian 
 training and know the facts concerning his life 
 and death are not in the slightest degree relieved 
 of condemnation. If they meditate upon that 
 death at all, more than likely it adds to their sense 
 of sin rather than lightens it. If in heaven the 
 guilt of the murderer has been transferred from 
 the heart of the murderer to Jesus, there is no 
 place on earth where the consciousness of that 
 transaction has been recorded. 
 
 Nor is the penalty transferred by any attitude 
 of human judgment. Never have we heard of a 
 Christian judge who, when a man has been proven 
 guilty of murder, has said: Inasmuch as Jesus 
 Christ has borne the penalty of this crime, this 
 criminal may go free. If any one ever had sug- 
 gested such a thing, Christian society would rise 
 against him and impeach him, whether with or 
 without sanction of law. Nor have we ever heard 
 of a judge who said: Inasmuch as Jesus Christ 
 died to bear the penalty of this crime, this man 
 in righteousness ought to be freed, but as the 
 principle has never been enacted into human law, 
 I am compelled against my sense of justice to 
 sentence him to death. It has never entered the 
 head of any one to apply the substitutional theory 
 of atonement in actual transference of the sin of 
 the sinner from his own head to that of Jesus 
 Christ, in the actual social and civic relations of 
 life, and yet theologians have given such an ex- 
 pression of the doctrine that if their words have 
 189 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 the ordinary meaning of language, justice re- 
 quires such an application. Such a strong and 
 helpful thinker as Garvie says : " In the cross the 
 sin of mankind was forgiven because judged. It 
 was God in Christ who both offered forgiveness 
 and endured judgment; for God alone could do 
 both." We wish for the moment to hold before 
 us only the substitutionary features of this state- 
 ment. There were two thieves crucified with 
 Jesus. One of them became repentant, and was 
 assured of salvation; the other remained obdu- 
 rate, and there is no word on which to ground 
 a belief that he was saved. Did not Jesus die 
 for both! Yet it is evident that he did not die 
 instead of both or instead of either, so far as his 
 character as a thief was concerned. The follow- 
 ing consequences are involved in the statement 
 of Garvie: 
 
 1. If sin was forgiven because judged, then 
 all men are forgiven; for Christ died for all. 
 Those who claim this objective atonement must 
 feel considerable embarrassment when modern 
 sentiment will not allow them to apply it without 
 the subjective condition of repentance and faith. 
 Nothing is surer than that such an application is 
 now utterly repudiated. 
 
 2. It is hard to see how punishment manifests 
 the holiness of God unless it be visited upon the 
 identical sinner. Sin can not be separated from 
 the sinner as one would remove a garment, and 
 punished as an abstraction; only persons can be 
 punished. 
 
 190 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 3. It seems to us that God's holiness is pre- 
 served when he provides for the cessation of sin 
 and the experience of holy conduct. Pain does 
 not of itself accomplish this, as we have been 
 learning in our punitive institutions; but a new 
 heart, a regenerated nature. 
 
 4. Garvie affirms that "the holiness of God 
 himself in his judgment on sin is expressed and 
 exercised by inherent necessity in a moral order 
 which conjoins sin and suffering." This we 
 hasten to admit and also to add that there is no 
 provision in atonement, so far as physical se- 
 quence is concerned, to disjoin the sin and suffer- 
 ing. The forgiven man still suffers. It is the 
 inevitability of the conjunction of sin and suffer- 
 ing which makes God's rule a moral order. 
 
 5. The Epistle of John builds an argument 
 for the holiness of God on the very point that God 
 forgives and cleanses the sinner who confesses. 
 Such a confession is God's great opportunity to 
 end sin; for now the sinner joins with him in con- 
 demning it. To make an end of sin, when such 
 an opportunity presents, is in the highest degree 
 a manifestation of the holiness of him who can 
 and will thus do it. To make a righteous man 
 out of a sinner is a far greater manifestation of 
 holiness than any exhibition of vindictiveness to- 
 ward a sinner can be. 
 
 "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the 
 law, having become a curse for us ; for it is writ- 
 ten, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. ' ' 
 (Gal. 3:13.) 
 
 191 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ''Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on 
 onr behalf ; that we might become the righteous- 
 ness of God in him." (2 Cor. 5: 21.) 
 
 G. B. Stevens comments on these passages as 
 follows: "A punishment of Christ instead of the 
 guilty party would imply the literal transfer of 
 the guilt of man to him; for punishment where 
 there is no guilt would be injustice. But guilt is 
 the inseparable consequence of the sin done, and 
 can not attach to an innocent person. There can, 
 then, be no punishment where there is no guilt, 
 and there can be no guilt where there is no ill- 
 desert. To predicate punishment of Christ's suf- 
 ferings would mean either to predicate guilt of 
 him, which would deny his sinlessness, or to affirm 
 a transfer of others' guilt to him in such a sense 
 that he became the object of God's wrath, which 
 is contrary to the nature of guilt and confuses 
 all moral distinctions regarding sin, guilt, and 
 penalty. That Paul can not have intended to 
 affirm that Christ was punished is a priori prob- 
 able from the obvious implications of such a state- 
 ment. His words have been thought to involve 
 this view ; but if they had been so intended, they 
 would surely have been made more explicit. 
 There is no such statement as that Christ died 
 instead of (anti) us; he is said to have died on 
 behalf of our sins. If the statement that he be- 
 came a 'curse for us' is urged as necessarily 
 meaning that he came under a personal sense of 
 God's displeasure — that is, was punished by lit- 
 erally suffering the penal infliction of the curse 
 192 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 due to sin — it must then be said that the kindred 
 phrase, 'God made him to be sin for us,' is to be 
 as rigidly interpreted and can not mean less than 
 that God made him a sinner — a meaning which is, 
 however, excluded by the next phrase, 'who knew 
 no sin.' " ("The Pauline Theology," 235 fg.) 
 
 This conclusion to which Stevens comes seems 
 to us sound. But we are bound to notice that it 
 is a conclusion, possibly of Stevens, and may or 
 may not be Paul 's. The crucial point in the exe- 
 gesis is where Stevens enters some fundamental 
 principles which are not from Paul, but are his 
 own. The relation between guilt and a sinner, 
 which becomes a determining matter in the final 
 conclusion, is not enunciated by Paul, who for 
 aught that appears may be confused in the mat- 
 ter. But it is an ethical principle which Stevens 
 holds to be fundamental, to be recognized by di- 
 rect insight, and which is true, even if Paul may 
 have entirely overlooked it. 
 
 If we are to decide exegetical questions by the 
 introduction of such fundamental principles, why 
 is it not just as allowable to discuss the prin- 
 ciples of the atonement in the first place by the 
 light of these principles, without whose aid we 
 could come to no satisfactory conclusions con- 
 cerning what Paul has said? As a matter of fact 
 those who did not introduce these fundamental 
 ethical principles into their exegesis came to un- 
 ethical conclusions which the principles them- 
 selves on their own account are sufficient to over- 
 throw. In other words, we seem to be following 
 193 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 the light of truth given us direct, whose illumina- 
 tion has given us abundant confidence in our con- 
 clusions. New light has been breaking forth since 
 the days when the doctrine was taught of an un- 
 ethical transfer of man's guilt to the head of the 
 Savior of men. 
 
 But if the exegete, refusing to consider the 
 bearing of all ethical considerations, shall seek to 
 end the argument by insisting that Paul taught 
 this doctrine, ethical or unethical, it is only suffi- 
 cient to remind him that exegesis never can end a 
 discussion that has confessedly led to an unethical 
 conclusion. If according to the testimony of the 
 exegete Paul has taught for Christian doctrine 
 that which is unethical, it is only established 
 that Paul has taught that Jesus is not the Christ, 
 and we must look for another. Such exegesis only 
 undermines the authority of the apostle or other 
 teacher the meaning of whose words is thus estab- 
 lished. Such a process may only succeed in show- 
 ing that Paul never became entirely free from 
 the limitations of Rabbinical thought. The great 
 question that confronts us in any progressive de- 
 velopment of doctrine is, Shall we take John and 
 Paul as an aid or a limitation in interpreting the 
 thought of Jesus'? The wonderful sympathy of 
 the mind of Paul with the mind of Jesus is in- 
 dubitable; but did Paul or John exhaust the 
 thought of Christ concerning his mission or his 
 work? Any light or off-hand answer to this ques- 
 tion is unworthy of record. An affirmative an- 
 swer is rather discouraging to the devout stu- 
 194 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 dent, empties the progress of Christian doctrine 
 of significance; yea, more, it denies the validity 
 of Christian doctrine as such, and insists that 
 there can only be Pauline doctrine. As devout a 
 scholar as E. F. Horton says: "Not even John 
 and Paul fully apprehended his (Jesus') thought, 
 while all subsequent interpreters have been ham- 
 pered by the supposed necessity of approaching 
 his ideas only through the interpretation of these 
 and other apostles." ("Teaching of Jesus," 
 236.) 
 
 The relation between the death of Jesus and 
 the righteousness of God has been presented in 
 the following form : Forgiveness of sin might in- 
 dicate that God was indifferent to it. To allow 
 a sinner the destiny of a righteous man might 
 seem to say that God makes no distinction be- 
 tween righteousness and unrighteousness. In 
 order to prove that God does regard sin as a most 
 serious thing, the Father has the Son manifest 
 through death how great is his concern about it. 
 This done, there is no danger that he will be 
 thought indifferent to sin, and so he may now 
 freely forgive the sinner. 
 
 This is a plausible presentation. That it 
 would in this form accomplish the desired result, 
 we freely admit. We are inclined to turn away 
 from it only because it seems a somewhat arti- 
 ficial expedient. That God has no other means 
 of showing his horror of sin hardly seems pos- 
 sible. That is shown by the everlasting and un- 
 195 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 changeable nexus between sin and suffering. 
 Moreover, all that is stated above conies about 
 in our view, but in a more natural way. The 
 Cross manifests the suffering of God; to credit 
 it to the working of sin in the human heart, and 
 not to some "plan" to manifest divine righteous- 
 ness, meets every necessity of the moral problem 
 of the character of God. The view which we 
 hold, that God is the abiding sufferer, not simply 
 from the sins of that Friday of the crucifixion, 
 but of the sins of our own lives and of the pres- 
 ent day, sufficiently presents the antagonism 
 which God must feel toward sin. No "plan" ex- 
 pressly adopted for the purpose of manifesting 
 righteousness can be half so forceful as the dis- 
 covery that God has so made the world that when 
 it is hurt by sin he himself is hurt, and that vi- 
 tally. 
 
 The most striking statement of this view that 
 we have seen is by Prof. E. D. Burton, who says : 
 "In his suffering on the cross we have a mani- 
 festation more clear than anywhere else in the 
 world of the true nature of sin and, at the same 
 time, of the pain which sin continually inflicts on 
 God. It is the fullest manifestation of human 
 sin because here we see most clearly illustrated 
 that spirit which would lead men, if only they 
 had the power, to put God out of his own uni- 
 verse ; it is the fullest manifestation of the divine 
 pain at sin, because at no other point in human 
 history does God so uncover to us his heart as 
 it suffers under the stroke of human sin. 
 196 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 "The cross of Christ is in this view simply 
 the emergence into the plane of human history, 
 into the sight of human eyes, of the eternal divine 
 tragedy. It is God's perpetual word to us that 
 every sin of man smites him to the heart. The 
 death of Christ is not the concentrated accumu- 
 lation of the divine pain — it is the momentary 
 laying bare to the gaze of men of that fact which 
 is as old as sin, and will last while sin lasts, that 
 the sin of man is a blow at God which he feels 
 with all its force. Thus is Jesus ' death the mani- 
 festation of the sensitiveness of God to sin, i. e., 
 of his righteousness. " (" Biblical Ideas of Atone- 
 ment," 176, note.) 
 
 The righteousness of God is further shown 
 in the manner in which the forgiveness is be- 
 stowed. It is not bestowed upon sinners as such. 
 It is bestowed upon sinners who renounce sin 
 and through faith accept righteousness. Much 
 mystery may at this point be attached to the word 
 "faith." It seems to us that the simplest con- 
 ception of it is, if not the best, at least quite suf- 
 ficient to enable us to understand this transac- 
 tion. Faith does not represent an attained right- 
 eous character, but it does signify an acceptance 
 of a righteous program as placed before us in 
 obedience to Jesus Christ. By faith we accept 
 him as our Master, our Lord. We put ourselves 
 in the attitude of disciples, followers, loyal sub- 
 jects. This attitude maintained will bring us to 
 the full realization of a righteous character. If 
 it should be put aside, all the provisions of for- 
 197 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 giveness are withdrawn, and we are left as one 
 over whom there was only a sentence suspended 
 during good behavior. The rigor with which the 
 administration of atonement is upheld in behalf 
 of righteousness is of itself a complete vindica- 
 tion of God against the suspicion that he is in- 
 different regarding sin. None can benefit from 
 his grace unless he maintain the relation of faith 
 which binds him to the program of righteousness 
 and to Jesus as Savior and Lord. 
 
 The distinction between the vicarious prin- 
 ciple and the substitutionary is well illustrated 
 by a recent incident taken from life, so simple 
 that none can fail to understand it. Billy Rugh, 
 the newsboy, gave the skin on his leg to be grafted 
 on to that of Miss Ethel Smith, who had been 
 severely burned by the explosion of gasoline in 
 a motor-cycle. It was the only thing that could 
 save her life, and it was given with the full un- 
 derstanding on his part that he must lose his 
 leg, and perhaps his life. The shock of the am- 
 putation of his leg was too great for his system, 
 and he died. He expressed no regrets at the sac- 
 rifice, however, and died saying, "Yes, I 'm going; 
 but I was some good to the world after all." 
 
 The transaction might be called a substitution- 
 ary sacrifice, if Miss Smith had lived. Then it 
 might be said, He died in her stead. But the gift 
 of Billy Rugh's life was in vain. Miss Smith 
 also died, in spite of the costly sacrifice that had 
 been made to save her. Hence it was clearly a 
 vicarious death that the little hero accomplished 
 198 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 — a death for Miss Smith, but not a substitute for 
 her. He died in an effort to save her, but failed 
 to do so.* 
 
 If Jesus Christ's death had been substitution- 
 ary, then all for whom he died must have been 
 saved. To maintain that such is actually the fact 
 makes it necessary either to affirm that all the 
 race are actually saved — a supposition that is 
 contrary to apparent fact — or we must affirm that 
 he did not die for all, but only for a certain num- 
 ber whom we may call the elect. From a certain 
 point of view this latter assumption may arouse 
 no criticism of Divine action, provided those for 
 whom he died are designated. But it is mockery 
 unworthy of an honorable man, to say nothing of 
 the stainless Son of God, that certain persons 
 should be publicly called to attain salvation, and 
 the event should prove that there never was any 
 provision for their salvation. No one is able be- 
 fore the event of final salvation to identify the 
 elect. If in assuming that certain persons are 
 the elect, we do not give all others an adequate 
 presentation and offer of the gospel, we may 
 never be quite sure that it is not this lack of a 
 fair chance that caused their perdition rather 
 than any failure in the purpose of the Bedeemer. 
 On the other hand, to hold that the elect are those 
 who are actually responsive to the message of 
 God's redeeming love is to make it quite possible 
 that the response is the condition of their salva- 
 
 * The statement concerning Miss Smith 's death is as reported 
 at the time of writing, but is now contradicted. We leave it as 
 illustrative of a result which was entirely possible. 
 
 199 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 tion, rather than the election. The remaining 
 possibility of assuming that the elect include some 
 of those who are and always continue to be in- 
 different to God's offer of salvation and remain 
 to the last devoid of personal righteousness, is 
 to destroy the moral foundation and meaning of 
 salvation and to show God indifferent to moral 
 character. 
 
 The doctrine of election, then, as an explana- 
 tion of Christ's substitutionary death is quite un- 
 manageable. Those who hold to it must do so 
 not to make atonement intelligently reasonable: 
 for it flies in the face of reason. Having no ra- 
 tional light to throw upon the case of those for 
 whom Christ died, the burdens of the doctrine 
 must be borne gratuitously. 
 
 But the alternative of the doctrine of election 
 leads us to adopt the opinion that Christ died 
 for some, at least, who are not finally saved. It 
 would be proper, then, to represent his death as 
 an effort made in the interest of their salvation, 
 which in his case, as in our illustration of Billy 
 Rugh, failed. The death is not a legal transac- 
 tion, which, being accomplished, a record of it 
 made on the books of justice satisfying all the 
 necessities of the case, and the condemned by 
 virtue of it go free; it is rather a moral force, 
 response to which is free, and when the response 
 is made it is recorded not on books of justice, but 
 on the living tablets of the heart. This is the 
 definition of a vicarious rather than of a substi- 
 tutionary death. 
 
 200 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 The following is given as an illustration of the 
 atonement as viewed by those who think of it in 
 a substitutionary form. John Brown's oldest son 
 relates that by a system of demerits instituted by 
 his father he had accumulated a debt of a num- 
 ber of lashes for disobedience and other faults. 
 One Sunday morning the father told the son to 
 follow him to the tannery for the settlement of 
 the account. After a long and tearful talk Brown 
 the elder then administered one-third of the 
 lashes from a prepared blue beech switch. And 
 then, to the astonishment of the son, as told by 
 himself, " father stripped off his shirt and, seat- 
 ing himself on a block, gave me the whip and bade 
 me lay it on his bare back. I dared not refuse 
 to obey, but at first I did not strike hard. 
 'Harder, harder!' he said, until he had received 
 the balance of the account. Small drops of blood 
 showed on his back where the tip end of the 
 tingling beech cut through. Thus ended the ac- 
 count and settlement, which was also my first 
 practical illustration of the doctrine of the atone- 
 ment. ' ' 
 
 There can be no question that there is an ap- 
 peal to the moral nature in substitution volun- 
 tarily endured as in this illustration. When it 
 deals with a nature not utterly depraved, we may 
 have confidence that it will have its effect and 
 response, a response far stronger than any iden- 
 tical punishment could produce. The question 
 we raise is, Would not this appeal come as truly 
 in the life of every parent, as he inevitably suffers 
 201 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 by toil and privation for his child? Is there not 
 a fictitious element here which must be strictly 
 limited or it will result in anarchy? If a child 
 knew that the parent would take the lashing in- 
 stead of himself, would not his nature quickly 
 harden? John Brown's course may have reached 
 the desired result, but the transaction would seem 
 to be quite exceptional and incapable of being 
 reduced to a working principle of action. 
 
 Much greater objection can be found in the 
 following illustration, because it involves a pure 
 subterfuge. There is a noble piece of sculpture 
 in the royal palace of Amsterdam which portrays 
 the following incident: The king had enacted 
 that the perpetrator of a certain crime should 
 lose both his eyes. It so happened that his own 
 son was the one to commit the deed. The king 
 then directed that the son should lose one eye 
 and he, the king and father, would give one of his 
 eyes. This was done, that the law might lose 
 none of its authority. But this is plainly a mere 
 pretense, for the losing of the eyes meant in the 
 original law the losing of the power of vision. 
 As carried out, both king and son retain their 
 eyesight, though not in its perfection. If attrib- 
 uted to God, this illustration is a stab at his honor. 
 We are quite of the opinion that it illustrates 
 nothing in the divine action. God does not play 
 fast and loose with his laws which mark the re- 
 lation between crime and suffering in any such 
 way as is here suggested. Pain is the unescap- 
 able sequence of transgression; atonement as we 
 202 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 know it in the New Testament has nothing to do 
 with setting it aside. Its endeavor is to do away 
 with sin itself and bring the sinner through adop- 
 tion of righteousness into fellowship with the 
 Father again. 
 
 Another historic illustration may show how 
 unreliable and artificial the substitutional prin- 
 ciple may become, as well as suggest its origin 
 outside of revelation. Abdul-Muttalib, the grand- 
 father of Mohammed, was the father of eighteen 
 children. "He believed himself bound by a rash 
 vow to sacrifice one of his sons, in 569, before the 
 idols of the Kaaba, the sacred temple at Mecca. 
 Fate fixed on one he loved the most, Abdallah, 
 about twenty-four years of age. At the moment 
 of the sacrifice some of the Koreish chiefs arose 
 against so barbarous an action and so fatal an 
 example. By their advice a witch, arrafa, was 
 consulted, who declared that Abdallah 's life 
 might be purchased by means of the dia (price of 
 human blood), and by drawing lots. The dia con- 
 sisting of ten camels, the number ten was in- 
 scribed on a pointless arrow, and on another the 
 name of Abdallah. Nine times the name of Ab- 
 dallah appeared, and it was only the tenth time 
 that the camels were condemned. So a hundred 
 were killed instead of Abdallah, and this number 
 became henceforth among the Koreish chiefs the 
 price of the dia." ("Historians' History," viii, 
 112, 113.) 
 
 This Abdallah was the father of Mohammed. 
 The story may have been invented to throw a pe- 
 203 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 culiar sacredness around the ancestry of Moham- 
 med. But it nevertheless points to a sort of sub- 
 conscious belief in the idea of religious ransom 
 through substitution. As such, we judge that it 
 belongs to the natural or spontaneous elements 
 in religion, arising not from revelation, but from 
 human invention. 
 
 The Father's forgiveness needs nothing to 
 rest upon save the Father's love. They who hold 
 to the substitutional idea of atonement have a 
 conception of God which is that of a Judge, and 
 not that of a Father. Our complaint against it 
 is that, when thoroughly analyzed, it is non- 
 Biblical and un-Christian. 
 
 Let us bring clearly before our minds the 
 emotional activity of a judge. The symbol of his 
 feeling is that of a pair of balances. If man will 
 do right, the scales are balanced ; the judge feels 
 nothing and does nothing against us or for us 
 save to give us the protection of law. And if man 
 continues forever to do right, the scales remain 
 forever balanced; the side which represents our 
 cause or merit never is weighted down. The 
 judge never is moved with any emotion toward us. 
 He remains forever unmoved, undemonstrative 
 in relation to us. Is this a true picture of God? 
 
 Then, if we ever do wrong, immediately the 
 scales drop down against us. Now the wrath of 
 the judge rises against us, and he begins to set 
 the machinery of justice in operation for our mis- 
 ery or destruction. There is no escape until some 
 price has been paid or some satisfaction has been 
 204 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 rendered that is full and complete. Nothing is 
 left to compassion or mercy. Then the scales ad- 
 just themselves again, and the wrath of the judge 
 dies down, and he becomes quiescent or indiffer- 
 ent toward us again, and we pursue our way in 
 righteousness and safety. Is this transaction of 
 judicial adjustment worthy the name of forgive- 
 ness? Surely not. It has no element of forgive- 
 ness in it. It is a transaction of justice pure and 
 simple by which law has exacted and received its 
 full demands. 
 
 Ah, but some' one says, God provides the price 
 that is paid, the sacrifice which adjusts the scales. 
 We contend that as a Judge he does not. The 
 assertion makes the whole picture ridiculous. 
 The supposition is carried out by a disruption of 
 the Trinity, in such a way that the Father and 
 the Son are separated in feeling. The Father re- 
 mains as ever the exacting Judge, and the Son 
 by his sacrifice pays the price or makes the satis- 
 faction. This is a view of deity more artificial 
 and unreal than any furnished by the caprices of 
 ethnic religions and gives no reality to the ex- 
 alted character of the Christian's God. 
 
 How different is all this from the Christian 
 doctrine of God! In that the scales are forever 
 loaded down in our favor by God's invincible and 
 unbroken love. God is ever ready to forgive us 
 after our sin, if it can be done under such condi- 
 tions that we may derive any profit from it. He 
 will forgive, not because a price is paid, not be- 
 cause a satisfaction is made, but because he loves 
 205 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 us, and our repentance makes it possible for Ms 
 desire to forgive to be operative in reconciliation 
 toward himself, and a new nature appropriated 
 by us. Well does Campbell grow eloquent in his 
 attack upon this degradation of God's character. 
 He says: "But thus to think of the intercourse 
 with God which eternal life implies resting for 
 its peace and security on another ground than its 
 own essential nature; to think of sonship as cher- 
 ished otherwise than as the natural response of 
 the Father's heart; to think of the Father as re- 
 joicing in this sonship as present in us otherwise 
 than as the Father; to feel that the Prodigal son 
 feels secure in the welcome of his forgiving father 
 on any other ground than the fatherly forgive- 
 ness itself which has embraced him; to feel that 
 the Father is justified in his own eyes, or would 
 justify himself in the eyes of the rest of his 
 family, in the gracious welcome which he accords 
 to the returning prodigal, on any other ground 
 than that which he expresses when he says, 'My 
 son was dead and is alive again ; ' to suppose that 
 the filial standing must rest on a legal standing, 
 and that all this intercourse between the Father 
 of spirits and his redeemed offspring must be 
 justified by the imputation to them of Christ's 
 righteousness, and that this reality of the com- 
 munion of the Father and the Son must be recon- 
 ciled, in this way of at least seeming fiction, with 
 the moral government of God, instead of recog- 
 nizing that communion itself as what is the high- 
 est fulfillment of moral government and the ulti- 
 206 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 mate and perfect justification of all the means 
 which God has employed in bringing it to pass: 
 these are thoughts which have no place in the 
 light in which the apostle says, 'It became him 
 for whom are all things, in bringing many sons 
 unto glory to make the Captain of their salvation 
 perfect through sufferings.' " ("Nature of the 
 Atonement," 300-1.) 
 
 Different authors, while still adhering to the 
 term "satisfaction" in describing the atonement, 
 yet have made such admissions in modification of 
 it that the term is no longer a correct description 
 of their position. Merrill says: "But it must be 
 understood that the substitute (for penalty) did 
 not absolutely cancel the penalty. It only sus- 
 pended it till after probation, while its final exe- 
 cution is to be averted by personal acceptance of 
 Christ and loyal obedience to him. The atone- 
 ment thus gives room for the mediatorial scheme 
 and all remedial agencies. ("Atonement," 112.) 
 
 After such a statement it is hard to see what 
 place is left for the idea of legal satisfaction. 
 The atonement by this representation takes on a 
 very different aspect from that which is usually 
 brought to our mind by the term. It is rather 
 difficult to see that it is an atonement at all under 
 the demands made by " satisf actionists. " It 
 seems to lack in the following vital points : 1. It 
 is not a penalty for sins ; Christ suffered, but was 
 not punished. 2. It does not in itself release 
 from penalty, hence is hardly a substitute for 
 penalty ; for unless the sinner accepts Christ and 
 207 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 is obedient to him, the whole weight of the moral 
 law rests upon him, and penalty will be visited 
 upon him. It is difficult, then, to see what is left 
 more than that which is claimed under the term 
 "Moral Influence." It has suffering on the part 
 of Christ that did not release from law, but was 
 endured in order that sinners might escape pun- 
 ishment if they would. 
 
 It must be remembered that a large part of 
 those for whom Christ died on any theory (ex- 
 cept that of a limited atonement for the Elect 
 only) are not saved from the death for which his 
 death was intended to be a substitute. They die 
 unreconciled, defiled with sin, and no salvation, 
 the nature of which we know anything, ever comes 
 to them. We must see, then, that Christ does not 
 die for them in any mechanical or automatic 
 sense. He might as well not have died at all, 
 so far as any helpful effects that come to them. 
 
 We must conclude, then, that his death is not 
 in the region of mere legal effect, where lack of 
 realization of the benefit would be a gross injus- 
 tice. It must be in the region of a moral pro- 
 vision, the exhibition of a benevolent purpose, 
 but in itself only provisional in its effect, to be 
 accepted and acted upon, if any good shall come 
 to those for whom it was intended. 
 
 This consideration is in itself sufficient to 
 place it in the field of moral influence and remove 
 it invincibly from the field of legal action. It is 
 the plea of a father to his child, who still has the 
 power to resist, and not the verdict of a judge, 
 208 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 whose judgment is to be carried out by some 
 sheriff irrespective of what the accused shall do. 
 
 Defenders of Substitution have much to say 
 of the solidarity of the race and organic union. 
 The solidarity of the race is unquestioned; but 
 by confining attention to it a view of sin may 
 be held which is not that of a moral quality. Any- 
 thing affecting the race as an organism must be 
 of the nature of a physical disease, something 
 which operates entirely apart from the personal 
 will of the individual. For an affection of this 
 kind, mistakenly called a sin, some atonement 
 might be made without the co-operation of the 
 sinner ; that is, the sinful affection and the atone- 
 ment for it may both be objective matters, with 
 which men as individual moral beings have noth- 
 ing to do. But this is a very different view of 
 sin and its remedy from that which the Bible pre- 
 sents, which is moral on both sides. An atone- 
 ment for moral guilt can not be made apart from 
 the co-operation of the guilty individual. Substi- 
 tution, either with or without consent, can have 
 no place. 
 
 The literature of our subject has much to say 
 about the ''whole human race being in the loins 
 of Adam," and therefore the whole race became 
 sinners. Now that biology has made clear to us 
 the exact facts concerning the physical origin of 
 lives and the relation to our progenitors, it is 
 sheer nonsense to say of human persons consid- 
 ered as moral beings that all of them or any of 
 them were in the loins of Adam. This is such a 
 209 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 materialistic conception that there is probably not 
 in the world to-day a scientist who will stand for 
 it. Man as a moral being is not a cell. In no 
 sense that carries the least shadow of moral re- 
 sponsibility was any man now living in the loins 
 of Adam. There is nothing for such an argument 
 but a sheer and unqualified denial and appeal to 
 the facts of life: for there is not and never can 
 be any evidence for the position presented that 
 can be subjected to criticism. And yet the state- 
 ment continues to be made again and again, even 
 in recent discussions. 
 
 A statement of similar character and import 
 identifies us with Jesus Christ. A recent writer 
 is quoted as follows: "We were with him in all 
 that he did; were with him in his crucifixion, in 
 his death, in his resurrection, and in his glorifica- 
 tion. He was literally put to death, and all whom 
 he represented died with him, were buried with 
 him, and arose with him, not physically, but con- 
 structively. " 
 
 Dr. Orr says : "There is again the organic con- 
 stitution of our race, which permits his entrance 
 into it as its new Head, to redeem it by his obe- 
 dience and death from the ruin entailed upon it 
 by the disobedience of the first Adam." ("Side 
 Lights on Christian Doctrine," 138.) We think 
 the organic character of humanity would permit 
 Christ to redeem it in any sense that it is an 
 organism. But in the moral sense humanity is 
 not one organic whole, but is a collection of in- 
 dividuals, each responsible for his own conduct 
 210 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 and to receive an individual reward. It remains 
 a question of fact, moreover, whether Christ did 
 lift the consequences of sin from the race as a 
 complete organism. (Cf. pp. 167-169.) 
 
 Any personal identification of ourselves with 
 Jesus that carries any moral accountability is 
 sheer fiction. One may identify himself with 
 Christ by faith, a spiritual relation, instituted by 
 a spiritual and free moral action. But, of course, 
 this can be done now in this present year of grace. 
 No one personally had any relation to Christ in 
 the sense mentioned in the year 29 A. D. If orig- 
 inally related to his crucifixion, it was by some 
 bond that was involuntary, unfree, impersonal. 
 Every mark of personality and of moral charac- 
 ter has to be negated before one can even think 
 of such a relation. 
 
 Out of such fictional material no theory of 
 atonement can be constructed that will bear any 
 examination or be the basis of personal and sav- 
 ing faith. It is built not in the realm of fact, does 
 not stand upon the ground, has no mark of revel- 
 ation upon it ; but, to use the word of this recent 
 writer, it is "constructively" done out of fancies, 
 abstractions, and fictions. There can not be any 
 criticism or examination of it, for it has no real 
 material to test or examine. 
 
 Drawn on by this substitutional idea, Bishop 
 Merrill makes another application of the idea of 
 solidarity that is equally faulty with those criti- 
 cised above. He says: "In some way, possibly 
 beyond all human comprehension, he stood for the 
 211 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 race, embodied in himself the whole of humanity, 
 or so represented it that the nature he offered in 
 sacrifice was as nearly the nature that sinned as 
 it is possible for us to conceive."' (" Atone- 
 ment," 96.) 
 
 Much unclear thinking can be indulged in by 
 the use of the word "nature." It seems to be 
 used here in some such sense as identical sub- 
 stance, as if it were a common stuff out of which 
 all humanity is composed, and because Jesus was 
 of this same stuff, therefore he could stand for 
 us, and offer in sacrifice a part of it which would 
 represent the whole. Now, if that is a proper 
 representation of the race, if there were a sort of 
 substance, a part of which in some individual 
 form had sinned, this might pass as illuminating 
 some truth. But when we deal with the guilt of 
 sin we are dealing with persons : for only persons 
 can be guilty of sin ; only persons need an atone- 
 ment for sin. Stuff can not sin. If it were some 
 impersonal stuff that God had to redeem, he could 
 do it by some fiat, and all would be finished. 
 
 When we come to deal with persons on their 
 moral side, each one is complete in himself; he 
 does not have a "nature" which another person 
 shares with him, as he shares in the material sub- 
 stance which we call flesh with all other animal 
 beings. His nature is nothing more than the 
 quality of himself — physical quality if one is 
 speaking of his physical nature, moral quality if 
 one is speaking of his moral being. How any one 
 can share his moral nature is beyond conception. 
 212 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 We only need to turn upon such a verbal state- 
 ment and hold it up to examination, and it be- 
 comes an absurdity, an impossible mental object. 
 So with this vanishing of a "nature" that could 
 be shared vanishes the whole notion of Christ's 
 moral substitution or representative character of 
 us on the cross. 
 
 If we think of some concrete aggregation of 
 human units in some organized form, as that of 
 a nation, then we may think of that nation acting 
 in some given way, a way that, owing to the 
 social bonds that hold it together, may bring upon 
 it as a whole either praise or blame for its action 
 as an organism. Such an organized social body 
 might have a representative that could act in its 
 name and bring to it a blame or credit by his 
 action. If the human race is conceived thus in 
 its sinning, then the representative relation of 
 Jesus may be made good. But when we come to 
 treat of sin we always make our appeal to the 
 individual and teach that the individual may find 
 forgiveness of sins. If we would assume the Uni- 
 versalist's position and claim redemption for a 
 race in an organized race-form, then the repre- 
 sentative character of Christ may hold. In that 
 sense he was a member of the race and could act 
 for the race; but the results of his action must 
 come to the entire race, and can not be individu- 
 ally conditioned. Personal conversion and faith 
 as a condition of salvation are out of the question, 
 if this is to be the form under which we claim 
 Christ as our representative. 
 213 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 But this is far from the meaning which is 
 presented under the figure of representing our 
 race. "Nature" in the sense used never sins. 
 "Nature" can never atone for sin. Persons only- 
 can sin ; persons only can atone for sin. In moral 
 quality each person's act is his own: no one else 
 can ever share in its merits or demerits. For 
 morally each person is an independent unit. Only 
 physically are we bound together in an organism. 
 Any defect in personality which destroys indi- 
 vidual freedom to the same extent destroys moral 
 accountability and sin. 
 
 To us the most unobjectionable statement of 
 substitution possible seems far from lucid or con- 
 vincing. Thus Dr. C. C. Hall says : " On the Cross 
 of Christ, in the body and soul of the Representa- 
 tive Man, the sin of man is judged and condemned 
 unto death as a thing intolerable in the universe 
 of God; and thus eternal love itself meets the de- 
 mand of eternal righteousness, and through a di- 
 vine sacrifice, by enduring the condemnation of 
 sin, makes possible its forgiveness." ("Gospel 
 of Divine Sacrifice," 92.) If we pass by for the 
 moment the difficulty of getting Christ under the 
 load of sin, so that he could have any relation to 
 it through condemnation, and assume it possible 
 — an assumption really impossible, that he could 
 be treated in any sense as bearing sin — after such 
 an arrangement has been made, we then can not 
 see how his death has any reference to any one ex- 
 cept himself. His death will have relation to sin, 
 214 
 
SUBSTITUTION. 
 
 which by hypothesis has become identified with 
 him and will satisfy the law in his individual case. 
 But in the sense of a price it can not accomplish 
 anything for any one else. The law's demands 
 are for the one who sins ; guilt is untransferable. 
 Physical pain as an imposed penalty may be 
 transferred; but moral pain can not be. It may 
 be dulled by moral insensibility; but that in no 
 sense or degree transfers it to another. 
 
 Love, sympathy, social relation may tie us up 
 with others, so that when they suffer we suffer 
 with them ; but this well-known law is in no sense 
 the substitution that is contended for. It points 
 the way to what seems to us the true explanation 
 of the Cross, but by no manner of means is it 
 the traditional substitution. 
 
 There are those who cling to the term ' ' substi- 
 tution" while repudiating its historic and essen- 
 tial content. This may show the force which 
 tradition has upon us, but it tends to misunder- 
 standing and should be abandoned. Thus that al- 
 together admirable writer, Dr. Stevens, while pre- 
 senting us very desirable views, does so under 
 the term "substitution." He says: "If Christ's 
 sufferings can not have been the quantitative 
 equivalent, nor have had the moral quality of the 
 punishment due in the moral order to sin, in what 
 sense can they have been a substitute for man's 
 punishment? They can have been so only in the 
 sense that, though not the same in quantity or 
 quality, they answered the essential moral ends 
 of punishment. In place of the punishment of the 
 215 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 sinner there took place another gracious substi- 
 tution of another method of vindication and satis- 
 fying the moral requirements of law and holiness. 
 The substitution of Christ for us, therefore, does 
 not mean that he stood in our place and took our 
 punishment as an innocent man might stand be- 
 neath a descending weapon which was to avenge 
 a civil crime — a substitution which would be 
 purely mechanical, and without ethical value as 
 affecting the guilt of the offender; nor does it 
 mean that he personally assumed our guilt and 
 suffered its punishment — a punishment which, if 
 not impossible, would be inherently unjust. 
 Christ's suffering and death for us mean the sub- 
 stitution of another course of divine action in- 
 stead of the infliction of penalty. This method is 
 not a merely lenient treatment, an unconditional 
 forgiveness of sins, instead of a penal procedure 
 against them; it is a course of action which ef- 
 fectually rescues God's action in the treatment 
 of sin from the charge or appearance of laxness." 
 ("The Pauline Theology," 245, 246.) 
 
 These distinctions are so comprehensive that 
 there is left no standing for substitution in the 
 sense in which theologians have understood the 
 term. 
 
 216 
 
Chapter VII. 
 
 THE DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT— SPIR- 
 ITUAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 For the Lamb of God became like an innocent sheep 
 being led to the slaughter, that he may take away the 
 sin of the world. He who supplies reason to all is made 
 like a lamb which is dumb before her shearer, that 
 we might be purified by his death, which is given as a 
 sort of medicine against the opposing power, and also 
 against the sin of those who open their minds to the 
 truth. For the death of Christ reduced to impotence 
 those powers which war against the human race, and 
 it set free from sin by a power beyond our words the 
 life of each believer. Since, then, he takes away sin 
 until every enemy shall be destroyed and death last of 
 all, in order that the whole world may be free from 
 sin, therefore John points to him and says, "Behold 
 the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the 
 world." It is not that he said that he will take it 
 away in the future, . . . nor that he has taken it, 
 but is not taking it away now. His taking away sin 
 is still going on, He is taking it away from every in- 
 dividual in the world, till sin be taken away from the 
 whole world, and the Saviour deliver the kingdom pre- 
 pared and completed to the Father, a kingdom in which 
 no sin is left at all, and which, therefore, is ready to 
 accept the Father as its King, and which on the other 
 hand is waiting to receive all that God has to bestow, 
 217 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 fully, and in every part, at that time when the saying 
 is fulfilled, "That God may be all in all." (Origen's 
 "Com. on John," I, 37.) 
 
 Some years ago Phillips Brooks gave a course 
 of lectures under the title, "The Influence of 
 Jesus on the Moral Life of Man." In it he dis- 
 claimed the idea of considering Christianity as a 
 system of doctrine, but treated it as a personal 
 force. "Every man's power," he says, "is his 
 idea multiplied by and projected through his per- 
 sonality." And thus he treats the subject of In- 
 fluence. By that he thinks "Jesus is the Re- 
 deemer of man into the fatherhood of God. ' ' He 
 does not assume some non-moral force mystically 
 applied by which man comes into sonship; but 
 it is done by the truth that man is God's child 
 announced by and projected through the person- 
 ality of Jesus. We can not analyze the operation 
 of this force and show how spirit thus acts upon 
 spirit; we only recognize it as a well-known op- 
 eration to which we have given the name "In- 
 fluence." It is entirely unnecessary to assume 
 some other process acting here. This action of 
 spirit on spirit through the medium of a truth is 
 entirely adequate for the results, even though 
 those results are the most marvelous phenomena 
 known to us. The following word from Meyer may 
 suggest to us that there is far more involved in 
 spiritual influence than we have usually credited 
 to it. "I think it probable that the facts of the 
 metetherial world are far more complex than the 
 218 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 facts of the material world; and that the ways 
 in which spirits perceive and communicate, apart 
 from fleshly organisms, are subtler and more 
 varied than any perception or communication 
 which we know. Just as each organism is in fact 
 a system of forces, influencing and influenced by 
 other similar systems of forces in known and un- 
 known ways, so also must we regard human 
 spirits as interacting systems of forces, yet more 
 complex and yet further beyond our ken." 
 ("Human Personality," i, 136.) 
 
 There are those who emphatically discount 
 and repudiate the word "influence," as used in 
 the relations of spiritual beings. To them it 
 seems an insignificant relation, and does not con- 
 vey a depth of operation such as they imagine 
 they have conceived. They speak of certain re- 
 lations as "mere influence." When pressed for 
 a word that would convey a meaning of the inter- 
 action of free and sovereign spirits, they might 
 find themselves in a difficult situation. They 
 might use the term mystical simply to cover up 
 the fact that they had no definite mental concep- 
 tion. Some, however, would not hesitate to use 
 terms Scriptural in origin, to which they give a 
 pantheistic significance. "Christ in you" and 
 "you in Christ" are phrases which are often used 
 in a sense which is metaphysically unjustifiable. 
 It becomes so whenever we put into our thought 
 a real transfer of substance. These are beautiful 
 terms when used with a moral significance, but 
 destructive of Christianity when used pantheis- 
 219 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 tically. Their legitimate significance is limited 
 to the sense of spiritual influence. 
 
 A recent writer thus comments on the word: 
 "The word * influence' has a curious history. It 
 is obviously derived from Latin words meaning 
 inflowing, and was very widely used many gen- 
 erations ago to describe the supposed action of 
 the stars. Astrologists believed — as indeed did 
 all people with any pretentions of culture in those 
 days — that a strange power resided in celestial 
 bodies, which operated on the affairs of men in 
 such a way that all human destiny was really de- 
 termined by the movements of the planets and 
 fixed stars. This power was described as flow- 
 ing in to mankind from the heavens, and men be- 
 came and wrought what they did by virtue of 
 this influence." As a pictorial representation of 
 spiritual occurrences this ancient conceit may be 
 illuminating. 
 
 Influence among spiritual beings is on a par 
 in the spiritual world with "gravitation" among 
 material objects in the physical world. We will 
 probably be unable to define it; but it goes as 
 far as we should ever go when thinking of the 
 action of one free spiritual being upon another. 
 God has given us sovereignty. That means that 
 he will never forcibly control us. Yet this sover- 
 eignty is not so invincible that we live absolutely 
 alone. We are acted upon by others up to the 
 measure of "influence;" but when that action 
 passes into mastery, personality is destroyed, 
 freedom is lost, morality is impossible. "Influ- 
 220 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ence," then, is no insignificant word. Instead of 
 discounting it we should appreciate it as the far- 
 thest reach of our personal power over others 
 like us and the farthest limits of the power that 
 God has set for himself in his action upon the 
 children born in his likeness. 
 
 Let it be noted that atonement through spir- 
 itual influence is not opposed to something more 
 vital, but to an objective atonement, which of it- 
 self has no influence upon character by any oper- 
 ation that we can trace. 
 
 A quotation from Forsyth will show a very 
 current view of an "influence" that is not in- 
 fluential, an influence that is regarded as quies- 
 cent. He says ("Positive Preaching and the 
 Modern Mind," 345 fg.) : "Or he (Jesus) might 
 have done it by a sinless but statuesque person- 
 ality, who embodied his love and visualized it to 
 us as its living image and our perfect example 
 or type. But even that is more of a spectacle 
 than a salvation; it is something more aesthetic 
 for our spiritual contemplation than dynamic for 
 our moral redemption. ... It leaves him still 
 a somewhat inert personality, a spiritual figure 
 finished all but the arms. He can not take hold 
 of the world and wrestle with it. He is not among 
 the mighty doers of the race. He remains but a 
 gracious influence. ' ' Against such an undynamic, 
 statuesque Christ he then presents his idea in the 
 following words : ' ' The last moral reality is a per- 
 son not in repose, but in action with the world. ' ' 
 (p. 346.) 
 
 221 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 It is not difficult to construct an argument 
 and force a conclusion if such a contradiction of 
 ideas go unchallenged. Repose is here repre- 
 sented as "gracious influence," but it does 
 nothing; something that is not "influence" is 
 action and accomplishes something in the moral 
 world. 
 
 In a world where the spirit is contained in a 
 body this conception of uninfluential "influence" 
 is a natural, even though not a logical one. We 
 can think of the body in repose and the spirit in 
 a gracious and benevolent attitude, though even 
 here we can hardly see where the idea of influence 
 is justified. But in a world where we are dealing 
 with spirit alone — moral forces only, the contrast 
 is an absurdity. What could we mean by saying 
 that the spirit is exerting a "gracious influence" 
 and yet is doing nothing? What can we mean by 
 taking hold of something, and doing something, 
 in addition to exerting a gracious influence? In- 
 fluencing is spiritual action, the only kind of spir- 
 itual action that we know anything about, unless 
 we can conceive of a degree of action that goes 
 beyond influence and takes another spirit into its 
 control, and against its will forces it to do what 
 it would not do, if it could help it. 
 
 Again, does any one think it possible to be a 
 "gracious influence" without influencing any- 
 thing or anybody? That which makes one an 
 influence is the effect produced, the power ex- 
 erted. It is idle to speak of an influence that 
 does not influence. 
 
 222 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 One feels as he tries to gain the thought of 
 older writers on the atonement that they con- 
 ceived it as a sort of spectacle, an objective entity, 
 established out there as a sort of objectified price 
 which is being paid under stress of a legal re- 
 quirement. Law must have a formula fulfilled 
 before there is release of the prisoner. Not that 
 any one is enriched by the price paid, or has any- 
 thing which he did not have before. It is a case 
 where there is a great loss to one without any 
 corresponding gain to any one else. No person 
 gains anything; only justice, an abstraction, has 
 a vast penalty paid unto it. 
 
 We can not escape the feeling that it would 
 be better to have the dealing with persons, and 
 not with abstractions. Our view would make the 
 sacrifice just the same in absolute value and suf- 
 fering, but it would make a direct appeal to per- 
 sons. It is a pierced hand and heart reached out 
 unto men, that they may relent and give o'er 
 their wicked rebellion and cease from their base- 
 less suspicion toward their Father in heaven. 
 Christ on the cross pleads — not to the Father; 
 for the Father and he are one in all the essentials 
 of this transaction; God the Father does not need 
 such suffering to make him willing to forgive — 
 nor to justice, which is nothing as soon as it is 
 dislodged from a person ; but to men, who do not 
 know God's love, do not trust it, do not appro- 
 priate its benefits. 
 
 The view from which we dissent is set forth 
 in the following quotation from Dale, who claims 
 223 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 to be presenting the view of Paul. He says: 
 "From this just condemnation, from this right- 
 eous wrath, there is redemption in Christ; for 
 Christ 'in his blood' — not in his personal holi- 
 ness merely — has been placed by God before the 
 eye and heart of all mankind as a propitiatory 
 sacrifice. Sacrifices are not offered to men, but 
 to God, and the direct intention of this sacrifice 
 is to avert that supreme peril which, according 
 to the preceding argument, menaces the whole 
 race. The death of Christ is represented — not as 
 a method by which God touches the human heart 
 — but as the ground on which God cancels human 
 guilt, and delivers the guilty from the wrath 
 which threatens them. . . . The effect of the 
 death of Christ in atoning for human sin is so 
 immediate, so independent of any change in hu- 
 man character, that he (Paul) has to enter on 
 a new line of argument in order to show that 
 those who are justified can not continue in sin." 
 ("Atonement," 236, 248.) The view of Paul, if 
 here correctly interpreted, has no other statement 
 in the New Testament. We are here entirely out 
 of the atmosphere of the Gospels as they reflect 
 the teachings of Jesus. Nor can it be said that 
 Jesus anywhere gives even in germinal form the 
 idea that God's wrath needs to be averted by a 
 propitiatory sacrifice. It might be better for 
 Paul if we could find some other line of interpre- 
 tation more consistent with the teachings of Jesus. 
 Especially unfortunate is that interpretation 
 224 
 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 which refuses to the Cross the means of God's 
 appeal to the human heart. If it does not have 
 this power, then the knowledge of it would seem 
 superfluous, and the great ungospeled world is 
 receiving the same benefits from the Cross that 
 the world receives which has had its full and ex- 
 plicit announcement. This is to make the gospel 
 an automatic legal operation, dispensing its bene- 
 fits unconditioned by knowledge or volition. Its 
 working under this view is magical rather than 
 moral, dependent only on the fiat of Almighty 
 God. Man may receive its benefits, but in doing 
 so he changes neither his character nor his con- 
 sciousness. Nothing he can do will enhance the 
 benefits or hinder them. He may well be morally 
 and intellectually indifferent to it. God the Fa- 
 ther will arrange it all. 
 
 Such theories of atonement have been only a 
 judicial formula. They have sought to deal with 
 the abstract relations of law and justice. They 
 have not furnished, considered in themselves, any 
 redeeming power upon the personality of man. 
 They describe transactions that might as well 
 have been wrought out beyond our vision, as they 
 do not directly even presume to have any influ- 
 ence over us. The atonement as thus viewed was 
 something done for us, independently of our 
 knowledge or choice, and it works out its result 
 apart from our volition or co-operation. 
 
 As factors of redemption these theories may 
 be entirely neglected. Whatever is done for us 
 225 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 in them is done without our volition, and they 
 will accomplish all that they can when we are 
 entirely ignorant of the facts and the operation. 
 
 This relation of the theory of atonement to 
 our knowledge and life is in itself a suspicious 
 circumstance. God does not usually so act in 
 any of the processes of salvation. Salvation in 
 all its traceable steps is a co-operation between 
 the human and the divine agency. If atonement 
 is an exception, it is a very marked one. 
 
 Over against such an extra-moral dialectic in 
 jurisprudence we hold to a theory of spiritual 
 dynamics, a plan through which God works out 
 the love of his heart in a way that conquers the 
 human heart. We believe that it harmonizes 
 with the highest law, but it is not on its face 
 simply a system of legal satisfaction. It is rather 
 the statement of the highest potency of spirit 
 operating on spirit. So when we come to examine 
 the method by which atonement is actually 
 wrought — and we believe it is wrought out in the 
 heart of the sinner rather than in some objectified 
 form — we describe it as the method of Spiritual 
 Influence. 
 
 We would prefer to avoid the prejudices that 
 gather about the phrase "Moral Influence;" yet 
 it is important for us to draw attention to the 
 kind of influence which we believe the atonement 
 is to exert, and the method by which it achieves 
 its results. We shall use the word moral as 
 opposed to physical or any other influence that 
 operates without the consciousness and volition 
 226 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 of the sinner. This supreme divine operation on 
 the heart of man can not be performed by any- 
 non-moral method. God will appeal to the heart 
 of the sinner to be reconciled to himself, but he 
 will not force the reconciliation, even though that 
 were not in itself a contradiction of terms. He 
 will invite the assent and consent of the sinner 
 to the new relations of life; he will mourn over 
 him if the invitation is refused ; but he will never 
 unmake man as a moral being in any attempt to 
 rescue him from the perdition incident to a wrong 
 use of freedom. The term "moral influence" 
 contains an indispensable and unavoidable truth, 
 a truth that can not otherwise be properly and 
 correctly phrased. We may hope that it will be 
 weighed by the reader, not under the inertia of 
 the old prejudices, but with the mental allowance 
 that its truth may be better stated than formerly, 
 and better comprehended. "The moral problem 
 set in our need of salvation can only be solved 
 by a moral movement in the God who undertook 
 it. A redemptive work is moral or nothing. . . . 
 If the incarnation was not above all things a 
 moral achievement by God, the redemption can 
 not be a moral conquest of man." (Forsyth, 
 < ' Person and Place of Jesus Christ, " 235. ) "Je- 
 sus aimed at man 's redemption. But he expected 
 to win men from sin not by a transaction, but by 
 a vision ; not by the thorns and cross of Calvary, 
 but by the eternal Saviorship of God, which he 
 knew that his Palestinian sufferings would re- 
 veal." (Aschem, "Help from the Hills," 207.) 
 227 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 Those who discount moral influence utterly 
 might be helped to a more just view if they would 
 ask, What is its alternative? What kind of ef- 
 fective influence may that be which is not moral? 
 
 At least one line of answer that has engaged 
 the mind of the theological world and now 
 strongly holds it is an influence that we may call 
 legal. We are not now to think of law as a 
 method of divine activity, but as Divine fiat, an- 
 nouncement, rule, command. If such an influence 
 goes so far as to be sovereignly enacted, it may, 
 indeed, be very effective ; but it is instantly seen 
 that it loses its spiritual character, and in an 
 atonement under such an influence God would be 
 operating on men as he might operate on a rene- 
 gade world or some other obstreperous material 
 creation, if such a conception may be used to 
 illustrate our thought, however unthinkable as a 
 reality. Such an atonement would not, indeed, be 
 a moral influence; it must be classed as a phys- 
 ical or violent and non-moral influence. Can any 
 one see in such a view an improvement over moral 
 influence f 
 
 We must admit that this method of operation 
 on the nature of man, which does not win his 
 consent and does not co-operate with his choice, 
 is a view that is widely held. To some it may 
 be acceptable after reflection. It was an element 
 in the Calvinistic view of regeneration, by which 
 God's sovereign action, producing repentance and 
 faith, preceded man's choice of salvation. But 
 that any one can hold that such a method of op- 
 228 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 eration, exalting mere power, is a view superior 
 to the alternative moral methods, in which God 
 and man co-operate for the work of salvation, is 
 to us inexplicable. Spiritual forces are moral 
 forces; moral influences rank highest in dignity 
 and worth. Moral influence is of a nobler sort 
 than legal influence conceived as self-enacting fiat. 
 They who object to " moral influence" might 
 be puzzled to define the power that accomplishes 
 anything through atonement upon human nature. 
 They belong logically with those who hold that 
 atonement is not wrought in the nature of man 
 at all ; that it is not an effect wrought upon man, 
 but one that is worked out for the benefit of man ; 
 that not in the will and disposition of man are 
 its transformations, but in the mind of God. This 
 binds these objectors to "moral influence" to the 
 satisfaction theory. Our purpose for the moment 
 is merely to make that clear, and to call attention 
 to the position, equally manifest, that the satis- 
 faction atonement in itself does nothing for the 
 moral nature of man. It may, if true, be left en- 
 tirely in the speculative field. It has no mission 
 in transforming man's moral nature. The atone- 
 ment to which we hold, on the other hand, consists 
 in all those forces of love and spiritual power 
 which change the heart and purpose of man. 
 Atonement occurs only in those and for those 
 who yield to the loving solicitations of the Re- 
 deemer, who in his life of loving and self-denying 
 service and upon the Cross in dying agonies 
 produces the moral drawings, which change 
 229 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 man's opposition to his Heavenly Father into a 
 surrender to his love and a loyalty to his govern- 
 ment. The satisfaction atonement does not need 
 to be known or believed by us to accomplish all 
 that is claimed for it. The atonement through 
 displayed love, on the other hand, is effective 
 only where known and accepted. 
 
 If it be objected that children below moral 
 consciousness and heathen who are living up to 
 their light, but ignorant of what has been done 
 to save them, are thus left without atonement, 
 we reply, Where there is no rebellion there is no 
 occasion for reconciliation. Children who have 
 not yet violated moral law, because they could not 
 yet know its obligations, are incapable of sin in 
 the evangelical sense. Atonement for them can 
 have no meaning. 
 
 Concerning heathen, we can not conceive of 
 any benefit coming to them from an atonement 
 that does not change their spiritual condition, 
 make them actually pure in life. What profit is 
 it to them to assert that an atonement has been 
 wrought out for them which does not save them, 
 does them no actual good so far as we can dis- 
 cern. Their need of atonement is manifestly not 
 greater than their need of purification of life, 
 which the satisfaction atonement does not pro- 
 vide them. 
 
 There are two great facts that spread in the 
 human race under an identical or corresponding 
 law : they are the contagion of sin and the redemp- 
 230 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 tion through moral influence. In the latter half 
 of the fifth chapter of Romans "the human race 
 is conceived of as a moral unity that possesses a 
 collective life of its own. Humanity is not an ag- 
 gregate of atoms; it rather resembles a tree 
 whose leaves are distinct, while at the same time 
 they partake of the common life and the qualities 
 of the stem with which they are organically con- 
 nected. Without ceasing to be personally respon- 
 sible, we are so related to the race as a whole that 
 its sin lives in us and involves in us consequences 
 that are not the result of our individual actions. 
 Not through the personal sin of each, but through 
 the sin of one man, has death come into the world. 
 All are included in that one, and in idea, or po- 
 tentially, sinned and died in his act. 'The judg- 
 ment of all men was by one man to condemnation' 
 (Rom. 5:16), and through the organic unity of 
 the race, sin, thus originating, worked itself out 
 in actual sinning and dying of all the individual 
 members of mankind. But Adam in this respect 
 was a type of the man to come, i. e., of Christ. 
 In him humanity came to possess a second Adam, 
 or Representative, who summed up in himself 
 and realized perfectly its capacities for the higher 
 life, and in his actings he became the proper 
 organ of the race. In his holy and sinless person 
 humanity was born again, as it were ; abandoned 
 its revolt against God and returned to its proper 
 allegiance to him; overcame evil, and lived the 
 perfect life well-pleasing to God. Christ thus be- 
 gins a new period in the moral history of man- 
 231 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 kind, imparting a new element to our collective 
 being; and for that relation of 'all' to Adam, 
 which masses them, through their organic con- 
 nection with him, partakers of his sin and death, 
 there is substituted now a new relation of 'all' 
 to Christ, the second Adam, that makes them 
 partakers of his righteousness and life, a relation 
 which in its ideal truth holds of mankind as a 
 whole, and becomes a reality in those who con- 
 nect themselves with him by their personal faith, 
 and of the new humanity of which he is the 
 Head." (Somerville, "Paul's Conception of 
 Christ," 86, 87.) 
 
 This author 's view seems to us near the truth. 
 In the chapter on "Substitution," pp. 209-214, 
 we presented our strong protest against a moral 
 identification of two spiritual beings. But that 
 statement needs properly the qualification which 
 the possibility of moral influence between persons 
 presents. Our moral separateness is not lost, as 
 our physical separateness is, in this human or- 
 ganism; but a relationship is found which may 
 be correctly described by the word contagion or 
 influence. The old view of substituting Adam's 
 sin for ours, or attributing his sin to us, and of 
 crediting Christ's righteousness to us, has at 
 least the support that we now see to be involved 
 in the working of social laws through the unitary 
 organism of humanity. We do not say that 
 Adam's sin was ours by judicial pronouncement, 
 but the sin entered the race through the working 
 of social contagion. If sin entered any individ- 
 232 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ual of the race, it would permeate inevitably all 
 the members, though, of course, not after the 
 manner of judicial edict, instantly, but after the 
 manner of the contagion of a disease. 
 
 On the other hand, any saving power pos- 
 sessed by any member of the race would by the 
 operation of the same social law find its way 
 through the race, and we would have what we 
 now know to be the process and condition of 
 human history, the contention of the principles 
 of good and evil in the human heart. As such a 
 force, but distinguished from all others in that 
 he revealed the Father, and thus was pre-emi- 
 nently a saving force, is the life, teaching, and 
 death of Jesus Christ. 
 
 A very important light falls upon our conten- 
 tion by the observation that the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews names as the first result 
 of the death of Christ, that through suffering he 
 learned obedience and was perfected as the 
 Author of salvation (2:10; 5:8). The under- 
 lying thought seems to be : He who was to grap- 
 ple with this tremendous problem of the salvation 
 of mankind so lost, must be fitted by the deepest 
 suffering for his task. This would be inexplicable 
 if the task were merely the fulfillment of a judi- 
 cial formula, but is quite manifest if the task is 
 the grappling with the moral influences that sway 
 human nature in its depths. To appease the Fa- 
 ther in a passive death would seem to require 
 no preparation save absolute innocence; but to 
 overcome human opposition in a spiritual strug- 
 233 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 gle would demand whatever of discipline that 
 might come from the most educative of all forces, 
 the hot fires of suffering. 
 
 We may anticipate that we shall be attacked 
 for illustrating this supreme redemptive force by 
 other social forces. It may by a superficial atten- 
 tion be said that we are placing this on a level 
 with other saving forces that come from other 
 members of the race. We do not place it on a 
 level. We believe that no other force was ever 
 comparable in power with it; but we can not see 
 but that it operates by the same social law as 
 other known influences among men. It can be 
 excepted from that method of operation only by 
 insisting that Christ's death was the one event 
 in history which appeased the anger of the Father 
 and satisfied the exactions of his law of holiness. 
 We are unable to hold that view, and hence hold 
 that Christ was the supreme influence, operating 
 through social laws, that has secured the pleasure 
 of the Father in that it has secured the righteous- 
 ness of man. We understand the Eedeemer to 
 affirm that his followers shall follow in his re- 
 demptive footsteps and share in the work of rec- 
 onciling the world to the Father. They are to 
 drink his cup, fellowship his redemptive suffer- 
 ings, and complete the conquest of the world by 
 love. 
 
 We recapitulate our argument as follows: 
 We have rejected the idea that the benefit of the 
 atonement comes to us through Christ suffering 
 234 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 in our stead for our personal misdeeds. In what 
 way, then, does atonement actually benefit sin- 
 ners? What is the nature of the operation by 
 which we secure salvation through Christ's death? 
 What is atonement's dynamic? We answer with 
 fullness of conviction that Christ's death oper- 
 ates to the restoration of man to fellowship with 
 God in the same manner in which all real power, 
 as distinguished from change in legal relation, is 
 exerted upon human conduct, viz., through spir- 
 itual or moral influence. This is the name for all 
 actual impression that can be made upon the 
 human spirit, viewed as a moral or free being. 
 Says J. M. Whiton: "To the historical work of 
 Christ, in his sacrificial life and death of love, 
 we give the name of the Atonement, because that 
 work, as it affects us in our contemplation of it, 
 begets the enabling power within us to accomplish 
 the real atonement in conscience, which is ac- 
 cepted in heaven because effective on earth, satis- 
 fying to God because satisfying to that which is 
 of God in us. And so we rest in the word of the 
 Apostle John, 'Behold the Lamb of God who 
 taketh away the sins of the world.' " ("The Di- 
 vine Satisfaction," 18.) 
 
 The Substitutionary idea was that of some- 
 thing done for us in a legal forum which does 
 not even depend upon our knowledge for its ac- 
 complishment. As such it does not record itself 
 in the human consciousness at all. We may lo- 
 cate it as transacted in heaven, or wherever we 
 may locate the Divine Consciousness. In itself 
 235 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 it can produce no evidence of its working in 
 human history or consciousness. It is all done in 
 the mind of God. We have rejected it because we 
 can discover nothing in the mind of God that 
 made it necessary. In that rejection we lose noth- 
 ing that can ever have been recorded in human 
 consciousness itself. 
 
 The substitutionary transaction must have 
 had its ''moral" side in order that there should 
 have been any appeal to the human heart or the 
 basis of any voluntary change in human conduct 
 or character. An atonement that consisted only 
 in its substitutionary features would have been a 
 poor instrument, indeed, for the Almighty to use 
 in conquering the rebellion of the human heart. 
 As substitutional, it was complete when abso- 
 lutely objective, outside of human knowledge and 
 impression. God's moral conquest of the world 
 would have been just the same without it as with 
 it. They who hold to it must at the same time 
 affirm its moral appeal in order that there might 
 be some power brought to bear on the human 
 heart for its conquest and regeneration. Thus, 
 in rejecting it, we lose nothing that can ever 
 operate in changing the heart and mind of men. 
 We retain the moral element of the atonement 
 as the only operative element, leaving the substi- 
 tutional element to those who can persuade them- 
 selves that it has a foundation in God's wrath, the 
 only possible foundation that it can have. "Re- 
 member above all things that the love we have 
 236 
 
DYNAMIC OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 to do with is holy love. And holiness is the eternal 
 power which must do and do till it see itself 
 everywhere. That is its only satisfaction and 
 atonement, not the pound of flesh, but entire, ab- 
 solute response to its own active kind." (For- 
 syth, "Positive Preaching," 350.) 
 
 237 
 
Chapter VIII. 
 
 THE OBJECTIVE EESULT— JUSTIFICA- 
 TION 
 
 When atonement is effective, two results ensue 
 to the sinner: first, there is a change in his re- 
 lation to law, and second, there is a change in 
 his moral nature. The second result, which in- 
 cludes the ideas of Regeneration and Sanctifica- 
 tion, we reserve to another chapter; we are now 
 to deal with Justification. 
 
 Justification is surely not a justification of 
 one in his sins, or for his sins, or the justifica- 
 tion of his sins; in no sense does it change the 
 character of moral deeds, or the relation to right- 
 eousness of an immoral doer. Anything of that 
 nature would be the abrogation of law and right- 
 eousness. It is difficult, then, to see that it means 
 anything more than the pardon of one who has 
 sinned, for some consideration that will not de- 
 stroy law or righteousness, a consideration that 
 may further the ends of the whole construction of 
 a world of righteousness and a world of law. 
 
 Says Dr. Payne: "To be in a justified state 
 is not either to be pronounced just or to be made 
 actually just — for both are impossible in the case 
 of a sinner — but it is to be treated as if we were 
 just, or rather, perhaps, to be in the state of 
 238 
 
OBJECTIVE EESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 those whom God declares he will treat as if they 
 were just. ' ' ( Quoted by Campbell, ' ' Atonement, ' ' 
 81.) Campbell objects to even that form of im- 
 putation which holds that, while guilt and sin are 
 untransferable in themselves, they are transfer- 
 able in their effects. 
 
 How is the transfer to be made from being a 
 sinner under condemnation to being a justified 
 person in fellowship with God? 
 
 Granting that the ground of this change is 
 provided for in the love of God, how is that love 
 to be available for the sinner? That love does 
 not avail while the sinner sins, else we would have 
 the whole world saved, and saved in its sins : for 
 God loves all. There must be something on the 
 part of the sinner which makes this love avail- 
 able for him. What is it? It is not an answer 
 to say that it is an acceptance of the new nature 
 which God, indeed, offers to him and insists upon 
 his accepting. That acceptance must have some 
 antecedent in the mind of the sinner. Is it re- 
 pentance? "Well, if repentance is only a regret 
 for the consequences of sin, and no regret for 
 the nature of sin's relation to God, it is hardly 
 sufficient. Here seems to be the place for the 
 faith which Scripture announces as the cause of 
 Justification — justified by faith. Following the 
 chain of spiritual causation back, we find that the 
 exhibition of God's love in the life and death of 
 Christ is enough for a basis of faith. Having 
 come to the place where sin is hateful, its con- 
 sequences known to be baneful, the sinner looks 
 239 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 about for release. At that moment the Cross is 
 presented as God's attempt to rescue him, an 
 exhibition of God's love. If God loves like that, 
 there is hope that in spite of the fact that I, the 
 sinner, have sinned, I may enter into relationship 
 with him. Hence we have, first, conviction of the 
 evil nature of sin; second, conviction of the love 
 of God; third, faith in God's willingness to for- 
 give; fourth, renunciation of sin (repentance); 
 and lastly, forgiveness and acceptance of a new 
 heart. The resultant state that is achieved is 
 Justification, where God enters into relations 
 with me as his child. This relationship thus es- 
 tablished, the relation between a child and a Fa- 
 ther is of the essence of Justification. Of itself 
 it pronounces nothing concerning the past life. 
 It neither cancels it nor justifies it; it may not 
 of itself relieve me of the natural consequences 
 of that life. It only guarantees that now my 
 Father and I will work out together whatever 
 problems are involved in love and sympathy, and 
 on my part there will be trustful obedience. 
 
 Remission of Sins. 
 It is likely to be objected to our view that 
 such an atonement as we have pictured does noth- 
 ing with sins, that they remain just the same as 
 though no atonement had been made. We reply 
 by asking, What can be done with them, except 
 to cease to reckon them? They can not be un- 
 done; their objective results can not be undone. 
 Only one thing in the world can be done about 
 240 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 them : as far as they represent personal relations 
 they may be overlooked, may henceforth go un- 
 mentioned, may in this moral sense be forgotten. 
 If this is not a sufficient treatment of them, if a 
 further demand is made concerning them, that 
 demand will be an impassable barrier to pardon ; 
 it will destroy all possibility of reconciliation be- 
 tween the offender and the offended. 
 
 There is much extravagant language used on 
 this subject that is justified neither by insight 
 nor personal experience. Some time since we met 
 a bright and conscientious young lawyer, whose 
 training in a Christian home had been such that 
 he revolted in conscience against some supposedly 
 orthodox statements in reference to pardon. He 
 held that it would be a violation of the perfect 
 world that God had made for him to forgive sins ; 
 that we ought not to ask to be excused from pen- 
 alty. This raises an interesting question which 
 does not seem to us to be idle. Concerning the 
 question of fact whether God does remit the pen- 
 alties of sin, we ought first of all to be quite clear. 
 
 Dr. Dale (" Atonement," 373 fg.) mentions 
 three conceptions of the nature of punishment: 
 1. As a reformatory process. This he rejects be- 
 cause it would lead to the theory that when ref- 
 ormation had been accomplished without punish- 
 ment, the latter would be unnecessary. 2. Punish- 
 ment is an expedient for strengthening the 
 authority of law by creating a new motive for 
 obedience, a sort of necessity of government. 
 This he rejects on the grounds that it would be 
 241 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 unjust to punish one person for the benefit of a 
 second person. Punishment belongs to the per- 
 son himself on the grounds of his deserts, irre- 
 spective of its effect on others. 3. Punishment 
 is an effect of God's personal resentment against 
 those who have offered an insult to his personal 
 dignity. This is rejected because punishment 
 would then be infliction according to the caprice 
 of the offended rather than on grounds of real 
 desert. 4. The fourth definition, which he adopts 
 as his, is that conception which represents it as 
 pain or loss inflicted for the violation of law. 
 This seems to establish the ground of punishment 
 as in a sense independent of the will of God. It 
 is a desert belonging to the individual without a 
 personal volition from God. Is God, then, free 
 to forgive sin? Is he not bound to regard this 
 desert in all cases and to leave the sinner under 
 the operation of the law that he has violated? 
 
 Fairbairn makes a distinction between phys- 
 ical and moral evil which may enable us to pene- 
 trate the subject a little deeper. " Physical evil 
 is the evil men suffer ; moral evil is the evil they 
 do. The one falls under the categories of choice 
 and action, the other under those of results and 
 consequences. And this means that moral evil is 
 due to the act of the personal will, but physical 
 is conditioned by the operation of fixed laws, or 
 an established order. The moment the will has 
 chosen, the fixed law begins to operate; and so, 
 though the act may be transient, the consequences 
 are permanent." (" Philosophy of the Christian 
 242 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 Religion," 150.) Moral evil is the only evil or 
 sin nnder onr control. It is of a nature so widely 
 different from physical that it should have a name 
 by itself. It is sin properly so called, and phys- 
 ical evil is but its result, and yet its results are 
 not exclusively physical. "It mars the godlike 
 beauty which is native to the soul; it steals away 
 the charm which made it seem to the eye of its 
 Maker very good; it isolates it from the source 
 of life; it removes it from the breast of the Al- 
 mighty who breathed it into being. ' ' (Op. cit. 151.) 
 Even if physical evil is the consequence of moral 
 evil, it can not be shown that the former is ar- 
 rested as soon as the latter ceases. The physical 
 consequences continue on after the moral agent 
 has changed his course. All that we can with cer- 
 tainty affirm is that G-od has introduced amelio- 
 rative forces which tend to overcome or do away 
 with the physical consequences after moral evil 
 as the cause has. ceased to operate. The follow- 
 ing distinction seems to approximate the truth: 
 God has established a framework of action which 
 we call Nature. It expresses his will in a general 
 form toward all his creatures. Its violation is 
 not always a question of guilt because the viola- 
 tion is not always consciously committed. Never- 
 theless the penalties follow whether we violate 
 knowingly or ignorantly. It has never been held 
 as a universal proposition that forgiveness of sins 
 relieves us of all penalties. It may be held that 
 it does so in specific cases; but the law of ex- 
 ceptions has never been worked out, and the gen- 
 243 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 eral rule may stand : that forgiveness of sins does 
 not lift penalties which the framework of nature 
 imposes. 
 
 The sins that may be forgiven are conceived 
 as personal relations between the soul and God. 
 Moreover, it will not do to say that spiritual 
 penalties are always lifted; they are not, as a 
 matter of fact. There are ameliorative influences 
 let loose by restored fellowship, but they do not 
 directly lift the penalties. We are left, then, with 
 the view of forgiveness of sins as the re-establish- 
 ment of personal relations with God, with what- 
 ever consequences that may involve in the phys- 
 ical and spiritual world. Future penalties, re- 
 served for a day of reckoning, may be added to 
 these implied present consequences ; but of these 
 we have no means of examination. They can 
 hardly be introduced here and conclusions drawn 
 that are valid in the sphere of the known. 
 
 Returning now to our question, What does 
 pardon do with sins committed? we can readily 
 see that moral evil stops the moment that the 
 moral agent ceases to sin. So far as that is con- 
 cerned nothiiig remains for a redemptive scheme 
 to do. On the other hand, individual and social 
 history shows that the physical consequences of 
 moral evil do not cease when the moral agent 
 experiences a change of mind or purpose, not 
 even when he is pardoned by the great Lawgiver. 
 Pardon does not annul the physical consequences 
 of law violation. The seed of evil has been 
 244 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 planted; it continues to grow after we have 
 changed our character. All that we can do now 
 is to combat it with the produce of a better plant- 
 ing. 
 
 But there is one other element that enters into 
 the consideration, that is the element of Guilt or 
 moral desert for past misdeeds. What does or 
 can pardon do with guilt? 
 
 So far as the person is concerned it is difficult 
 to see that pardon makes any change concerning 
 the guilt of sin. It does not lift the guilt from 
 one. The person who committed the sin remains 
 forever the person who committed the sin; the 
 demerit of the sin remains forever the same in 
 measure. Pardon does not change any fact con- 
 cerned, and atonement never substitutes any 
 other person in the place of the guilty one. 
 
 The confusion that has been introduced into 
 this seemingly very simple moral problem is the 
 fact that if the sinner will renounce his sin as 
 sinful and will change his mind, and by divine 
 help will change his life 's conduct, God has prom- 
 ised that his guilt for past sins will not bar pres- 
 ent and future fellowship with himself. This 
 seems to be the sum total of the transaction, and 
 meets completely all the ethical demands of the 
 situation. He will remember our sins (guilt) 
 against us no more forever; he will take us into 
 divine fellowship, and our moral life may thus 
 have a new beginning. We cover all the case 
 when we say that God is not vindictive. A bad 
 245 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 past lie will allow to stand, as indeed he must, as 
 a bad past, but not as an obstacle to present and 
 future spiritual opportunity. 
 
 The only alternative to this is not a removal 
 or annihilation of the past sins and the guilt that 
 has ensued — even God can not do that, because it 
 implies the impossible, the impossible because the 
 contradictory. The only possible alternative is 
 that God should cherish resentment for sins now 
 repented of but irremovable ; that he should seek 
 to "vindicate" his authority against rebellion 
 now given over. A vindictive God is not the one 
 revealed by Jesus Christ. And a God seeking to 
 " vindicate" his government and authority is 
 one consciously weak, who does not dare to take 
 back his repentant child or subject, for fear that 
 he will not be able to deal with other children or 
 subjects who may rebel. 
 
 We need not encourage the idea that forgive- 
 ness in God is brought about by anything outside 
 of himself except by such a morally receptive at- 
 titude in us as will permit God to bestow it. "We 
 can not and need not make God gracious by any 
 sacrifice that we may bring according to the an- 
 cient notion of the function of sacrifice, nor by 
 any service that we may render, nor even by any 
 prayer we may offer viewed as a motive for God. 
 He is already gracious. The only thing lacking 
 to fellowship between him and man is such a re- 
 sponse to his gracious offers as will allow his 
 grace its operation without the destruction of 
 man's freedom. He has rendered the necessary 
 246 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 service in coming to us through his Son. He is 
 now seeking to change our minds by the petitions 
 and revealed sufferings of his own heart as mani- 
 fested in his Son. We need only to come into a 
 harmonious state of mind with him ; he is already 
 forgiving in spirit. " After this revelation of 
 Jesus Christ all notion of teasing God into an at- 
 titude of forgiveness by prayers, sacrifices, or 
 elaborate ceremonial must vanish from Christian 
 thought. It is God who makes the offering; it 
 is God who presents the sacrifices ; it is God who 
 solicits men. After Jesus' sacrificial life and 
 death religious thought must assume as its fun- 
 damental postulate the good will of God toward 
 men. It is he who makes the initiative in the 
 atonement, and not man." Jesus " convinced 
 men of God's readiness to forgive." (Dinsmore, 
 op. cit. 197, 198.) 
 
 Miley thinks that God as a Father could freely 
 forgive sins as illustrated by the Parable of the 
 Prodigal Son, but as a moral Ruler he could not, 
 save on the basis of some satisfaction atonement. 
 He says: "He had no need for the atonement in 
 his fatherly disposition, but only in the require- 
 ments of his rectoral offices." ("Systematic 
 Theology," ii, 104.) This indicates that atone- 
 ment theories part asunder according as men 
 differ in their view of God. If he is pre-eminently 
 a Ruler, a King, a Judge, they are inclined to 
 hold to the necessity of an objective atonement. 
 But if they feel that his fatherly relation com- 
 prehends his moral rulership, then they can con- 
 247 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ceive that he may forgive sins on the basis of 
 repentance, as earthly fathers are in the habit of 
 doing. 
 
 Campbell, an author whose bold thinking has 
 greatly aided us, seems to think that if the blood 
 of Christ has power enough to conquer our spirits 
 by the love displayed, we need have no fear that 
 it will not have power enough to overcome any 
 legal barriers that may stand in the way of the 
 Father's willingness to forgive us our sins. He 
 says : ' ' It is indeed unbelievable — no man can be- 
 lieve — that receiving Christ as our life, we can 
 feel that his blood does indeed cleanse us from 
 all sin, in relation to that worship of God which 
 is in spirit and in truth; but that we can not 
 feel secure as engaged in this worship unless 
 that blood of Christ, under the power of which 
 our spirits have come by faith, speak to our con- 
 science of penal sufferings endured for us and 
 to assure us that the law has no claim against 
 us." (" Nature of Atonement," 181.) 
 
 It is quite usual in treatises on the atonement 
 to present the elaborate system of sacrifices of 
 the Jews as illustrative of the atonement of 
 Christ. We should remind ourselves of two 
 things in this connection: First, there are many 
 instances of forgiveness for gross sins in the 
 sight of God on the simple ground of repentance 
 without any mention of sacrifices. Second, the 
 ceremonial sacrifices did not avail for forgiveness 
 of certain moral offenses among the Jews; for 
 them a great Day of Atonement was provided. 
 248 
 
OBJECTIVE EESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 Furthermore, it is perfectly clear in the light of 
 the teachings of Amos and Isaiah that sacrifices 
 did not, when taken alone, avail anything in the 
 forgiveness of sins. They might symbolize the 
 contrite heart, but if they were an unreal or false 
 expression of the heart they were an offense to 
 God rather than a ground of forgiveness by him. 
 This would indicate that in themselves they ac- 
 complished nothing. The heart sacrifice was es- 
 sential, and in recorded instances it was adequate 
 standing alone. 
 
 Moreover, this ceremonial system as such was 
 repudiated by the New Testament revelation. 
 The whole ceremonial system was brushed aside 
 as in itself worthless in removing sin. It is not 
 more clear that it was symbolic of the sacrifice 
 of Christ than of the individual Christian. We 
 may not assume that it teaches the atonement in 
 Jesus; we must estimate it in this particular 
 from the foundation up. 
 
 That God may forgive sins without a price 
 being paid to his justice is demonstrable from the 
 cases of remission of sins before the atonement 
 of Jesus on the Cross. To this class we would 
 add those cases of forgiveness before Christ's 
 death. To this, no doubt, various answers will 
 be urged. First, that the element of time is not 
 valid for God. But there is no possibility, from 
 our point of view, of coming to any conclusion 
 on such a negative ground. God forgave sins 
 when the atonement was not a fact, and in any 
 case only an intention. Jesus forgave sins — the 
 249 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 man sick with the palsy, the woman of evil char- 
 acter, etc. — without any mention of a price to be 
 paid as an atonement, and while he was still liv- 
 ing. But, second, it will be said that the sacrifices 
 in the Old Testament were symbolical and pointed 
 forward to Christ, and that sins were forgiven 
 through them as a figure on the basis of an atone- 
 ment that was promised and yet to be made. This 
 is an assumption long held and hoary with age; 
 but it is neither self-evident nor established be- 
 yond controversy and investigation. There are 
 those who hold that the sacrifices of the Jews 
 were a mere matter of ritual, a form of worship, 
 having various uses, but dissociated from the sac- 
 rifice of Christ. " Toward the sacrifices of the 
 temple Jesus' attitude was that of tolerance. 
 Though not opposing them, he ascribed to them 
 no intrinsic value as a means of reconciling God 
 and man. He taught explicitly that they had no 
 such value in the case of a man who, having 
 wronged his fellow-man, had not made peace* with 
 him (Matt. 5:23, 24), and never pointed men to 
 them as a means through which they might come 
 into right relations with God." (Smith & Bur- 
 ton, op. cit. 111.) In the case of the cleansed 
 leper he commanded him to perform the usual 
 sacrifices, not as a means to cleansing, but in def- 
 erence to a proper social demand that an author- 
 ized officer should pronounce him cleansed, and 
 thus that he was a proper person to be welcomed 
 into society from which his disease had excluded 
 him. The principle of the love of God as the 
 250 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 ground of forgiveness is probably broader and 
 more unexceptional than that of a special sac- 
 rifice. 
 
 "The true sacrifice must be not an animal 
 sacrifice, but the sacrifice of man himself, not 
 merely as the subject, but also as the object — self- 
 sacrifice. The human sacrifice, interdicted in the 
 law, sacrifices others, not the guilty man, and is 
 thus a caricature of the sacrificial idea. In it the 
 only surviving truth is that sin and guilt forfeit 
 life or are worthy of death." (Dorner, "System 
 of Christian Doctrine," iii, 409.) It would seem 
 that when the sinner surrenders himself unto God 
 the ethical requirements are met more fully than 
 through any other suggestion. His sacrifice may 
 not be worthy, and there is no legal or commer- 
 cial obligation upon God to receive it; but if God's 
 love moves him to receive it, every necessity in 
 the situation is met as fully as can be. 
 
 The real problem is, How to get man to make 
 this surrender of himself unto his Father in 
 heaven. The problem is not by some offering 
 made to God to make God willing to receive him. 
 We understand the Bible to teach that he is al- 
 ready willing to do that if the surrender is the 
 free choice of man. But man is not willing ante- 
 cedently. He is wicked; he has sinned and lost 
 confidence in his standing with God; he is still 
 a rebel. Christ's sacrifice is admirably adapted 
 to make a compelling appeal to his heart. When 
 its rebellion is broken down, and confidence re- 
 gained that relations with the Father may be re- 
 251 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 established, then the antecedent work of sacrifice 
 has been accomplished. The animal sacrifice 
 seems to us to have worth in its partial giving 
 up of self. The animal belongs to the sacrificer ; 
 it is his property, a part of himself. In so far 
 as it represents his willingness to yield himself 
 to God it has worth. In so far as it was a mere 
 formal offering, not carrying the heart with it, 
 it was worthless. The sacrifice needed may be in- 
 ferred from the fact that until man surrenders 
 himself, even the sacrifice that Jesus made is of 
 no value in his behalf, plainly suggesting that 
 Christ's sacrifice is for the purpose of securing 
 man 's sacrifice, and failing that, it has been made 
 in vain. If Christ's sacrifice does not lead to 
 man's sacrifice of himself, it does not lead to 
 anything except the deeper condemnation for re- 
 jecting such love and such an appeal. 
 
 The assumption that a sacrifice of some kind 
 is the foundation for justification leads to the 
 rather intricate and probably indefensible posi- 
 tion presented by Dorner in the following state- 
 ment: "Since expiation is necessary according 
 to the law, and yet the blood of beasts can not 
 actually expiate, the symbolic sacrificial institute 
 is still not an abolition of guilt. The guilt is 
 simply overlooked. Further, while it is a mani- 
 festation of grace, it is merely a manifestation 
 of Divine long-suffering, and has not the power to 
 purify the conscience. The deeper reason of this 
 fact lies in the circumstance that the atonement 
 was for the individual offenses, to which the sac- 
 252 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 rifices apply, not an atonement for the sin, for 
 the guilt-burdened state." (Op. cit. 408.) This 
 being interpreted with what intelligence we can 
 bring to it, seems to say that the Old Testament 
 system of sacrifices did not really expiate sins at 
 all, but were a sort of provisional arrangement 
 by which God would put off the punishment of 
 sins. These sacrifices were required, but mani- 
 fested on the part of the offerer only a sort of 
 surrendered will, but did not really remove the 
 guilt of the sinner. 
 
 This is a vital point. If they did not remove 
 guilt (and the prophets as well as the author of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews assert that they do 
 not), then did Old Testament characters fail of 
 reconciliation with God, and fail to come into 
 fellowship with him? We can hardly believe it. 
 But if they did come into fellowship with God, 
 on what ground? It is rather hard philosophy 
 to say that Abraham's sins were not forgiven, 
 and that settlement was only deferred until the 
 time of the new covenant, when he shall have been 
 dead eighteen hundred years. That new covenant 
 could not mean anything personal and real to him 
 unless he foresaw it and trusted in it, which, if 
 he did, of what use was his temporal covenant 
 of sacrifices? The whole matter seems too dim- 
 cult, too obscure to be a required foundation of 
 saving faith. It must be rejected as too artificial 
 and complicated. There remains, then, nothing 
 but the free grace of God as the foundation for 
 justification of those who lived before the knowl- 
 253 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 edge of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world. 
 No payment of price, no bleeding sacrifice was 
 required by the Father in dealing with these 
 saints of the patriarchal and Mosaic covenants as 
 a foundation or justification of his forgiving love. 
 But if this is granted in the case of these who 
 lived before Christ came, it is untenable to as- 
 sume that the Father required the sacrifice of 
 his Son before he would forgive the rest of the 
 world and receive them into a justified relation 
 with himself. 
 
 It will not be needful for us to enter into a 
 discussion of the different forms of sacrifice of 
 the old covenant. None was so prominent in the 
 Jewish life and none entered so closely into re- 
 lationship with the mission of Jesus as the Pass- 
 over sacrifice. If we can escape the satisfaction 
 or substitutional idea in it, we will hardly expect 
 to find it elsewhere. Says Fairbairn: "The feast 
 was the most domestic of all the feasts of Israel. 
 In it the father was the priest, the home was the 
 temple. The lamb was not the symbol of any 
 sacerdotal function, but of family and racial 
 unity, especially in the eye and purpose of God. 
 Its blood was not shed to propitiate a vengeful 
 Deity, and induce him to pass over the family 
 for whom it had been slain and the house where 
 it was being eaten, but rather to mark them as 
 God's own; in other words, the paschal lamb did 
 not make him gracious, but found him gracious, 
 and confessed that those who offered it believed 
 themselves to be the heirs of his grace. It was 
 254 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 the seal of a mercy which had been shown and 
 was now claimed, not the purchase of a mercy 
 which was withheld and must now be bought. 
 . . . Jesus translated these associations from 
 the traditions which acted as the fetters of the 
 past into the ideals which were to govern the fu- 
 ture. He manifestly conceived himself as the sac- 
 rificial lamb, for only so can we find any meaning 
 in the reference to his blood ; the figure was beau- 
 tiful enough to apply even to him. It was the 
 symbol of innocence, meekness, gentleness of one 
 who was led to the slaughter and was dumb un- 
 der the hand of the shearer; but it did not speak 
 of a victim whose blood was to be shed to appease 
 a vindictive Sovereign. On the contrary, the 
 blood told of divine grace and denoted a member 
 of the family of God, a man spared, emancipated, 
 introduced into all the liberties and endowed with 
 all the privileges of Divine sonship." ("Philos- 
 ophy of the Christian Eeligion, ' ' 423, 424. ) From 
 the pre-incarnation standpoint, which is the only 
 proper point of view from which to see the total 
 act of Grod, the Lamb offered is offered by the 
 Father, not for the purpose of inducing himself 
 to graciously pass over the sins of repentant men, 
 but as a love-token that he yearned to bring back 
 to his bosom those who had wandered from him, 
 and had thus far refused to accept any token less 
 precious, less expressive of his own heart. 
 
 The work of the Redeemer is spoken of a few 
 times as a ransom which he gives for man, as in 
 255 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 Mark 10 : 45, * * The Son of man came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his 
 life a ransom for many. ' ' How shall we construe 
 the thought? We must give our interpretation 
 under the light and limitation of various Old Tes- 
 tament incidents and usages. "To the Jew a ran- 
 som was the money which a man paid to recover 
 possession of his inheritance when he had parted 
 with it (Lev. 25: 25-27) ; it was the price he paid 
 when he purchased the freedom of any one that 
 was 'nigh of kin to him' who had become a slave 
 to a stranger (Lev. 25:47-49); it was what he 
 gave in exchange for the life of the first-born of 
 an unclean animal which he wanted to keep, and 
 which the law required him either to redeem or 
 to destroy (Num. 18:15; Ex. 13:13; 24:20); it 
 was the five shekels which he had to pay for the 
 life of his first-born child, etc." (Dale, " Atone- 
 ment," 76.) 
 
 We must exercise due care in taking up this 
 ceremonial ransom into Christianity; but espe- 
 cially we must note the different conditions of the 
 two ransoms. To whom does Christ pay this ran- 
 som? Here the early Church stumbled and said 
 it was to Satan, and the answer was not wholly 
 obsolete for a thousand years. But we now say, 
 Nothing was owed to Satan; no ransom to him 
 was required. To whom, then? 
 
 We reject the idea that the ransom was re- 
 quired by God the Father, or by some abstraction 
 called Justice, or by the necessities of govern- 
 ment. These rejections we have already sufn- 
 256 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 ciently discussed. We can not see but that man 
 himself keeps himself in bondage. By the fact 
 of being free he chooses that he will continue in 
 sin. He is at once the slave who is held in bond- 
 age and the master who holds himself in bondage. 
 He is the slave and the slave-master. It is to him 
 in this second person that the ransom is required. 
 His hold on the slave must be broken. Good faith 
 to him must be established before he will pass 
 over this slave to the new Master, the Christ, who 
 ransoms him. Hence, anomalous as it may seem, 
 the ransom must be paid to the man himself, and 
 this fact changes the relationships of ransom. 
 This fundamental distinction will change the ap- 
 plication of every Scripture having the form of 
 substitution. If this interpretation of ransom is 
 unsatisfactory to any, they must then hold that 
 the ransom is only a general transaction without 
 distinct statement as to those who receive the 
 price. This general form of the transaction is the 
 interpretation given by Fairbairn, who says: "It 
 is evident that Jesus is thinking of the fitness and 
 efficacy of his death as a method of accomplishing 
 a given purpose, and this determines the word 
 (ransom) he chooses. He does not think of buy- 
 ing off man either from the world or the devil, 
 or of paying a debt to God, or of making satisfac- 
 tion to law ; he simply thinks of man as enslaved 
 and by his death rescued from slavery. To re- 
 quire that every element in a figurative word be 
 found in the reality it denotes, is not exegesis, but 
 pedantry." ("Philosophy of the Christian Re- 
 257 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 ligion," 410.) This latter construction rejecting 
 the double character of ransoming, relieves us of 
 the embarrassment of the question, which never 
 had satisfactory answer, To whom is the ransom 
 paid? It does not picture God to us as a Shylock 
 exacting a pound of flesh, nor permit the ab- 
 surdity of Satan possessing a moral right to the 
 custody of man. It is a picture of our main con- 
 tention that Jesus appeals to us by his death to 
 be reconciled to God, and accept a place in his 
 love and fellowship. 
 
 Campbell has put the whole picture of forgive- 
 ness in one single question so comprehensive and 
 cogent, that we transfer it here, feeling, as he 
 says, that there can be but one answer to it. He 
 says: "That we may fully realize what manner 
 of an equivalent to the dishonor done to the law 
 and name of God by sin, an adequate repentance 
 and sorrow for sin must be, and how more truly 
 than any penal infliction such repentance must 
 satisfy divine justice, let us suppose that all the 
 sin of humanity has been committed by one human 
 spirit, on whom is accumulated this immeasur- 
 able amount of guilt, and let us suppose that this 
 spirit, loaded with all this guilt, to pass out of 
 sin into holiness, and to become filled with the life 
 of God's own righteousness — such a change . . . 
 would imply in the spirit so changed a perfect 
 condemnation of the past of its own existence, 
 and an absolute and perfect repentance, a confes- 
 sion of its sin commensurate with its evil. . . . 
 258 
 
OBJECTIVE RESULT— JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 Shall this repentance be accepted as an atone- 
 ment, and the past sin being thus confessed, shall 
 the divine favor flow out on that present perfect 
 righteousness which thus condemns the past? 
 shall the present perfect righteousness be re- 
 jected on account of the past sin, so absolutely 
 and perfectly repented of? and shall divine justice 
 still demand adequate punishment for the past 
 sin, and refuse to the present righteousness ade- 
 quate acknowledgment — the favor which in re- 
 spect to its own nature belongs to it? It appears 
 to me impossible to give any but one answer to 
 these questions. We feel that such a repentance 
 would, in such a case, be the true and proper satis- 
 faction to offended justice, and that there would 
 be more atoning worth in one tear of the true 
 and perfect sorrow which the memory of the past 
 could awaken in this now holy spirit than in end- 
 less ages of penal woe." ("Nature of Atone- 
 ment," 126.) 
 
 It is a very proper question whether that 
 preaching which has been dominated by the satis- 
 faction theory of the atonement has not changed 
 the divine message as it comes to us in the Bible. 
 Does the gospel bring forward the necessity of 
 a legal adjustment of our relation to Grod as 
 prominently as have these sermons ? We will not 
 raise the question here whether the Gospels ever 
 raise the question of our legal relation; we only 
 remind ourselves that to change the emphasis is 
 to change the message. We can so exalt one 
 thought and neglect another as to make the divine 
 259 
 
THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 word to men a thing really different from its 
 original form. The Bible portrays us as sinners; 
 but is it not as sinners against a Father rather 
 than sinners against a law? Are not the rela- 
 tions which are disturbed personal relations 
 rather than relations of government? Do not the 
 Scriptures make the forgiveness of God promi- 
 nent rather than the price paid in order that there 
 might be forgiveness? Of course, the answer to 
 this last question will depend much upon our 
 view of the death of Christ, whether it be a price 
 paid or a manifestation of love and a desire for 
 renewed fellowship. Is not repentance made 
 more prominent than propitiation? 
 
 260 
 
Chapter IX. 
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFI- 
 CATION. 
 
 Some years ago we heard an able minister of the 
 gospel speak of the danger of the doctrine, widely 
 held, as he affirmed, of salvation by Character. 
 We have been on the ontlook for the dire conse- 
 quences of that doctrine ever since. But we are 
 as yet quite unable to discover them. We can un- 
 derstand the danger of substituting a moral deed, 
 narrowly defined, for a heart relation to God ; but 
 how there can be any danger in the effort to attain 
 a godlike character we are confessedly too blind 
 to discover. From our point of view, we believe 
 that in our limitations the Father would excuse 
 us from about everything else if we will only be 
 like his well-beloved Son in character. One might 
 make wrong uses of a mere theory about charac- 
 ter, but it is hardly conceivable that he could de- 
 rive any ill from an effort to attain the character 
 itself. The whole plan of God's relations with 
 men is for the purpose of character. The teach- 
 ing, the life, and the death of the Redeemer are 
 for the purpose of forming a character like the 
 divine. If it be assumed that in a given case the 
 character is formed without any of these agencies 
 operating, it may be a subject of surprise, but can 
 hardly be one for regret. If out of the heathen 
 261 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 jungle, where no knowledge concerning the Christ 
 has ever penetrated and consequently no personal 
 faith toward him has ever been exercised, some 
 one shall at the last come forth who displays the 
 divine elements of character of the Son of God, 
 we may stand amazed at the fact, but we can 
 hardly doubt that the Father above is greatly 
 pleased and will vouchsafe to such an one a hearty 
 welcome to his companionship. If this is not sal- 
 vation by character, then we fail to comprehend 
 what is meant by the phrase. The Bible, the 
 Cross, the knowledge of Christ, and personal faith 
 in him are the means of salvation. They repre- 
 sent the machinery. But the machinery is not 
 an end ; it does not exist for itself. It exists and 
 operates for the sake of the product. If by hy- 
 pothesis some one gains the object of its work- 
 ing, the divine character, without using the ma- 
 chine, we should not quibble about the process, but 
 should rejoice in the results. 
 
 This may introduce our position that the goal 
 of the atonement is Sanctification, by which we 
 mean nothing more nor less than a holy person- 
 ality. Any plan that contemplates the reunion of 
 man and God after the separation that sin has 
 made, that does not provide for the attainment 
 of this holy character, is self -evidently erroneous. 
 No mechanical methods under the form of beauti- 
 ful and impressive and expressive ritual will suf- 
 fice. No judicial procedure that does its work ex- 
 ternally to the soul, leaving it untouched in moral 
 quality, can for a moment find standing. Any 
 262 
 
SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 theory of atonement that is from God must have 
 all its elements so to work together that the final 
 result is a renewal, a purified, a regenerated, a 
 sanctified, a God-indwelt spirit of man. Atone- 
 ment without this morally transforming power is 
 fruitless and irrational. Of all God's creatures 
 man alone is capable of moral action in the fullest 
 sense ; he only is capable of fellowship with God. 
 The atonement is demanded because this capa- 
 bility had been destroyed by sin, and it is atone- 
 ment's sole function to restore this moral fellow- 
 ship and life with God, the fundamental require- 
 ment of which is godlikeness in his spiritual 
 being. An atonement that does not do this 
 does nothing as atonement. 
 
 An atonement and pardon that do not accom- 
 pany and guarantee renewed character, renewed 
 citizenship under law, may find an entrance into 
 human administration, but not into Divine. The 
 following incident from current literature will 
 make this point clear. "A young man killed a 
 man and was sent to penitentiary for life. A 
 minister interested himself in his case and found 
 extenuating circumstances which he presented to 
 the governor, who, having great confidence in the 
 minister, finally gave to him a pardon for the 
 young man. Joyfully he hastened to the prison, 
 but first he was minded to talk with the young 
 man seriously. Among other things he asked him 
 what he would do if he were pardoned. The youth 
 immediately said, 'I would go and kill Judge 
 Blank' — the man who had sentenced him. The 
 263 
 
THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 minister was shocked. He saw clearly that the 
 man had murder in his heart, and it would not 
 do to set him free. So, without telling him of the 
 pardon, he went out and tore it into pieces." 
 
 This may not have been according to human 
 law and justice. If the young man committed the 
 deed under circumstances that justified him in 
 the sight of the law, he was entitled to his free- 
 dom, without regard to the future. 
 
 But the minister dealt with the young man as 
 the Heavenly Father deals with us. In the Divine 
 administration, even though we were not justified 
 in the deed, we may have pardon if we will secure 
 the future by contrition and a better heart. This 
 Divine method, while probably not practical for 
 human procedure, owing to our inability to know 
 about the contrition and the new heart, appeals 
 to us as in every way the better method of dealing 
 with sin, securing every end that abstract justice 
 can, and very much besides. 
 
 The following story has gotten into the ma- 
 terial used in illustrating the grace of God: A 
 man was on trial for his life. The case proceeded 
 without prejudice or partiality, and the man was 
 condemned by the jury. The prisoner showed the 
 utmost indifference during the trial, and also 
 when the judge pronounced sentence upon him, 
 adding his expressions of horror at the indiffer- 
 ence which the prisoner had manifested through 
 the trial. But as they were leading the con- 
 demned man back to his cell, he drew from his 
 breast the pardon which his friends had procured 
 264 
 
SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 from the king before the trial began. In conse- 
 quence of this, a condemned man, he walked out 
 from the custody of the law a free man. 
 
 We hold that such a story, reciting no more 
 details of ground for pardon and purpose of a 
 new life, is a complete travesty on the Christian 
 doctrine of atonement. This callous indifference 
 to processes of law, based on the consciousness 
 that he was above law, can become an absolutely 
 lawless spirit. Where one was conscious of his 
 righteousness, the indifference might be justified ; 
 but on the other hand, if conscious of his ill-desert, 
 it would be most evil, resting only on the fact 
 that he had a ' ' pull ' ' with the King. Apart from 
 repentance and change of heart and mind, no man 
 has any such "pull" with Almighty God. No ob- 
 jective atonement of any nature can ever give 
 it to him. Such a doctrine is the foundation of 
 as deep immorality as the world has yet conceived. 
 
 Corresponding to the doctrine that our sins 
 are laid upon Christ is the doctrine that his right- 
 eousness is laid upon us, and thus we are justified 
 in God's sight. Sometimes this doctrine is an- 
 nounced outright, but more frequently in later 
 literature in some mediated course. Says Dale: 
 "The Lord Jesus Christ, the Moral Ruler of the 
 human race, instead of inflicting the penalties, has 
 submitted to them ; he has ' died, the Just for the 
 unjust,' and has been 'made a curse for us.' 
 This supreme act becomes ours — not by formal 
 imputation — but through the law which consti- 
 tutes his life the original spring of our own." 
 265 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 (''Atonement," 422.) This author has prepared 
 for this statement by some pages of argument; 
 he follows it with a page more in illustration. All 
 we can say is : Blessed is the man who can see it. 
 We find ourselves utterly unable to see how 
 Christ's identification with the race, which we 
 fully accept, makes any act of his our act in a 
 personal and moral sense. By faith we can ap- 
 propriate the blessings which he has provided 
 for us ; but that is the appropriation of a blessing, 
 and not the confusion of a personality. 
 
 We can not help but believe that this author 
 is looking into a fog bank and has constrained 
 himself to believe, doubtless through stress of 
 theory, that he sees something. We believe that 
 that something will vanish as soon as the fog lifts. 
 We can construct no argument except the one of 
 unreality, against what he says: for we can see 
 no connection between his primary position — 
 Christ's incorporation into the race, and our in- 
 corporation into a spiritual body, into Christ — 
 and the conclusion, that his act becomes mine. If 
 the incorporation were in the sense of Pantheism, 
 by which we lose individuality and personality, 
 and become merely a part of a great organism 
 of which Christ were the intellectual and voli- 
 tional part, then, of course, what any part did the 
 whole would do, and there would be no distinction 
 of moral action between him and me. But this is 
 not a Christian conception. It is a solution of 
 the atonement by the destruction of human per- 
 sonality and responsibility. We are willing to be 
 266 
 
SUBJECTIVE BESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 a Pantheist up to the point where all is God save 
 personality. To pass that point is no solution; 
 it is mere losing out the factor of human person- 
 ality, and sin ceases to be a problem at all. 
 
 There can be no doubt that God desires that 
 man should be righteous ; but it is difficult to dis- 
 cover a foundation for the demand for man's 
 righteousness if it is to be merely formal, as it 
 must be if it is only imputed to us. Eeal and per- 
 sonal righteousness will fit one for the fellowship 
 with God and the society of the eternally saved. 
 But a righteousness that he does not have on his 
 own account, but only as a participation in the 
 form of a legal fiction, has no surer ground in ref- 
 erence to righteousness than it would have to any 
 other attribute of God. It is this foundationless 
 claim for righteousness which makes Campbell 
 ask: "As to the supposed necessity for God's im- 
 puting righteousness that he may see us as per- 
 fectly righteous, why must our participation in 
 Christ's righteousness be the meeting for the de- 
 mand for perfection any more than our partici- 
 pation in his holiness, or his wisdom, or the free- 
 dom that is in him? All is perfect in him, and 
 he and his perfection belong to us ; but all in the 
 same sense." (Op. cit. 192.) 
 
 One view of justification is that we do not be- 
 come personally just, but on the ground of faith 
 God imputes Christ's righteousness to us, clothes 
 us in the garment of Christ's purity. This view 
 seems to be the obverse side of the substitution 
 267 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 of Christ bearing our sins; his righteousness is 
 substituted for our unrighteousness. The first 
 substitution may lend some logical force to the 
 second. But the whole comes to a rather unsatis- 
 factory conclusion. Our sin is transferred to him 
 without his becoming a sinner, and his righteous- 
 ness is transferred to us without our becoming 
 righteous. This seems to be a provision for a 
 salvation that is a fiction in its foundation and 
 a fiction in its results. It seems to be invented 
 in the despair of making sinners personally right- 
 eous, and provides a method by which they may 
 be called righteous when they are not really right- 
 eous. For ourselves, it is clear that unless Chris- 
 tianity makes people righteous in their own per- 
 sonal character, it is a failure, and candor calls 
 apon us to admit it.* 
 
 The other view is that faith is an initial act 
 of righteousness by which we enter upon a life 
 of obedience. When we accept Jesus as our 
 Savior we accept him as our Lord and Master. 
 Thus while we do not become morally perfect at 
 
 * " If Divine and human action are brought into such an 
 opposition to each other that the gain of the one signifies the 
 loss of the other, all freedom of man and all human activity 
 become prejudicial to the all-power of the Divine, as well as 
 to an unconditional surrender of man; and both of these are 
 absolutely necessary to religion. If such a one-sided course is 
 adopted, religion will restrict freedom as much as possible up 
 to complete annihilation; indeed, this line of thought made all 
 explicitly religious characters determinists in their consciousness. 
 . . . All this easily leads to overstrain and an untruth; when 
 this track of thought is followed, it depicts man as impotent, 
 depraved, and bad, in order to allow the Divine grace to shine 
 all the clearer against a dark background of human existence. 
 
 268 
 
SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 a bound, do not attain at once to a complete moral 
 stature, we are making a righteous beginning, and 
 by accepting obedience we are entering on a road 
 which leads to perfection. The righteousness is 
 a righteousness of Christ, but it is an appropri- 
 ated righteousness by which we become person- 
 ally righteous. It is not a mere substitution of 
 Christ's righteousness, which is only a legal fic- 
 tion and a moral impossibility, but a righteous- 
 ness which becomes personal in so far as we re- 
 main true to the law of its acceptance. 
 
 A bishop of the Negro race is credited with 
 saying: "But through his death and resurrection 
 we may commit sins of lying, stealing, Sabbath- 
 breaking, getting drunk, gambling, whoring, mur- 
 dering, and every species of villainy, and then 
 come to Grod through our resurrected Christ and 
 enter heaven in the end." This is a little more 
 crudely expressed than usual, but the same doc- 
 trine with its inferences has often been heard 
 from white preachers. Another Negro preacher 
 had attained a much better point of view when 
 
 We have thus obtained the unfortunate doctrine of original sin 
 which drew Christianity into Manichseism ; and thus we find that 
 opinion of Luther that man does not so much acquire righteous- 
 ness as that righteousness is imputed to him by faith. Such an 
 opinion, if thought out, resolves the great struggle of the world 
 into an appearance and a play." (Eucken: "The Truth of Ee- 
 ligion," 221, 222.) 
 
 This suggests what an investigation of Church history may 
 confirm, that emphasis on the doctrine of original sin has been 
 found only with those teachers who were determinists. Be- 
 lievers in human freedom may have inherited the doctrine and 
 thus have accepted it in the sense that they did not reject it; 
 but it does not belong naturally to their school of thought. 
 
 269 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 he said in his sermon, ' ' There are many who have 
 three wives who say they are going to heaven; 
 but that 's because they don't know God." 
 
 It is probable that it was such extreme illus- 
 trations of an unethical atonement which has 
 brought about the drift from the mechanical and 
 legal in all our theological conceptions, and is the 
 fundamental reason for dissatisfaction with all 
 legal and governmental theories of atonement. 
 Because religion must be ethical there is placed 
 "an absolute bar to the older Calvanism, of sal- 
 vation by Divine decree, supposing that that made 
 conceivable the idea of character at all. The 
 atonement, too, can get its full meaning only as 
 it is conceived as ethical throughout." (King, 
 "Reconstruction in Theology," 182.) 
 
 "It is the doctrine of the Book of Revelation 
 that they are acceptable unto God who have been 
 cleansed from sin, who are clothed in the fine 
 linen of righteous acts. Men are thus cleansed 
 and purchased unto God to be his people, because 
 of, or through, the blood of the Lamb that was 
 slain; i. e., through participation in that moral 
 life, that attitude toward sin and the world which 
 Jesus manifested in the laying down of his life. 
 Thus the condition of acceptance by God is eth- 
 ical, and the death of Christ has its significance 
 in that it is sufficient for the bringing-about of 
 this ethical condition. ' ' ( Smith & Burton, ' ' Bib- 
 lical Ideas of Atonement," 263.) 
 
 This idea of pardon without atonement of any 
 kind is finding its way into the theories of the 
 270 
 
SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 new criminology. Some reformers are urging 
 that the way to make men good is to treat them 
 as if they were good, demanding of them no se- 
 curities for conduct. Doubtless many persons 
 have been classified as criminals who are rather 
 irresponsible degenerates, and their cases should 
 be a special study of society. Such classes aside, 
 we hold that government, human or divine, rests 
 upon the guarantees of renewed life and conduct 
 from those who have fallen into transgression. 
 Their evil conduct demonstrated, we must assume 
 that they are evil in heart, and they are under 
 obligation to show a renewed purpose before they 
 can be dealt with on the basis of freedom and 
 usual human rights. "We do not enter this discus- 
 sion so far as to make any suggestions as to what 
 these guarantees of a new life shall be or what 
 shall be done with them in case of a failure to 
 give them. We only insist that justification be- 
 fore the law and sanctification in life must be 
 closely held together. 
 
 A somewhat noted case occurred recently in 
 Ohio. A man was adjudged guilty by a jury of 
 manslaughter under circumstances of great ag- 
 gravation. The judge pronounced sentence of 
 many years in the penitentiary, and then, without 
 any public • securities whatever, unconditionally 
 suspended the sentence. It was not because there 
 was any atonement of any kind, any change of 
 heart that could be evidenced, any mitigating cir- 
 cumstances in connection with the commission of 
 the crime. The defense of the judge afterwards 
 271 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 seemed to have no better foundation than that 
 he thought that was the way to reform men. The 
 sequel showed that it was the way to make a bad 
 man worse, the way to disrupt the civic commu- 
 nity, and to furnish a sufficient ground for the 
 recall of the judge, if the people had had the legal 
 machinery to permit it. We may rest quite as- 
 sured that the judgments of heaven will meet 
 quite as high standards as those which are im- 
 posed upon our Court of Common Pleas. No ad- 
 ministration of God will encourage sin and crime 
 in his universe. There will be pardon and mercy, 
 a mercy that is as much greater than man's as 
 the heavens are higher than the earth, but there 
 will not be in its ministration the least encourage- 
 ment to sin. "The prophet's emphasis upon re- 
 pentance is the core of the New Testament teach- 
 ing. Their insistence upon right character as the 
 only way to reconciliation with God is everywhere 
 taken for granted in the New Testament." (Smith 
 & Burton, Op. cit. 265.) 
 
 The relation of sin to one who has experienced 
 the benefits of the atonement is expressed by Paul 
 in the strong word, death. (Gal. 2: 20; 2 Cor. 5: 
 14-17). As a corpse can not enter into the activi- 
 ties of life, so a redeemed man can not enter into 
 the activities of a life dominated by animalism as 
 long as he is redeemed. "The death that he died 
 is ours, both in that it was for us, and in that it 
 belongs to us to enter into it and share it with 
 him, living no longer for the fulfillment of our 
 own purposes and ends, but for his, who for us 
 272 
 
SUBJECTIVE EESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 died and rose again." (Smith & Burton, op. cit. 
 190.) Stevens comments on this passage in 2 Cor. 
 as follows : " All died to sin — that is, in an ethical 
 sense — in and with the death of Christ. The 
 moral renewal of mankind, which in Pauline 
 phraseology is so often represented as a dying to 
 sin, and which had its efficacious cause in Christ's 
 death, is spoken of as accomplished when his 
 death was experienced. It is a mystical identi- 
 fication in time of cause and consequence. ' ' 
 ("Pauline Theology," 233.) 
 
 How shall God be just and the justifier of sin- 
 ners ? It can not be overlooked that sin produces 
 in the heart of God a conflict. He loves that which 
 is holy; but he also loves his children. Their un- 
 holiness grieves him, but does not extinguish his 
 love. Out of this conflict the Father-heart of love 
 comes victorious; out of love's provision his love 
 of holiness also is satisfied : for it provides for the 
 restored holiness of his children. The failure of 
 love, manifested in alienating his children perma- 
 nently, would have also disappointed his love of 
 holiness; for it would have eventuated in their 
 permanent sinfulness. 
 
 * ' The justice and righteousness of God and his 
 holiness, and also his truth and faithfulness, pre- 
 sented difficulties in the way of our salvation 
 which rendered for their removal an atonement 
 necessary. . . . The goodness and the love of 
 God, as the moral ruler and governor of the uni- 
 verse, also demanded an atonement, that our sal- 
 vation might be consistent with the well-being of 
 18 273 
 
THE PBOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 the moral universe. . . . But justice looking at 
 the sinner, not simply as the fit subject of punish- 
 ment, but as existing in a moral condition of un- 
 righteousness, and so its own opposite, must de- 
 sire that the sinner should cease to be in that con- 
 dition ; should cease to be unrighteous : righteous- 
 ness in God craving for righteousness in man, 
 with a craving which the righteousness in man 
 alone can justify. So also of holiness. In one 
 view it repels the sinner, and would banish him 
 to outer darkness because of its repugnance to 
 sin. In another it is pained by the continued ex- 
 istence of sin and unholiness, and must desire that 
 the sinner should cease to be sinful. ... He 
 who is able to interpret the voice within him truly 
 . . . will be found saying, . . . ' Surely the di- 
 vine righteousness desires to see me righteous — 
 the divine holiness desires to see me holy. . . . 
 Good and righteous is the Lord ; therefore will he 
 teach sinners the way that they should choose.' 
 A Savior because a just God." (Campbell, 
 "Atonement," 25, 26, 27.) 
 
 The restored fellowship between man and God 
 culminating in the sanctified state of man is pro- 
 vided for by the Savior in what he calls a new 
 covenant. He says, ' ' This is my blood of the cov- 
 enant, which is shed for many." This doubtless 
 points back to the Old Testament symbol in the 
 case of the ratification of a covenant. An animal 
 was slain and Moses divided the blood in half, 
 one part of which was sprinkled upon the altar 
 and the other half was sprinkled on the people. 
 274 
 
SUBJECTIVE BESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 This, on one part, was a symbolical giving of their 
 lives unto God by the people. They were to de- 
 vote their lives to him, not as the heathen often 
 do by being slain unto him, but by their sanctified 
 conduct, by living for him and unto him. The 
 blood of the animal, typifying life, substituted for 
 the life of the people, was sprinkled on the altar, 
 that is, giving it unto God. On the other part, the 
 other half of the blood, which represented the life 
 of God, was sprinkled upon the people, a symbol- 
 ical giving by God of his life to the people. He 
 thus became their God, and they became his 
 people. This very expressive substitution has in 
 it, one may readily see, no thought of substituting 
 the animal in death for the deserved death of the 
 people. (Vid. Ex. 24: 6-8.) It is rather a beauti- 
 ful representation of that which occurs as the 
 result of atonement in the restored fellowship be- 
 tween God and his children. 
 
 The expression that John the Baptist uses 
 concerning Jesus challenges our attention, " Be- 
 hold the Lamb of God that taketh away (or 
 beareth) the sin of the world." It is natural to 
 assume that John is referring to some Old Testa- 
 ment usage or sacrificial incident. Just which 
 one is sufficiently indicated by the phrase it is not 
 easy to decide. The Passover Lamb is excluded 
 because of entire lack of points of contact. The 
 lamb referred to in Isa. 53 has sufficient points 
 of similarity to John's references to receive the 
 favor of thoroughly good exegetes. Others seem 
 to have in mind a rather loose reference to Azazel, 
 275 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 the goat bearing the confessed sins of the people 
 away into the wilderness. "We will not press 
 the exegetical difficulties, first, that it is a lamb 
 and not a goat, and second, the goat was not slain 
 as a sacrificial offering. We prefer to consider 
 the incident as a possible symbol of the Lamb to 
 whom John refers; but we recognize that the 
 analogy must be somewhat loosely held. Perhaps 
 then, as always, symbols were not referred to 
 with careful exactness. Dorner evidently has this 
 incident in mind in the following discussion, and 
 we quote his statement as one of the possible 
 views held. He says: "Atrein- (alpav) does not, 
 indeed, signify 'to bear' in the sense of enduring 
 or suffering, but of taking away. But that the 
 taking away does not take place by mere teaching 
 or example is shown by amnos (a/^os), which 
 points to the sacrificial idea. Hence also not 
 merely to the taking away of sin, but primarily 
 of guilt must be thought of, and therefore expi- 
 ation. . . . Although it is not expressly said 
 that the lamb takes the sin upon himself, still the 
 thought must lie at the basis that the lamb re- 
 moves the sin of the world by bearing it away; 
 i. e., still therefore, innocently taking the guilt 
 and its curse upon himself." (" System of Chris- 
 tian Doctrine," iii, 415.) 
 
 This reference to the lamb (goat) bearing 
 away the sin into the wilderness is a fundamental 
 conception of first-rate importance in any inter- 
 pretation we may give it. Perhaps the ordinary 
 interpretation has held that John's thought was 
 276 
 
SUBJECTIVE RESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 concerning the guilt of sin, and therefore this 
 discussion should be under Justification ; but our 
 view is that, as a Sin-bearer, Christ takes away 
 the sin in personality, and hence this whole mat- 
 ter has to do with Sanctification. To us it is 
 conceivable that in picture or symbol the sins 
 of the people could be confessed over the head 
 of a lamb, and then that it should bear them away. 
 A striking picture! What does it teach? Cer- 
 tainly not a literal bearing away of sin or sins. 
 That is quite absurd. So a literal fulfillment is 
 also quite unthinkable. But the picture would 
 be a legitimate representation of anything that 
 procured the removal of our sins. Sins are not 
 substance, that could be borne away as a bundle ; 
 but they are a moral quality, and if by persuasion 
 or appeal or by anything that caused man to re- 
 nounce them they are removed, the transaction 
 might legitimately be represented as being loaded 
 on to a lamb. To think of a literal fulfillment of 
 the symbol by Jesus, however, is transcending the 
 limitations of moral operation. Campbell evi- 
 dently has some such Scripture incident in mind 
 when he says: "In no sense did the confession of 
 the people over the victim, thus selected as phys- 
 ically perfect, connect these sins with it or lay 
 them upon it; for in no real sense could it bear 
 them. Therefore, while that confession indicated 
 and foretold the laying of men's sins upon Christ, 
 it shed no light upon that which these words ex- 
 press — no light either upon the capacity for bear- 
 ing our sins which was in Christ because of his 
 277 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 moral and spiritual perfection, or of that reality 
 of coming under their weight which was to be in 
 his consciousness in making his soul an offering 
 for sin." (Op. cit. 106.) 
 
 A Christian doctrine should not be merely a 
 subject of intellectual interest. If true, it is the 
 statement of the interaction of relations between 
 God and men, and consequently should pulsate 
 with life. The nearer the exact truth it is, the 
 more vital it should be with the dynamic of sal- 
 vation. From age to age, as we grope, even 
 though slowly, into the light of truth, our doc- 
 trine should become more and more important, 
 because more and more saving. As we are en- 
 abled to eliminate, grain by grain, the mass of 
 error that may have clung to them, by so much 
 should they lose their feebleness and defenseless- 
 ness in the world's great conflict. 
 
 We would not even wish that our view of 
 atonement should escape this test. Let its power 
 be registered in character as its final sanction. 
 "We can not help but feel a great confidence that 
 the portrayal of a suffering God, whose heart 
 now bleeds because of the world's sin, is a pic- 
 ture with an appeal far stronger and calculated to 
 win the reconciliation of man far more potently 
 than the traditional picture that represented only 
 an historic fact, accomplished and forever past, 
 however great the moment portrayed may be. 
 God pleading with us to be reconciled is more 
 influential to the men now living than God whose 
 278 
 
SUBJECTIVE EESULT— SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 pleadings are forever closed because his atone- 
 ment has been long an accomplished fact. The 
 Father that ever has forgiveness in his heart for 
 sinners is more able to draw sinful sons back to 
 himself than the Father whose anger must be pro- 
 pitiated before he can forgive. 
 
 279 
 
Chapter X. 
 
 THE BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 
 
 The nature of the atonement should receive much 
 light from its working through us. That Jesus 
 intended his followers to relate themselves to the 
 sin of the world and its alleviation in the same 
 way that he was related, can not, we think, be per- 
 manently doubted. His significant words to 
 James and John, "The cup that I drink ye shall 
 drink; and with the baptism that I am baptized 
 withal shall ye be baptized" (Mark 10:39 and 
 Matt. 20:23), and his words to the entire com- 
 pany of the apostles, "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 
 the Father," (John 14:12), are entirely harmo- 
 nious with all his teaching, and only make explicit 
 the meaning of his keynote command, "Follow 
 me." The words of Paul to the Colossians (1: 
 24), "Now I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, 
 and fill up on my part that which is lacking of 
 the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's 
 sake," explain to us his constant note of rejoicing 
 in the fellowship which he has with the suffering 
 of Christ. The words of Peter are even more un- 
 mistakable in their import: "For hereunto were 
 ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, 
 leaving you an example, that ye should follow his 
 280 
 
BELIEVEB'S ATONEMENT. 
 
 steps." In succeeding verses the effect of fol- 
 lowing Christ in suffering, while innocent, is illus- 
 trated in different situations. 
 
 These instances will show sufficiently that the 
 disciples of Jesus are called upon to suffer vi- 
 cariously for the wicked, that they may be won 
 to righteousness. It may be successfully main- 
 tained that when Jesus laid down his work at the 
 ascension, he handed it over in all its implications 
 to his disciples to carry forward in the same 
 identical lines in which he himself had borne it 
 while among them. 
 
 But it can not be discovered in the actual 
 working of this atonement that we are now used 
 in a substitutional sense to suffer in the place of 
 the wicked. We suffer on their behalf, but not 
 in their stead. Their unrighteousness and its pain 
 are lifted by their repentance and reform, and not 
 directly by our suffering. We may lift them out 
 of sin and suffering when we are instrumental in 
 getting them to turn from unrighteousness which 
 brings the pain and the death; but if we are un- 
 successful, we, as also did Jesus, are suffering 
 in vain for them. 
 
 In obedience to love, which is the atoning prin- 
 ciple, we bear their sins in our body, and relate 
 ourselves to them in all the forms affirmed of 
 Jesus. Yet the suffering is related to the sinner 
 morally and not mechanically or judicially. It is 
 effectual if the sinner will yield to the influence 
 that is brought to bear in the appeal; but if he 
 hardens his heart against the appeal which love 
 281 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 makes, he remains with his sin and its conse- 
 quences just as if no one had suffered for him. 
 The only effect of the atoning effort is to add the 
 increased sense of condemnation and defenseless- 
 ness when the day of retribution comes, by the 
 consciousness that love was resisted and vicari- 
 ous suffering on his behalf was rejected. 
 
 The working of this principle of vicarious suf- 
 fering in human society is a demonstration before 
 our eyes. Either it teaches the nature of the 
 atoning work of Jesus Christ, or all his commands 
 to follow him fully are idle and impracticable. 
 That it is not substitutional in human society is 
 a conclusion from direct insight. That it is not 
 substitutional in the work of Jesus Christ is an 
 immediate and unescapable inference. 
 
 With the substitutional atonement in mind, 
 men have been in the habit of saying of the 
 heathen, or of any other class that may be the 
 subject of interest at the moment, Christ died for 
 them, and surely they will be saved. Even though 
 only a few are bold enough to draw the inference 
 that all will be saved, yet it is believed by this 
 class that a proportion of them, possibly as large 
 as are saved among gospeled peoples, will finally 
 be rescued from the bonds of sin. If Christ died 
 in the stead of these people, this conclusion is in- 
 deed well based, and the hesitancy to include all 
 in the blessedness is not at all logical or worthy 
 of our faith. But the conclusion, nevertheless, is 
 so irrational from any standpoint of life-observa- 
 tion as to discredit the foundation of it. 
 282 
 
BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 
 
 Christ died, indeed, on behalf of the whole 
 world. If we think of any particular individuals 
 for whom he died in direct relation, we must con- 
 fine our attention to those who saw his life and 
 death, heard his words, and also to those who 
 shall be influenced by the story of these privileged 
 ones, who loved him and caught his spirit. 
 
 To extend the atoning influence outside of 
 these, to those who have never heard the story of 
 his mission of love in the world, is to make it a 
 mere judicial decree by which their legal relations 
 to the Kingdom are changed, but which has no di- 
 rect influence upon their moral and spiritual char- 
 acter. This is to change the nature of salvation 
 from something done in a man, which makes him 
 in consciousness and moral quality a son of God, 
 to something done for a man which leaves him 
 in his own inherent quality just the same as he 
 was. What such a salvation would be worth it 
 is hard to appreciate. No spiritual microscope 
 could discover its effect, either within the man 
 or in the changed character of the universe. If 
 that is the sum of the atonement in its effect upon 
 the world, we may get all the comfort we are 
 able to out of its legalistic relations, but we will 
 still need an atonement to produce some actual 
 spiritual effects upon the character of the all-too- 
 real a sinner. The former will have no effect 
 upon the sin of the world ; will not heal the wounds 
 of the universe which sin has made; nor will it 
 comfort and strengthen the human heart in its 
 blindness and ignorance of what has been done. 
 283 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 Christ's atonement we conceive to be some- 
 thing mnch more real. It is a spiritual force 
 actually liberated in the world, through the life 
 and death of Jesus Christ, but is conditioned in 
 its benefits necessarily by transmission through 
 other lives and the sacrifices of those who have 
 heard of Jesus, have believed on him, have yielded 
 themselves to him, and undertake to follow him 
 wholly, even to entering into his atoning spirit 
 and drinking the cup of which he drank and, if oc- 
 casion presents, dying the death that manifests 
 the same love and loyalty to a task that his life 
 and death showed. 
 
 The substitutional death of Christ would leave 
 us all who follow him, as mere bystanders. We 
 look on him and see him suffer for the world; 
 we may be very grateful for it — we should be un- 
 speakably so ; but whether we are or not, the re- 
 sult to the world is just the same. The heathen 
 in whose place Christ suffered will be brought into 
 the kingdom, whether we go and tell them of the 
 story or not; whether we make any sacrifices to 
 inform them and to influence them or not. 
 Whether we stand at some post of duty, where 
 the opposition encountered is very great and the 
 price paid for doing duty is very large, will make 
 no difference. The one great atoning work of 
 the world has been accomplished ; we need feel no 
 responsibility. 
 
 This is a theory very comfortable to self-and- 
 luxury lovers ; but is it true to life f Is it true to 
 the representation that Christ made to his fol- 
 284 
 
BELIEVEE'S ATONEMENT. 
 
 lowers'? "Was it so understood by his apostles? 
 If it be true, it was an impertinence for Paul to 
 say that he was filling up in his body what was 
 lacking in the suffering of Christ. There is noth- 
 ing lacking, his death will reach the last man with- 
 out further concern from us, if substitutionalism 
 be true. 
 
 The teaching of Jesus better accords with the 
 view that when he closed his sacrificial work in 
 the world, he handed it over to those who would 
 follow him, and they were to carry it on until 
 sin is overcome and the open sore of the world 
 has been healed. 
 
 The vitality of the death of Christ in this lat- 
 ter view is just as great as in the former view, 
 but it differs in that it leaves in the world, after 
 Jesus has departed, the atoning forces and the 
 powers actually reformatory, while in the for- 
 mer the atoning formula — and it is difficult to see 
 that it is more than a formula — is complete. Even 
 if the formula is complete, saving forces are 
 forces actually existing; they enter into history; 
 they pass from heart to heart. The affirmation 
 that Jesus completed them is tantamount to say- 
 ing that morally saving forces were withdrawn 
 when his personal work was accomplished. It 
 means that even when men are full of love and 
 the sacrificing spirit, these do not modify the 
 problem. They are beautiful in our relations to 
 the Father as responses to what he has done ; but 
 they have no effect in the present problem of aton- 
 ing for the world's sin. On the contrary, we know 
 285 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 that to-day the necessity for sacrificial suffering 
 holds in human society as much as in the year 
 29 A. D. The law is unchangeable. Jesus, as the 
 Great Head of the Church, is the great Example 
 in illustration of the law ; but the Church becomes 
 his Church only in so far as it catches his spirit 
 and follows him even unto death, not simply in 
 the effort to save itself, but also in the effort to 
 save the world. 
 
 No bloom of rose till long compressed 
 In the close bondage of the bud; 
 
 No nation saved, no wrongs redressed, 
 Without some flow of willing blood. 
 
 " Without the shedding of blood there is no 
 remission," is the principle that governs human 
 conditions in all history. It is a meager insight 
 into this principle, if not its perversion, which 
 would limit it to changing the mind of the Father 
 toward his sinful child. Every one who would 
 cure the sin of the world must bear the sin of 
 the world. In this Jesus is our ideal Illustration, 
 and not the isolated sin-bearer of the world. 
 Jeremiah, the great sin-bearer of Israel, said: 
 "Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a 
 fountain of tears, that I might weep day and 
 night for the slain of the daughter of my peo- 
 ple ! " Principal John Caird said, ' ' Not only can 
 a good man suffer for sin; but it may be laid 
 down as a principle that he will suffer for it in 
 proportion to his goodness." 
 
 286 
 
BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 
 
 "Is it true, Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer 
 most, 
 
 That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain, 
 And the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of 
 the strain?" 
 
 Of what benefit was the suffering of the 
 prophets and the anguish of the saints of old? 
 Would the world be just as rich if they had de- 
 clined to make their sacrifice f If not, in what way 
 can we connect their pain with our present weal, 
 if not on the basis of vicarious suffering for us 
 and for the world that has absorbed their moral 
 power as the earth drank in their blood. Take a 
 cross-section of the moral forces that are now 
 working in history, and you will find Moses as 
 large for us as he was for the Israelites, and 
 Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Paul. George Adam 
 Smith is credited with saying, "The doctrine of 
 vicarious suffering grew up because it was an in- 
 dispensable part of human life and experience." 
 He illustrates it by reference to Jeremiah : ' ' The 
 shame and the incurableness of sin which the 
 people did not feel, Jeremiah took upon himself. 
 He confesses sin for the people. He spoke as 
 if they themselves felt the terror and helplessness 
 which overwhelmed him and which he felt for 
 them. ... He loved this people, and in the 
 meeting of love and conscience he proved how 
 such a man can suffer for the people. He did 
 not understand it; for he was not Christ. The 
 only possible explanation is, that if a man have 
 287 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 the divine gift of a purer heart and a more loving 
 conscience, there comes the inevitable obligation 
 of suffering." 
 
 That the atonement of Christ was a moral 
 power, and not a mere act for the judicial change 
 of relations, may be inferred from the fact that 
 the suffering of Jesus on the Cross does not seem 
 to have made any immediate impression on the 
 sin of the world, nor has any appreciable impres- 
 sion on sin ever been made in all those parts of 
 the world where the story of Jesus' love has not 
 been told. Any effect that it may have made upon 
 people deprived of the light of Christian truth 
 has only been on the pages of theological treatises, 
 in the legal system of satisfactionist atonements. 
 They tell us that it has atoned for the sins of the 
 world, and in their systems that atonement was 
 of a nature to be completed in a single transac- 
 tion. They interpret the words of Jesus, "It is 
 finished, ' ' to mean that at that moment atonement 
 was complete; the debt is paid; the satisfaction 
 is provided. In justice there seems to be nothing 
 more to do than to proclaim the release of the 
 sinner from his guilt, and his release can not be 
 conditioned even on his knowledge of the pro- 
 vision for it. 
 
 If atonement is an actual bringing of man into 
 spiritual fellowship, all such views are as f ounda- 
 tionless as they are inconsequential. In itself 
 considered, apart from the impression wrought 
 on the mind of men through knowledge of the love 
 of God, man was in just the same condition after 
 288 
 
BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 
 
 the Cross that he was before. Unconditionally 
 it had wrought no change in the situation of man 
 or upon the world's bulk of woe and sin. As a 
 gospel to be announced, it was complete ; but the 
 effect of it was conditioned on its impression 
 through announcement. But the whole work of 
 annunciation yet remained. Meantime the sin of 
 the world wrought its same havoc in society, mak- 
 ing the hearts of all men to bleed and the lives of 
 all men to be broken. 
 
 This work of annunciation, or bringing the 
 love of God to bear upon the nature of men, pro- 
 vides the opportunity for all the followers of 
 Jesus to enter into fellowship with his suffering, 
 that the ends for which he died may actually be 
 reached. It then becomes possible for Paul in 
 his years of toil, accompanied with social ostra- 
 cism, persecution, privation, and pain, to say: 
 I rejoice in the fellowship of the suffering of 
 Christ. I am actualizing his great purposes. I 
 am filling up that which he would have done if 
 he had remained, but because of his departure was 
 lacking in the suffering of Jesus for the Church. 
 The work of atonement goes on as long as sin 
 goes on. Jesus has retired from the world activi- 
 ties in the flesh, and has handed over his task of 
 reconciling the world to the Father to his follow- 
 ers, to all who will live godly in his name. 
 
 This brings us all into the great work which 
 
 Jesus came into the world to do. He has given 
 
 the great demonstration of the love of God to men, 
 
 a demonstration which no other could authorita- 
 
 289 
 
THE PROBLEM OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 tively make in the name of the Father, a demon- 
 stration, however, which was the culmination of 
 a long course which had been going on under the 
 direction of God through his servants the priests 
 and prophets. But now, with this complete, ut- 
 terly adequate revelation of the love of God, we, 
 his followers, may take up the work in the same 
 spirit, to accomplish the same end. His work 
 without ours did not reach the individuals for 
 whom it was intended. Unless Paul had preached 
 this gospel in Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, Ephe- 
 sus and Corinth, the death of Christ would have 
 been fruitless for the sinners there. 
 
 If we were asked, What causes the Kingdom 
 of God to be so slow in its realization in the 
 world? we would say that the most comprehensive 
 reason, including various reasons of minor pro- 
 portions, is that the followers of Jesus are re- 
 fusing to be crucified as was he. They are refus- 
 ing to drink from the cup from which he drank 
 to an extent that makes a barrier to progress in 
 spiritual things. They are putting aside the vi- 
 carious life, in which, as well as in various ethical 
 duties, they are called to be his followers. He 
 never gave us any promise of life in this world 
 save the promise of the kind of life which he him- 
 self lived — a life that would relate itself to the 
 salvation of others by the same principle which he 
 exemplified on the Cross. Until we shall learn 
 this and dedicate ourselves to it, as all great 
 Christians have done before us, we will hold back 
 his Kingdom to an ignominious rate of progress. 
 290 
 
BELIEVER'S ATONEMENT. 
 
 What we mean is illustrated by the following 
 incident : George Adam Smith met a young Cath- 
 olic missionary priest, who told him that he was 
 going to see his mother for the last time. He 
 was home from the Congo. ''Why do you say 
 for the last time?" said Smith. The young priest 
 replied: "Do n't you know that the average length 
 of a missionary's life on the Congo is two and a 
 half years? I am going back, and shall never 
 return. Therefore I am paying my last visit to 
 my mother." "But why," said Smith, "do you 
 go to the Congo?" Looking him squarely in the 
 face, the priest answered, "The life I now live 
 in the flesh I live in the faith of the Son of God, 
 who loved me and gave himself for me." 
 
 Thomas Hanby, one of the early preachers in 
 Scotland, lay dying, and he was heard to say, 
 "This is great work." "What is great work?" 
 was asked. "Dying work is great work," he re- 
 plied. 
 
 291 
 
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