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FORGIVENESS AND LAW,
GROUNDED IN PRINCIPLES
INTERPRETED
BY HUMAN ANALOGIES.
B Y
HORACE BUSHNELL.
NEW YORK:
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO.
1874.




1WNTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
HORACE BUSHNELL,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress,
at Washington.
JOHN F. TROW & SON,
PRINTERS ANI) BOOKBINDER.S
205-213 East 12t/z St.,
NEW YOR{K.




ADVERTI S E MENT.
PROPOSING a discontinuance of the last half-Parts
III and IV —of my former treatise entitled The Vicarious Sacriice, this present volume is put forth to occupy
the place made vacant. The design is, at some future
time, to put the former first half and this new last
half together, and recompose the treatise, in a form
to more satisfactorily represent what I would like to
say of the whole subject. What I have taken to be
"the whole subject" comprehends more, it will be
remembered, than what is included topically in our
theology under the head of atonement; viz., another,
not less weighty part, relating to Christ as a power on
character.  This other part, as set forth in the first
half of my former treatise, I retain. But the latter
half, discontinued and now to be supplied, covers
exactly all that has been heretofore and commonly
taken as being the Atonement.  So that we are
having on our hands in the discussion just what has
been, and to the vast majority of disciples still is, the




iv             ADVERTISEMENT.
whole topic.  It is not so to me, but a good deal
less.: And  yet it is of the greater consequence,
that it has so nearly gotten a monopoly of right in
the field. Besides it may justly be more dear to
us all, that so many of the best and holiest believers
of the past ages have found their life centered in it;
faultily and even repulsively conwceived as it certainly
has been. And if it has so great possible value when
tainted by so great mistake, how much more is it to
be valued if it can be rightly understood.
H. B.




CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
IN WHAT way led to this revision, Page 10. The moral view of atone.
ment asserted even more completely, 12. Novelty excused, 14.
How all doctrines have to pass a change of form when they come
into the human molds of thought, 16. Reasons why this doctrine of
Christ requires  revision, 21.  Brief notice of Dr. Campbell's
treatise, 28.
Page.
CHAPTER I.-FORGIVENESS AND PROPITIATION, WITHOUT EXPIATION. 33
The one principle that underlies the subject, 34.
Forgiveness by God and by men coincide in the New Testament, one
set forth by the other, 35. Negative forgivenesses, 36. Difficulties
that are real, 37. How forgivenesses fail, 39. Two things necessary,
sympathy with and cost made for the subject, 40-41. Examples
for illustration, 42, 45, 46.  We require in forgiveness to be ourselves propitiated, 48. In this we have the tragic element of our
virtue, 49.
II.
The analogy of our own propitiations, 50. Applied to God, 52. Not
that Christ dies for the reaction of it, 53. God loves his adversary
already, 54. God's holiness not too inflexible, 55. God's office in
government no objection, 56. Our analogies only show that we
propitiate ourselves, 57.  No implication dishonorable to God, 59.
God's propitiation above time, 60.
III.
Scripture statement of propitiation, 63.  Usus loquendi of the altar
word, 64. Old Testament sacrifices, 66. Statute concerning blood,
68. How these old forms are related to Christ's sacrifice, 71. The
Propitiation thus set forth, 72.
1*




Vi                       CONTENTS.
Pat
IV.
Objection to all propitiations however conceived, 73.  Propitiatio:
from eternity, 74. Another solution, 76. Not supposed that G(
has reluctances here to overcome, 77. An ideal of God that mu
have great value, 78.
V. —(WITHOU   EXPIATION.)
What now to be thought of expiation,.81. Classic word not in t]
Scriptures, 82. Worst and best examples, 82. Suffering, right
wrong, the main thing in expiation,.83. Demoralizing effect of' e:
piation, 85. It is evil paid, for evil due, 86. No instance in Scri
ture, 87. And no indications for it, 87. No interest of charact
in expiation, 90.
CHAPTER  II.-La w AND COMMND.MENT..........
The satisfaction of law, 94. Theologic devices for this purposes, 95.
I.
Christ and his commandments, 97. Who is he to assume such a right, 9
General statement, 99. Two words, Law and Commandment, 10,.
What Law is, 101. What Commandment, 103. Commandment in
a sense unlegal, 104. Liberty in these, 105. Christ's own exposition of them, 106.. Offices and uses, 1017.' Law first stage of dis*cussion, 108. No perfect institute in itself, 109. Mostly negative,
109. Has no inspirations for.duty, 110.  Commandment includes
more and better, 111, 112. Leave the tabulated rule and embrace
the divine person for law, 113. Commandment offered to faith, 114.
How the two -are related, 115.:One a factor in nature, the other in
the supernatural, 117. Law never to be taken away by redemption, 118.
II.
Great Analogies also to be noted, 120. Mother and child, 121. The
school, 123.. Labor and the curse, 124. The army discipline, 125.
The civil state, 127. The two factor method in all these analogies,
130. No compensations here in deliverance from the law, 131. It
never works destructively, 132.
III.
The gospel a twofold way of discipline in like manner, 133. GENERAL
PBOPOSITION to include all, 134. The penally coercive discipline, 134.
No judicial penalty here, 136. The two factors work together, not
one against the other, 137. No justice comes till after the discipline
is through, 139. But we are kept in due impression of its future,




CONTPENTS.                            vii
Page.
140.  Apprehended loss of justice, 141.  No thought of saving
justice by penal compensations, 143. Public and Retributive justice,
145. Christ incarnated into the discipline, 147. His incarnation is
the necessity of suffering accepted, 149. More to him  than to us, for
we do not much realize our own, 151. See no law of desert and
therefore make light of it, 152. Make no sufficient account of the
suffering of the good, 153. Christ's suffering great because of his
purity, 154. Also by his great amount of mind, 155. Suffers in a
failing cause, 157. The temptation, 158. Weeping over the city and
the agony, 159. No justice in the suffering of the cross, 161.
I V.
Some of the texts supposed to show God's dealing with Christ on the
score of justice, 162. How we make proof texts, 163. No literal
language for religious ideas, 163.  Gratitude exaggerates always,
164. Christ made a curse, 166. Bare our sins, 167. Gives himself
a ransom, 168. The scape-goat forms, 168. Forms of fifty-third of
Isaiah, 169. How the commandment keeps the law, gives it back its
honor, and works conjunctively with it, 173-6.
CHAPTER  III.-JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH  1..................... 17
Rom. iii, 25-6, How understood, 177. Two sets of words in English to
represent one in the Greek, 178. Probably no relief, and can only
take our disadvantage as it is, 181.  Legal justification impossible,
183. Legal justification implies justification before faith, 184. The
fiction supposed, 185. Also another fiction, 186. Legal satisfaction
an ignoble gift for character, 187. Highest of all words for character
is right or righteousness. 190.
I.
Plato and Socrates in quest of its secret power, 192.  Psychological
non-discovery, 193. Abraham  in advance of Socrates, 194.  God
early declared to be source of all righteousness in men, 196. Christ
puts us to the seeking after righteousness-even that of God, 197.
How Christ advances the scope of the idea, 199. Legal justification
cold and insufficient, 201. True justification the normal state of all
created mind, 202. Faith how related to justification, 204.  What
the true faith is, 205. Luther's great discovery true, 206. Only his
head mistook the meaning of his heart, 207. Justification and sanctification not confounded, 210.




Vi[[.                    CONTENTS.
Page.
II.
How related to imputation, 212. We are also to have our righteousness
putatively in God.
CHAPTER  IV.-THREEFOLD DOCTRINE OF CHRIST CONCERNING HIMSELF.............................................. 218
How often has it been wished that Christ had given us a doctrine concerning himself, 218. He. has done it, 218-19. His three Articles,
219. Our English word Comforter a great mistake, 220. Dispenses
comfort, of course, much as Christ himself does, 222. We have
missed the meaning here by not observing that the Spirit is to work
in and by Christ's work, 224.
ARTICLE I.
Of sin because they believe not on me, 225.  New  sensibility of sin
expected, 225. Defect of the old methods, 227. They did not produce
the sense of sin as a state, 228. Christ reproves of sin by the sense
of what is not done, 229.
ARTICLE II.
Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and ye see me no more, 230.
Great and upright characters commonly not valued till they die, 231.
Christ expects a great revision to occur after he is gone, 233. By
what he calls righteousness he means justification, 234. - And there
is no legal justification possible to be thought of here, 235.
ARTICLE III.
Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged, 236. Conceives
evil to be a great organizer, 237.  But the bad kingdom  will be
shaken by the  trial scene at hand, 239.  Judas, Peter, Annas,
Caiaphas, all shaken, 240. Pilate himself is judged, 241.- So dispossessed that he makes court to Herod, 244. All the multitude dispossessed by what they have seen, 247. All this by no display of
force. but only by goodness, 247.
The uses proposed to be made of this doctrine of Christ, 249. Not to
be a rival doctrine, 250. To be a duplicate view that will take us
away from so many literalities, 252. In the three articles we have
the full scope of a gospel, 253. They give conviction not by the
law, 253. The justification is simple and clear without the word,
255.




INTRODU O TIOKN.
IT  seems to  be required  of me, by the  unexpected
arrival of fresh light, that I should make a large revision
of my former treatise, entitled The Vicarious Sacrifice,
and  especially  of the  Parts III. and IV. of the same.
Having undertaken to find the truth on this great subject
at whatever cost, I am not willing to be excused, from
farther obligation because the  truth appears to be outgrowing my published expositions. My former discussion has
been as favorably received as I had any right to expect,
and there is no reason, personal to myself, why I should be
fastened to my own small measures, when larger measures
are given me. Besides, how shall a man ever get rid of his
old sins, when he can not let go his little outgrown opinions?
Wishing no change, I have yet not ceased to consider and
reconsider the whole question, as carefully as if I had not
written, watching for all inward monitions and  outward
suggestions, whereby I might be corrected and guided
farther in, to apprehend the matter of it more worthily,
and in closer accord with the truth.
Since it so often helps the interest and also the under
standing of the reader to know in what manner the writer
came into the arguments and opinions he is trying to set
forth, I feel constrained to indulge a little larmnless egotism.




10                INTROD U CTION.
Thus it has happened to me twice over, when writing on
two simply practical subjects, to be overtaken by surprise
in suggestions setting me back on the last half of my book,
and requiring amendments in it that amounted to  a virtual substitution of it by new matter.  I do not pretend
to say that I have these amendments by any private revelation, I only know that I have them as being found by them,
and not as having found them  myself. Perhaps our new
seeing in such matters is, at times, but our mood; and yet
perhaps our mood may be our gift of seeing.
Thus, I was writing a discourse on the inquiry, How shall
a man be able to entirely and perfectly forgive his enemy,
so as to forever sweeten the bitterness of his wonrmded
feeling and leave no sense of personal revulsion? I can not
give the whole argument here, but it must suffice to say,
that I was brought squarely down upon the discovery, that
nothing will ever accomplish the proposed real and true
forgiveness, but to make cost in the endeavor, such cost as
*new tempers and liquefies the reluctant nature.  And this
making cost will be his propitiation of himself. Why not
say this of all moral natures, why not of the Great Propitiation -itself? Here opens my Chapter I., entitled Florgiveness
and Propitiation.
Before the complete writing out of this, I was overtaken
again by corrective suggestion at another point.  Falling on
the injunction by which Christ lays it on us to "keep his
commandments," the prosy dullness in which we commonly
embalm his words, when we draw them  out as tests and
lessons of practice, was forever exploded by the question
occurrent, Why his commandments? Where- is the law?
Does he undertake to overtop Sinai, and be a new standard
of character? Thus I had the Greek words noomos and entolj,




INTRODUCTION.                        11
before me, and they began to freshen each other in the individualities of their uses and  meanings.  One  thought
opened into another, and I began to sketch a series of
articles for the press that should give a practically fresh
exposition of the Saviour's word.  Suffice it to say that I
shortly came upon the discovery that the law-state has
everywhere a commandment-state going with it, to be its
consummation or crown; its fulfillment, and so, in a
very important and true sense, its satisfactional substitute.
Here then begins another, partly very simple, partly very
subtle range of inquiry, treated of in Chapter II., called
Law  and  Commandment.  In this certain terms of our
atonement language get a qualified permission, but nothing
that offends the principles of right.
These two chapters, I. and II., cover the general ground
of my revision, as they also do the general field of what ham
been called in orthodox circles the atonement.  My chapter
IV. occupies a ground by itself.  How  it came it will not
be difficult to see, only it may be difficult to find why it did
not come sooner, and to some, at least, of the great interpreters. It has to me the nature rather of an occurrence
than of a discovery; for how can that be called a discovery
which the Master's words have been plainly teaching for
eighteen hundred years, and which we, his disciples, have,
by  some unaccountable dullness, missed, even down to a
particular day of accident within the last six months? An
oversight all the more humiliating that the doctrine we have
missed has been the doctrine of Christ by Christ himself;
an operative doctrine indeed, and not a formulating, giving
the outfit of the Spirit and the implemental forces by which
he is to work.  And again, let it be the more valuable to us
that it comes in after the formulating history is done, to be




12                 INTROD U CTION.
a gospel by Christ's own authority, not inwoven with any
of the old textures of the schools, but set in by an intercalation, to have its owil footing, and its regulative sway in the
respectful deference of the ages to come.
It will be observed in these preliminaries that the corrections I am proposing to make do not include a return to
any of the standard theologic formulas I have heretofore
rejected.  I recant no one of my denials.  I only undertake
to fill the vacant spaces made by them with better material.
Thus, if any one should imagine that in now asserting the
positive fact of a propitiation of God, I return to the common orthodox position, that will depend entirely upon the
manner in which the propitiation is believed to be made,
whether as by a legal satisfaction for sin, or wholly one side
of law by a transaction in and of the divine feeling itself.
I asserted a propitiation before, but accounted for the word
as one by which the disciple objectivizes his own feelings,
conceiving that God himself is representatively mitigated or
become propitious, because he is himself inwardly reconciled to God.  Instead of this, I now  assert a real propitia-.
tion of God; finding it in evidence from the propitiation we
instinctively  make ourselves, wheli  we  heartily  forgive.
So if it should be imagined that I now give in to the
legal-substitution, legal-satisfaction theory, it will only be
true that I assert a scheme of discipline for man, which is
contrived to work its own settlement, in being fulfilled and
consummated by an obedience in the higher plane of liberty
itself.
I still assert the "moral view" of the atonement as
before, and even more completely than before; inasmuch as
I propose to interpret all that is prepared and suffered in the
propitiation of God  and the justification of mlen, by a




INTRODUCTION.                       13
reference to the moral pronouncements of human nature and
society; assuming that nothing can be true of God, or of
Christ, which is not true in some sense mnore huzmano, and
is not made intelligible by human analogies.  We can not
interpret God, as any one mlay see, except by what we find
in our own personal instincts and ideas.  And just here is
the sin  of all our theologic endeavor in the past ages,
especially as regards this particular subject, that we invent
so many ingredients that are verbals only, having no reality
and no assignable meaning. We contrive a justice in God,
which accepts the pains of innocence in place of the pains
of wrong, and which is, in fact, the very essence of injustice.
We contrive a forgiveness on the score of compensation,
which to our human conceptions mocks the idea.  We
imagine that Christ has a virtue more transcendent than any
of mortal kind, because it is optional; whereas nothing is a
virtue save as it is done for the right, and as being under
moral obligation.  We conceive that Christ is even overgood in this way, better than he need be, and that the surplus lie gains is a mnegitum  prepared for us; asserting how
often that we are saved by the merits of Chrisc, when we
can not so much as conceive the idea.  We contrive how law
may be satisfied for transgressors without their punishment,
and then we teach that God may justly punish after satisfaction.  Our precise difficulty is, in all such impossibles of
thought, that we are trying to construct the ways of God, or of
his Son, without any light from our own moral instincts and
ideas; to make him  intelligible in the matter of a gospel,
without intelligibles anywhere given to be his interpreters.
We put the bits of glass and crockery into our kalcidescope,
and turning it round and round  we make theologic figures
that we call truths, and which having no ideas in themn, we
2




14                INTRODUCTION.
think must surely stand, because they look so regular and
are milled in the scientific way of the scientific instrument. Thus we go on from age to age, trying vainly to
fasten theologic notions that represent God by nothing in
ourselves. Is it not time now, after so many centuries gone
by, to have it discovered, that there is no truth concerning
God which is not somehow explicated by truths of our own
moral consciousness?
If now these prefatory specifications signify less, taken
by themselves, than might be desired, they will at least have
a certain value in suggesting beforehand what I myself conceive to be the significance or intended amount of the
reconstructions offered-that I  do not undertake to be
orthodox, but to be more sufficiently and scripturally true.
It will be understood, I presume, that I suppose the two
revised statements, or solutions of doctrine I am now going
to propound, to be really new. I frankly allow that I do,
and also as firankly confess that in this simple fact my
courage and confidence are most weakened by misgivings.
For who can expect a great subject like this, which has
engaged so many of the most gigantic minds of so many
past ages, to be now, in these last times, more sufficiently
apprehended and better expounded by an ordinary teacher,
at his common level of standing.  It is difficult, I allow, not
to be greatly appalled when confronted by this objection.
But it must not be forgotten that now and then some person
will be stronger in his accidents, than other and greater men
have been in their powers; also that God himself sometimes
makes accidents for mind by his own private touch, when
he will unfold some needed lesson; also that God has a way
of preparing times for the uncovering of truth, and that as




INTRODUOTION.                      15
he would not have his Son appear till the fullness of time
should come, so he will not expect his Son's gospel to be
duly conceived till the times are ready and all the suggestive
conditions ripe that may set us in upon it. No greatest man
or champion is going to conquer a truth before its time, and
no least competent man, we may also dare to say, need miss
of a truth when its time has come, and the flags of right
suggestion are all out before him, How easy a thing it is,
in fact, to think what the times have got ready to be thought,
and are even whispering to us from behind all curtains of
discovery, and out of all most secret nooks and chambers
of experience. That now the clock has finally struck, and
the day has fully come for some new and different thinking
of this great subject, I most verily believe. And, to make
this evident, I propose to occupy the few remaining pages
of this preliminary chapter in showing by what signs the
two staple matters of what has heretofore been called the
Christian Atonement, viz., Propitiation and Legal Substitution, appear to be asking, or rather expectantly waiting,
for some more satisfactory, better grounded exposition.
In the original word of Scripture the truths revealed
are either visibly or verbally presented from that other
side of heavenly announcement whence they come.
There is no sympathy as yet, no twofold thinking in the
forms, for they represent one party only. But the supposition is, that being given to intelligence, intelligence will fall
at work upon them, and that human thought, laboring in
the outward images of things, will generate modes of speech
and laws of experience that compose a kind of secondlanguage on the base-level of nature. And so it will, by
and by, begin to be the problem how to get the simple




16                INTRODUCTION.
indicative matter of revelation into the forms of thought
prepared in the thought-lainguage of the mere understandcl
ing. The problem is, to accomplish a marriage of the two
parties, and get the declarative work grafted in upon the
natural analogies, when it will be so much closer to the
common life of men, and settle its hold just so much more
firmly on their convictions. We must not be so jealous
of naturalism as to be alarmed by this process. It is not
the supernatural submitting itself to nature to be buried and
lost, but going down to hook itself in upon nature by
seizing on the analogies of thought and law; so to become
fast locked in all the terms of experience and opinion which
thought has generated. The bent we are thus receiving
more and more distinctly towards nature and science is not
wholly mischievous, as many appear to assume in their
nervous dread of naturalism, but is our instinctive endeavor
to obtain a new anchorage ground for christian truths and
ideas, where they will hold us more firmly, and yield us a
more settled confidence. To change the figure, we digest
the declarative matter supernaturally given, and turn it into
chyle for the absorbent action of our intelligence, in the
plane of life where we grow our common thought and frame
our common judgments.
Thus our fathers, down to a few generations back, made
up their account of human depravity under what they called
"the covenant of works;" and only could not be sure,
whether the propagation of it was "by the federal headship
established in that covenant," or " by Adam sinning for us,"
or "by our own sinning in Adam," or by "God putting over
Adam's sin upon us by an act of imputation." All which
is substituted now, with how great advantage, by simply
conceiving that every sinning man is retributively damaged




INTRODUCTION.                       17
in his person by the effect of his sin, which damage is propagateci of necessity in his. posterity, by well known laws  of
physiology.
In the same way all the expectances of christian nurture
were set forth, and conceived to have their pledge inll "the
covenant of Abraham,"' and laborious argumentations were
drawn out to show that the sacrament of baptism followed
the sacrament of circumcision, connecting us back, as it
were across the sea, with that far off, dimly beheld dispensation of promise. Whereas now we behold a promise always
at hand in the laws of physiology, finding how, in their
dispensation, every good  element and  gracious longing
works reproductively in the child, to fashion, as by a law,
the lineaments of a divine life established in its parent.
And then, furthermore, after the child is born, we do not see
it to be a wholly separate creature at first, but regard it for
a long time still as being in the matrix of a parental culture,
where it is wax to every temper, feeling, sentiment, all that
bathes it in expression, all that is done for it and round it.
And then to finish out our conception, instead of going back
to Abraham, to imagine some blessing coming out of Abraham's faith, we say, without scruple, that we mean to have
our child "grow up " in the faith.
We get a similar advantage when we put ourselves to the
question of Christ's divinity. Piling on scripture citations
ought to sufficiently prove it. And yet after it is proved in
this manner, it will scarcely seem to be true.  There is, in
fact, no way to make out his divinity, so effective and true as
to put him down into humanity, under the laws of humanity, and see, from  his childhood onward, whether he stays
there.  Starting him above the level of humanity, there to
simply continue and be, embalmed in texts, makes him  a
2*




18                INTRODUCTION.
kind of riddle in his story —we can no way master it, an'd
are sure of nothing concerning it-but when we find that we
call not keep him  under nmanhood after we have put him
there, he will have proved his divinity by experiment. The
Unitarians have been of great service to us here; for when
we start with them, at their point of born humanity, we find
him shooting proudly up out of human range and level, in
all the wonders of his great life and character, and by no
fit name can we call him but Immanuel. The closer we
bring him down to manhood the more evidently, visibly,
indisputably superhuman, or divine he appears.
In the same way again we have found our advantage in a
less ghostly way of conceiving the supernatural.  We tried
a long time, and some are trying still, to think it as a phantasmagoric affair that is sutper as regards nature, and comes out
apparition-wise in prodigies and flitting visitations, supernaturally disturbing our mortal affairs. Therefore believing,
it may be, in supernaturals that occurred a long time ago,
or clear back in the beginnings of revelation, we took up the
impression that such things were credible when they
were far enough off; but that any thing so irregular may
be occurring now, we assumed to be wholly incredible.
What then is nature, we have lately begun to ask, as related
to the supernatural? and what is the supernatural as related
to nature? And one, we learn to say, is the world under
causes, the other the world above causes. One is matter and
force, the other is mind in the self-arbitrament of will.
Whereupon it is discovered, strange to say, that we act
supernaturally ourselves, and are in fact supernatural beings.
All minds, in all orders and worlds, cre'ated and uncreated,
nake up thus a realm  supernatural, under whose action
nature is every where flexible as a hand for its uses. And




INTRODUCTION.                       19
the supernatural is only just as much more real than nature
as it is more sovereign, and more nearly universal.  We get
a place for it thus, where it shows itself as a factor in our
common life, and as such is the subject of our consciousness.
We no longer perambulate the sky and climb over the moon
to find it, but we have it as a fact familiar to our knowledge.
Again, we get a solid footing in the same manner for the
great gospel fact of vicarious sacrifice, by showing its correspondence and symbolic natural agreement with facts and
demonstrations occurring all the while in our human relations. All love, as we perceive, reveals the vicarious instinct,
either natural or religious.  The sad story of a child in the
street, the moan of a wounded stranger by the roadside,
engages it.  The malefactor dying for his crime will none
the less burden some good man's heart, but possibly the
more, that he suffers only what he deserves. And so the
mother, the friend, the patriot, are all specially charged with
their own special burden of concern or sorrow. Half the
wants  that gird  our industry, and half the  cost we
undergo in our feeling, are instigated by our vicarious relations and offices. And Christ is with us under like instigations, only immeasurably above us in the scope of his
sympathies and the generally perfect fullness of his aims
and dispositions.  Nothing is easier to believe than that he,
in this most humanly natural and worthy sense, bows himself
to suffering in a mission of vicarious sacrifice. But if, taking
hold of certain highly figurative phraseologies, we conceive
them  prosily enough to convert the. matter of the vicarious
suffering into penal endurances under the justice of God,
we recoil from  believing a story of supernatural goodness so doubtfully good.  Even if we say that we believe,
our faith is choked by a jealousy of mistake, and we are




20                 INTRODUCTION.
scarce able to hold ourselves to any but a very thin, misgiving sort of confidence.
Edwards drew what I look upon as the finest paragraph
in all his works, setting forth Christ in the sentiment of his
vicarious relation to men as their Redeemer and Saviour.
And yet he could not imagine that it amounted to very
much more than a pleasant commendation of him  to our
human feeling. That it showed the very essence of the
substitution-how "' he bore our sins in his own body- on the
tree," how  "God laid on him  the iniquity of us all," and
how "the chastisement of our peace was upon him "-he did
not so much as imagine; that was something more literal,
and not to be explained by any such mere human analogies.
"Christ's great love," he says, "and pity to the elect was
one source of his suffering-[one source only].  A  strong
exercise of pity excites a lively idea of the misery under
which he pities them, *"   his love and pity fixed the idea
of them in his mind as if he had really been they, and
fixed their calamity in his mind as though it had been really
his.  A  very strong and lively love and pity towards the
miserable, tends to make their case ours; as in other respects
so in this, in particular, as it doth in our idea place us in
their stead, under their misery, with a most lively feeling
sense of that misery, as it were feeling it for them, actually
suffering it in their stead by strong sympathy."'   And yet
he could not see the atonement here; that was transacted
on the nails and the wood! As if the mere suffering of his
human body were any thing in comparison with the great
moral woe of his heart, or as if it were intended to be any
thing but an outward sign of that.  We see from  his words
that he had the key in his hand, but he did not dare to use
* Jiisccllcteous observaclions.




INTRODUCTION.                      21
it. Had he thus been able to see the matter of the sacrifice
in the moral analogies so powerfully setchedl- by himself,
instead of lapsing under the jargon of penalties endured
and legal compensations paid to justice, what strength and
clearness would he have added to all our christian ideasgiving us a gospel simple as our own human feeling, and
faithfully interpreted and verified by it.
It only remains to add, in this connection, that what I am
now proposing, in my chapters on the Propitiation, and Law
and Commandment, is to bring these points away from the
wrangle in which they are held, and show them as
given to intelligence, under the same great analogies where
the other christian truths referred to are beginning to be
received and rested in with such increase of confidence.
Let me now proceed to add some reasons why a specially
deliberate attention  to this subject of penal atonement
appears to be demanded at the present time; and if possible some revision of doctrine that will arm us against the
incoming perils. For it is not any longer to be disguised
that a time of jeopardy has come, and jeopardy revealed,
we are not to forget, is God's last impulse of discovery
for truths the groping ages have missed. A certain general momentum  of thought is becoming  every day more
and more pressingly adverse on this particular side of what
we call our gospel. It rolls in with a steady, sea-surge
motion, piling tides that even threaten to overtop and completely drown out the so called orthodox belief. It is not
that Unitarian arguments, maintained by Unitarians themselves, are at all more impressive than they have been, but
that there is a growing multitude in our own churches, and
a still larger more heavily insurgent'multitude outside, who,




22                INTROD UCTION.
in tones that indicate  all kinds of tempers, gentle and
fierce, candid and contemptuous, join their testimony against
all that we have been calling Expiation and Legal Atonement.  Apologies to save and  refortify  the ground we
are losing, even bear a look of exhausted iteration that
weakens belief. And what can even new argument do, if any
such is possible, in upholding, as for God, terms of proceeding, miscalled ways of grace, which it is getting to be generally agreed would forever dishonor a man dealing with his
fellow.  The condemning voices, we have long  seen, are
increasing in number, and their confidence is more emboldened by their better command of their subject. The press
is theirs, and they almost take possession of the current
literature. On what point the movement is advancing, and
with what results to come, it is not difficult to see; and a
great many of the truest and best disciples are quite distressed by what looks to them like a day at hand of general
overthrow. Is it not possible for them  to believe that confidence and hope are still permitted?  Let them  see and
be sure that all which their faith stands by is to stand, and
that only the unwisdonms of men are to vanish away.
Another consideration must not be omitted; viz., that
our modern undertaking of gospel missions abroad requires
of us a thorough reinvestigation, and, if necessary, a faithful
reconstruction of our doctrine; that we may have it intermixed with no needless offenses, and loaded with no artificial
impediments. We can not convert the world with an outfit
which is lumber and not armor. Subordinate truths will of
course have a subordinate consequence, but the great central
truth of the Redemption misconceived, or only half conceived, or mixed with conceptions that are morally revolting,
will but stumble on its way, and, even if it wins a sort of




INTRODUCTION.                       23
victory, will come to its end in disastrous overthrow. It is
unpleasant to be afflicted with misgivings of this kind in a
work so grandly beneficent and so closely bound up with
the love of God, but it is not easy to be entirely clear of
them.  By our missions we are now put face to face with
the whole eastern half population of the globe.  Is there no
reason to fear that we have precipitated ourselves upon
them  without a sufficient understanding either of their religious position or their intellectual capacity? or what is
more to be regretted, without any such preparation of doctrine as would help us to effectually pour in the love of God
on their subtle refinements and the congeries of theosophic
delusions they maintain as religions.  After twelve or twenty
years of missionary life among them, Dr. Duff revisited
Scotland, and published his heavy octavo volume on their
religious faith and condition.  Not long after his return to
his field he discovered, just what some of us suspected in
reading his book, that he had missed the point of insight,
and that back of the coarse and revolting superstitions he
had looked upon as their religion, they had rich stores of
learning and philosophy, including much valuable truth. I
have not seen the retraction he published, but only the report
of it; suffice it to say that no such misconceptions are any
longer possible; for we know as a matter of common intelligence that these people have their bodies of literature reaching back to the earliest ages of human story; scholars of
great culture practiced in the subtlest refinements of speculation; tenets and maxims of conduct not selcom  worthy
of christianity itself.
Now that such peoples, however much impressed with our
superiority in arms and naval arts, in constitutional law and
liberty, and above all in material wealth and production, are




24                 INTROD UCTION.
going to have the faith of a gospel suddenly precipitated on
them, and become christians by simple notification, is a most
irrational confidence.  Our first thing is to be sure for ourselves that the christianity we offer them is the true, cumbered by no revolting speculations, disfigured by no jargon
of false theory; and then that we so far understand their
religious prepossessions and prejudices that we can make
our christian approach by fit adaptations, and engage their
assent by a thoroughly appreciative judgment of their truths
and errors. They are warming now to a glow, we hear, in
their own cause, which is proof, beyond a question, that our
christianity will gain them only by the mastering of their
strength, and not by any dictation put upon their weakness.
As many as eighty newspapers, we are told, have sprung into
circulation in the native languages of India within a very
few years. They are almost all in the interest of political
democracy. Many of them too are discussing the question
whether christianity has any claim to being accepted as the
universal religion, some of them boldly insisting on its
inferiority to the faith of Buddh or Lao-tse, and stating their
critical reasons.  Chunder Sun, meantime, is pushing out
through India in his campaign of reform, to new organize
the old religion; having already gathered his sixty-five circles, or institutes of worship, designing to establish a great
enduring religion on the roots of the Indian history. We also
hear that the government University for English culture at
Bombay, matriculating year by year its eight hundred students, shows them falling off into a general contempt of Christianity, and our missionaries, unable to cope with so great
uibelief, send over to engage one of our ablest and ]nost
eloquent professors in a course of lectures for their benefit.
Doubtless he has done all that could be done in that manner,




INTRODUCTION.                        25
but what can any so casual, or merely occasional effort do for
the rooting of a faith that has no roots, and scarcely a soil to
feed them? WVe are also told by BMr. Nevins, in his late
interesting Book, how  the students of Shantung University
in China carry on their debates with christianity.   They
object to the trinity as impossible; also to the incarnation,
or to the new personality it produces, for like reasons.  Then
also they ask why christianity so constantly "appeals to
motives resting upon the doctrine of future rewards and
punishments, instead of taking the higher ground of urging
men to the practice of virtue, simply because it is right and
obligatory?"  And then again, " Is it consistent with the
justice of God to punish the innocent and clear the guilty,
as he does in visiting the penalty of death on the Saviour,
and letting the sinner go free?"   The three objections first
namned are intellectual, and may probably be well enough
removed by a skillful statement, but the last is moral, and
never was, or can be, so stated as to take away the offense
it creates.  And how  many times have our missionaries
reported this objection made by the malignants of unbelief,
regarding it, of course, as so much evidence given of their
reprobate condition! A very sad thing it is that good men
can be dealing out offense for gospel in this manner, and
expecting men to be saved by what only shocks the most
original and best convictions of their moral nature.  Is it
not a matter of supreme consequence in this view, as regards
our missionary engagements, that we find how to drop out
of Christ's reconciling work what the Scripture does not
teach, save in figurative expressions never meant to be understood as they have been, and put the truth of it in such
harmony with the supreme beauty and perfectness of God
as will never shock or repel, but only draw men to its loving
3




26                 INTRODUCTION.
embrace.  I certainly think. it can be done, even as Christ
himself assumed, when he said, " I will draw all men unto
me."
Once more, as we are encountering a new age of doubt
that disallows the faith of any thing supernatural, and as the
gospel itself is crowded closer to the wall than ever before,
because of its intensely supernatural character, we can not
afford to hold on upon any sort of incumbrance that weakens
our doctrine or makes it incredible.  It must be enough
that we maintain our ground in what are called offenses
against reason, without having it put upon us to maintain
offenses against immutable morality.  "Laying aside every
weight" is even divine counsel for us now, and requires
us to be stripping here for the freest encounter possible.
We must not be hampered longer by  volunteer wisdoms
that choke our breath and stifle our confidence.
According  to  our new  gospel of naturalism, there is
nothing to be done for souls in the preparation of character, save by educating, or evolving, or developing, what is in
them. Development is the word most common, and it even
begins to be a staple word in sermons; the conception being
that there are stock powers on hand that have only to be
run, or operated under their own natural laws, to develop
some time or other all the graces of a completely finished
virtue.  At present, or in this first stage, they do not show
all that can be desired, being under nlisdirecting circumstance, or cause, or tempestuous appetite or passion. We
used to call it sin, but the simple fact is, it is now discovered, that we are doing just as we were made to do, and are
on the way to getby our misdirections and come out fully
ripe in good. If we commit murder, it is not wholesome;
if we lie, our lie so called is weak, but is in the way to com.e




INTRODUCTION.                      27
out just as good as the truth. And so we find a sovereign
gospel in development that works by nature, no thanks to
supernatural grace, or help from  any quarter. We are kept
thus in the integrity of reason, it is said. We do not want,
or believe, any miracle, or any supernatural person, or in fact
any salvation; all such incredibles we reject before argument.
Our christian gospel meantime begins at the grand first
point of depravity and moral incapacity, so finely and with
such evident truth asserted by Plato. Thus, after showing
that men are good "neither by nature nor by instruction,"
he answers the question How?  * "This I think could not
be shown easily, but I conjecture that the property of goodness is something specially divine, and that good men exist
as prophets do and oracle chanters. For these exist neither
by nature nor by art, but become such by the inspiration of
the gods."  What height of possibility for man is this, to
be inwoven thus with  God-help and  quickened by  the
perfect life of God! If then some are willing to believe that
man is a mere animal, grown up to his present pitch of
capacity by the processes of natural selection, what loss of
dignity will they look for instead, when, by a selection reaching downward, he forswears affinity with God? What hope
is there for man, asks Plato, but in God's inspirations?
Therefore Christ appears-the Grand Chief Miracle of the
world-doing every thing he does in human life by miracle,
if only it were done with outward show to keep the wonders
manifest.  He comes to quicken life where it is gone out.
IHe proposes a new birth, and a passing thereby from death
to life. H-Ie undertakes more than to be the power of a new
development, to be himself the new grain planted for de* Dialogue on Virtue.




28                 I SNT T  ODUCTION.
velopmnent. tIe propounds his mission as the mission of
a Saviour come to bring salvation.  He counts on no stock
powers in human nature that are going to mend themselves;
nothing short of a salvation brought down from  out of
nature  and above, in his divine person, can be any sufficient remedy. This most certainly is what is given us for
gospel, and this we are firmly to hold and boldly publish. I
for one believe in it with all my heart. And if I can not
have it to believe in, I want no other, more daintily or less
ruggedly and squarely pronounced.  All the better right
have we therefore to insist that, while we are asserting
faithfully this supernatural salvation-less popular than it was,
attacked more frequently by argument, and ready, as some
think, to be quite  gone by-we be not also obliged to
maintain doctrines of the salvation which are themselves an
offense to right sentiment and the sturdiest inborn principles
of our moral nature itself.
Proposing then, as I do here, a conception of Propitiation
and of Law and Commandment, that clears all such incumbrance, I think my argument is entitled, in advance, to
greater favor and consideration, than it ever could have been
in any former age of the world. For the time has now
come, as never before, when the gospel can not afford to
work at disadvantage and carry weights that do not belong
to it.
Since my book was published, a remarkable  and very
able treatise from the London press has come to hand,
entitled The Nature of the Atonemrent by  John McLeoci
Campbell. It had, in fact, been published years before,. but
had sonmehow missed being largely known to us. I have
read the book with much care and profound respect.  It




INTRODUCTION.                         29
deserves to  be  considered  a  fresh  contribution, where
contributions not fresh have been so common as to make
tihe exception  a relief.  The atmosphere of the book is
delightful —pure, sweet, fragrant with celestial unction, offering just such flavors of character as nmake it only the more
sad flault of his brethren, that they could think it their duty
to pluck down a teacher so visibly right in his devotion to
the truth, whatever may be judged of his successes.  IHis
juldgment of Luther and his doctrine is tenderly considerate,
coinciding entirely -with the  view  I gave in  my chapter
on  Justification   by  Faith,  in   my  former   treatise.
He is far less nearly  satisfied  with the  Calvinistic  doctrine represented  by Owen, Edwards, and  Chalmners, a
doctrine of penal satisfaction for the sins of the elect, whicl
could not therefore be for all, because it would give a legal
right of salvation to all in like manner.  And yet, abhorrent as this whole scheme of doctrine is to his feeling, the
later scheme is no wise better, which undertakes to make the
atonement universal, by conceiving that Christ dies, not for
the satisfaction of distributive justice, but only to maintain
the authority  of moral government by a due impression
made of God's rectoral, that is, general or public justice.
Public justice, he still argues, must be justice, else it is
nothing, and justice is in its very nature personal and distributive.  So that if the general stock fund of justice laid
up in God does not somehow include a personal justice done
that is practical, it is nothing-or in fact only a vacuumn put
to theologic uses.
He maintains, in this negative criticism, a spirit of candor
and deference that will so far incline almost any reader to
acquiesce in the conclusion at which he arrives; viz., that
the world is waiting still for a doctrine of the cross that has
3*




30                 INTRODUCTION.
not yet been taught in a way to satisfy the rational doubts
of inquiry. This now he undertakes in the more positive
way to supply; beginning at the vicarious relation  into
which Christ is entered by the love that brings him into the
world, and the personal identification he acknowledges with
us in our human nature.  It does not set him  legally in our
place, or make hini a partaker in any of the liabilities of our
guilt, it does not allow any such identification with us as
permits any claim of justice, or any right of pclmishllment
against him  on  our account; but he is so drawn to us
in his feeling that he has all our burdens upon him.  So that
spiritually speaking he is the human race, made sin for the
race, and acting for it in a way so inclusively total, that all
mortal confessions, repentances, sorrows, are fitly acted by
him in our behalf.  His divine Sonship in our humanity is
charged in the offering thus to God of all which the guilty
world itself should offer.  And so his'" confession of sin is
a pefect Amen in hi?.nanity to the jucdment of God on the
sin of m9an." (p. 196).  "LIe  responds in it also to the
divine wrath against sin, with a perfect response —a response
from the depths of that divine humianity-and in that perfect response he absorbs -it.  For that response has all the
elements of a perfect repentance in humanity for all the sin
of man *      * * and by that perfect response in Amen to the
mind of God in relation to sin, is the wrath of God rightly
met, and that is accorded to divine justice which is its due,
and could alone satisfy it," (pp. 136-7).
Precisely what and how much is to be understood by
these rather peculiar, untheologic modes of expression, I do
not know.  Prof. Park, in a very patient, carefully studied
article of the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, offers for objection, with at least logical justice, that "After having implied




IN TR OD U CTI ON.                  31
that Christ repented of the sins of the race, we do not s6e
why Mr. C. need object to the theory that he was punished
for these sins." He certainly need not, and what is more,
should not. But is it clear when Mr. C. speaks of repentance
in this manner that he means any such thing as we commonly understand by the word? Does he mean that Christ
forsakes the sin of the world as being in the guilt of it, and
casting it off with a hard and heavy struggle that amounts
to a moral revolution of his nature. That would scarcely
be a reverent imputation.  He speaks, we observe, more than
once in a way that magnifies " the sorrow " of the repentance. He also calls the supposed repentance "an expiation
for sin," several times over (p. 138).  As if the superstitious
ideas of penance had disfigured a little his conception of
the wholly joyful and free nature of repentance; counting
that the godly sorrow that worketh it stays by as sorrow,
after it is worked, dragging heavily in it to the end. And
yet we are in about the same doubt concerning the meaning
of Edwards in the passage on which, as we may say, Dr.
Campbell hangs, in a sense, his whole theory.  Thus arguing
for the necessity of an infinite suffering or sorrow, Edwards
says that " God could not be just to himself without this
vindication;" "for there must needs be either an equivalent
punishment, or an  equivalent  sorrow  and  repentance "
(p. 137).  This too he calls " an adequate  sorrow "-as if
the pain, the sufferer's sorrow  of the repentance, were its
chief significance.  Can it then be that the religious apprehensions of Edwards were so far let down as to allow his
putting  the alternative thus  between  the  pains of repentance and of punishment? Does he really imagine that
some possible amount of repentance will even the reckoning of sin, requiring after that no other atonement? Or is




32                 INTIi0ODU CTION.
he only using the alternative as a by-play in argument without any consideration of its merit or possibility?
And what again are we to understand by Dr. Campbell's
figure of absorption? the repentance wherein Christ in his
humlanity so responds "to the divine wrath against sin that
he absorbs it."  What is absorbed is talcen in to be retentively held; is the wrath of God so taken in by Christ? 
Thlat he certainly does not mean.  Is it then simply quelled?
That would be a very remarkable consequence to follow  a
mere representative repentance for sins, still and always going
on, not quelled themselves.
It is even more difficult still to find what is meant by the
satisfying of God's justice, the repentance offered being that
response to God's mind in relation to sin, in which "the
wrath of God is rightly met, and that is accorded to divine
justice which is its due and could alone satisfy it."  Is it
then a satisfaction of God's justice that it is acknowledged
to be just?  This would be a new conception both of justice
and the satisfaction.  Besides Dr. Campbell discards all the
satisfaction theories because they are legal, and the satisfac/rtion here proposed in the pains of repentance is itself'altogether legal, and gives a legal title to salvation if it gives
iany thing.  On  the whole, it does not seem  likely  to
mne, as these brief strictures will indicate, that his positive
doctrine is or can be sufficiently established.




CHAPTER I.
FORGIVENESS AND PROPITIATIONT WITHOUT EXPIATION.
THE argulment of my former treatise was concerned
in exhibiting the work of Christ as a reconciling
power on men.  This was conceived to be the whole
import and effect of it; just as, in our current
theology, it is conceived to be a work that reconciles
Godl-sometimes a propitiation, such as mitigates or
conciliates the dispositions of God in the forgiveness
of sins; and sometimes, witl far less appearance of
possibility, an expiation that satisfies the justice of
God, and allows him to yield the forgiveness legally.
I now propose to substitute, for tilhe latter half
of my former treatise, a different ex- Proposed reposition; composing thlus a whole of    Vision.
doctrine that comprises both the reconciliation of men
to God, and of God to men. I have still as little
question now as before, that the main significance of
the gospel is in what it does, or nndertakes to do, for
the reconciliation of men. Indeed, a great part of
the texts cited for atonement, so called, conceiving
it as a conciliation  of God, have their whole meaning, if rightly -understood, at the othler pole of the
(9;3)




34                FORGIVENESS
subject. And nothing is now  so much wanted, to
set the gospel in its true proportion, as a just reclaluation of these texts in the meaning they have lost.
When we speak, as I am now to speak, of the propitiation of God, having it as our assumed undertaking to show the fact of such a propitiation antecedently related to the forgiveness of sins, we seem
to be thrusting ourselves on a matter high above ourreach, and in its own nature altogether improbable.
There is even a look of offense and mortal presumption in the proposal itself. I am also pressed with
the conviction that my single arguments first named
will seem inconclusive, or even weak; for there is no
determinate position here to be taken that will turn
the question logically by itself. I have never handled
a subject where all the parts and complexities of
evidence are so necessary to be had in sight together,
in order to any just impression. In this view, let
me ask of my reader to go quite through my chapter,
and get all my points in view, before he begins to set
his opinions adversely in finalities of judgment passed
before the time.
There is, it is true, one great principle or fncdaThe one sover- mental fact which  runs through tile
eign principle. whole subject as presented, and is, in
a sense, the universal solvent of it, but that will not
be seen at any single glance, and can not bring God
into the range of a probable partakership with us, in
the necessities of propitiation, till it has been long
enough canvassed to reveal what is in it. The fact




AND PROPITIATION.                  35
of which I speak is the grand analogy, or almost
identity that subsists between our moral nature and
that of God; so that our moral pathologies and those
of God make faithful answer to each other, and he
is broulght so close to us that almost any thing that
occurs in the workings or exigencies of our moral instincts may even be expected in his.
It has been a question wl]tether to begin this discussion at the scripture texts, in which propitiation
is asserted-as I formerly thought it was not, save in
a certain objective way of accornmoda- Begin at fortion-but as the view I am  to advance   giveness.
opened first at the question of forgiveness by men
toward men, I will start my argument from  that
point, and bring in the scripture proofs farther on,
where they will have some complexions of thought
prepared to soften their incredibility.
In the New Testament it will be observed that forgiveness by God and forgiveness by  Forgiveness by
men are set forth mutually, one by the God and men
help  of the other.  "Forgiving  one t same.
another, even as God for Christ's sake [ev Xppia] hath
forgiven you."  "Forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive them  that trespass against us."  One kind of
forgiveness matches and interprets the other; for they
have a common property.  They come to the same
point when they are genuine, and require also exactly
the same preparations and conditions precedent.  It




36               FORGIVENESS
is not commonly supposed, I know, that forgiveness
by men requires any thing done which is in the nature
of propitiation. But we had best make nothing of
that; for, in fact, the matter of fobrgiveness by men is
so indeterminately thought, or so nearly unattempted
by analysis, that we really do not know what is
in it, or how it comes, or what it does. We talk of
it in a certain loose way, but have really no moral
casuistry by which we regulate our practice in it.
What then do we mean by forgiveness when we
speak of forgiving an enemy or wrong doer 2-what,
that is, by a man's forgiveness of a man a   I suppose
that a great many persons never had a thought of it
as signifying more than the mere passing of the word.
They  even choke at this, and only stammer it in
under-tone when it is passed. As if the mere getting
out of the word " I forgive 9 were the consummation
of their dcluty-struggle in the question.
Nothing is more evident, to any one who cares to
understand what is to be done in such a matter, than
that the mere passing of the word forgive constitutes
no new relation. It may be that the forgiving party
only says it, just to be quit of his adNot negative.
versary. I-e does it as a mere letting
go, or waiving of the man, not as a true taking hold
of him rather for eternal brotherhood's sake. I-le is
only thinking quite commonly, in this letting go, how
to be let go himself, and have his obligation'ended.
Sometimes it will be even thought, if not spoken
aloud, "Yes, I forgive him, but I hope never to see him




AND PROPITIATION.                   37
again."' Or it will be said,'Yes,  I forgive, but I
can never forget."' Or, again, "Yes, and I do not
munch care whether he repents of his wrong or not,
if only I can be quit of all connection with him."9   I
can not specify, and need not, all the loose ways and
turns of mock sentiment, by which this grace of forgiveness is corrupted and made to be no grace at all, but
only a plausible indifference under the guises of grace.
It is how often but a hind of hypocrisy under which
the forgiving man is hidden fronl his own discovery.
All this in a way of transition; the cases referred
to are only cases where irresponsible, self-sermving,
worldly men, whether nominally christian  or not,
cheapen tile duty of forgiveness by light performance, or slip it by evasions and tricks of words. But
there are troubles of mind in respect to  The difficulty
this matter of forgiveness that are real,    real.
and are encountered by the best and holiest zen.
They mean to be forgiving, and live in the habit of
it universally.  Is it not the love of God that they
have accepted as their ruling principle and joy-love,
that is, to every body, including even their enemiies?
Yes, but the love of God prepares not even him. to
forgive by itself, as we shall by and by see. Not
more certainly  will it prepare any best and most
loving of mankind to forgive.  We take up certain
modes of speaking which imply that love is a kind
of total virtue, and will carry all other graces and
virtues with it. And it will, in the sense of causation,
or of beinlg their causative spring. B-ut it does not




38               FORGIVENESS
follow that it will dispense forgivenesses without
also prepaling the necessary.antecedent propitiations.
A good man lives in the unquestionable sway of
nniversal love to his kind. If then one of them does
him  a bitter injury, will he therefore launch an absolute forgiveness on himn?  If he were nothing but
love-if he were no complete moral nature —he
might. But he is a complete moral nature, having
other involuntary sentiments that come into play
along-side of love, and partly for its sake —the sense
of being hurt by wrong, indignations against wrong
done to others, disgusts to what is loathsome, contempt of lies, hatred of oppression, anger hot against
cruel inhumanities-all these animosities, or revulsions of feeling, fasten their grip on the malefactor
sins and refuse to let go. And they do it as for
society and the law-state of discipline; composing a
court of arbitrament that we call moral opinion,
which keeps all wrong doing and wrong doers under
sanctions of public opprobrium and silent condemnation. Filling an office so important, they must not be
extirpated under any pretext of forgiveness. They
require to be somehow mastered, and somehow to
remain. And the supreme art of forgiveness will
consist in finding how to embrace the unworthy as
if they were not unworthy, or how to have them
still on band when they will not suffer the forgiveness to pass. Which supreme art is the way
of propitiation-always concerned in the reconciliation of inoral natures separated by injuries.




AND  PROPITIATION.                 39
I-ow it is that the forgivenesses of good men so
often miscarry, wvill be sufficiently explained by the
exposition here given.  It does not fol- IIowv forgivelow that they are to be impeached for  nesses fail.
obstinacy or insincerity.  They meant to forgive and
make clean work of their forgiveness. But their old
mind retLurns npon them  and their old animosities
are rekindled, as if only banked in their fires and not
extinguished.  They look on the faces and hear the
voices of the men they undertook to forgive, and their
disgusts come back on them. The old words rattle as if in  new  offenses, and there is no moral
gong at hand by which they can be drowned. Now
the difficulty very often is that the forgiven party has
never been so qualified by grace that he could fitly
be forgiven.  13ut that is no sufficient excuse; for
the forgiving party can be right even if there is no
forgiveness passed. In most cases the true account
of the matter is that the forgiving party did not find
how to be fitly propitiated, and was not qualified
antecedently by such a state of preparation as his
own moral nature and necessities demanded. What
he so honestly meant to do, therefore, he is not unlikely mortified by and by to discover is not effectually done.
True forgiveness then, that which forgives as God
in Christ hath forgiven, is no such letting' up simply
of revenge against the wrong doer as was first describedl-no shove of dismission no dumnb turning  of
the back. Neither is it any mere setting of the will




40                FORGIVENESS
to do a deed of love, as we often discover in really
good men —no drumming of the hard sentiments and
revulsions and inmoral condemnations to sleep.  Perhaps they were not meant to go to sleep, but to stay
by rather in such welcome as the new cast of a right
propitiation will suffer.
And in order to this, two things are necessary; first,
Two things  suchl  a symlpathy with the wrong doing
necessary.  party as virtually takes his ncature; and
secondly, a malking cost in that nature by suffering, or
e-xpnse, or painstaklig sacrifice and labor.  The sylmpathy -must be of that positive kind wllich wants the
man hllimself, and not a mere quiet relationship with
him; wants him for a brother, considers nothing to be
really gained till it has gained a brother.  The sympathy needs to be such as amounts to virtual identification,
where there is a contriving how to feel the man all
through, and read him as by inward appreciation, to
search out his good and evil, his weaknesses and gifts,
his bad training and bad associations, his troubles and
trials and wrongs-so to understand and, as it were,
be the man himself; having him  interpreted to the
soul's love, by setting all tenderest, most exploring
affinities in play, finding how to work engagement in
him, and learn what may best be touched or taklen
hold of in a way to make him  a friend.  Taking the
wrong doer thus upon itself, it will also take, in a certain sense, his wrong to be foreign; for its longing is
after some most real identification with the feillow
nature sought after. Thus we see that, to really for



AND  PROPITIATION.                  41
give and make clean work of it, requires a going
through into good, if possible, with the wrong doier,
and mieeting him  tlhere, both reconcilecd.  LAnd wlen
it is done thoroughlfyenonugh to configaure and new-tone
the forgiving party as well as the forgiven, lie is so far
becom3e himself a reconciled or propitiated man, as
truly as the other is become a forgiven or restored
man.  Or if the man so propitiated is repelled  in
tile forgiveness he offers, he is, huImanly speaking,
but as one that came unto his own andll  his own received him not.
But there remains, as was just now  intimated, a
second  indispensable  condition, by which the  advances of sympathy, finding tlheir way Malaking cost for
into  and  throughl  wrong  doers a-iid   enemies.
enemies, will becoume a more nearly absolute power in
them, and a more complete propitiation for themn;
viz., in the making cost and bearing heavy burdens
of painstaking and sorrow  to regain them  and be
reconciled to them.  The injured party has a m1ost
powerful and multiform combination of alienated and
offended sentiment strugghling in his  nature.  And,
in  one view, it is right that he should have.  Ie
could not be a proper man, least of all a holy mllan,
without them.  His integrity iS hurt, his holiness
ofiended, his moral taste dclisgusted.  Ie is alienated, thrown off, thrust back into separation, by the
wlhole inastinct of his moral nlatulre.  The fires of his
purity smoke. His indignations scorch his love, and
without any false fire of revenge, which is too coin4*




42                FORGIVENESS
monly klindled also, he seems to himself to be in a
revulsion that he has no iw.ill to subdue. HIe is a
wounded man whose damaged nature winlces even in
his prayers.  So that if hlie says   I forgive," with his
utmost stress of emphasis, he will not be satisfied with
any meaning he can force into the words.  Is he
tlherefore to be blamed, that he has so many of these
dissentient feelings struggling in him to obstruct his
forgivenesses? No, not in the sense that he has thenm,
but only in the sense that he does not have them mitigated, or propitiated so as to be themselves in consent,
or subjected by sacrifice. Let him find how to plough
tlhrough the bosom  of his adversary by his tenderly
appreciative sympathy, how  to appear as a brotherly nature at every gate of the mind, standing there
as in cost, to look forgiveness without saying it, and
he will find, however he may explain it or not explain it, that there is a wonderful consent in his
feeling  somehow, and that he is  perfectly atoned
[at-oned] both with himself anld his adversary.
To expl]ain this whole matter analytically I acknowledge to be difficult. Let me give it in the concrete
in three or four examples.  The first, which is very
simple, 1[ will give more at large that we may note in
transition sonme of the points which are likely to occur, on the way to a complete forgiveness.
Thus you had, we may suppose, a partner in trade
A case sup-  whom  you had taken up out of his very
posed.   clejected lot of poverty.  Discovering
talent and what you thought was character in him,




AND PROPITIATION.               4-3
you took him into confidence, to share your fortunes
with you.  ]Before you suspected danger from  him,
he had used the name and credit of your company, under cover of his legal rights, in a most faithless and cruel violation of trust, such as plucked you
down out of wealth, and reduced you to a lot of poverty so nearly complete that you had not even bread
for your children. But your industry and worth
brought you up again finally to affluence; while the
vices into which he fell brought him down to want
and hopeless destitution. Meantime, in all the intervening years you have been remembering his wrong,
which you could not well forget. HIis name has been,
of course, a name significant of bitter wrong in your
house, and so connected with pain as to be seldom or
never spoken-a word as it were for the dumb. You
have said inwardly, "I must forgive," and you have
meant, on principle, to do it, perhaps really supposed
it to be done; but there is, nevertheless, to this day a
sting in that name, and you do not like to hear it.
To meet him on the street, or catch the look of his
face, pains you, and you inwardly shudder as you pass
him, at the discovery that, christian man as you are,
you are certainly not -reconciled to him, and see not
how you ever can be. But you are shortly to find
how you can be. The poor man, going down under
his vices, loses name and figure and is all but forgotten.
But you bear that his family are suffering in bitter
want. Did you not say that you could forgive, and
what is come now but your opportunity   You send




44                FOR GIVENESS
them in supplies and means of comfort, once and again,
concealing always your name, lest it may seem to be
your revenge. By and by his son is arrested for crime,
and who but you will volunteer to give the needed
bail? and that requires your name. At lengith some
infectious disease falls on the forlorn being anld his
family, and who will peril life, in giving help and
watch to people so completely out of consideration?
B]ut you said your forgiveness long ago, and what shall
you do to make it good but go in to minister and be
their saviour? The poor fellow turns himself to the
wall when he sees you and weeps aloud, saying not a
word, but just covering his face with his hands and
smothering his broken-llhearted shame as he best can.
Where now, on your part, is the reluctance and revulsion that so often stifled your forgiveness? Gone, all
gone, forever! The word itself is become the sweetest
of all words. By your painstalking endeavor, and the
peril you have borne for your enemy, you are so far
reconciled in your own nature that you can now completely forgive, whether he can rightly be forgiven or
not. I-e can not be till he comes into a genuinely
ri;ght mind, though still you none the less truly forgive. The forgiveness in you is potentially complete,
even though it should never be actually sealed upon
him. You have taken his sin upon you in the cost
youl have borne for his sake, and what you have borne
~thus freely for him quells that unreducible something,
that cldumb ague of justice that was disallowing your
forgivenesses. It is even as if there had been a great




AN-D  PROPITIATION.                 45
sacrifice transacted in your soul's colurt of sacrifice, by
which your condemnations that were block-ing your
sensibilities hlave been  smnoothed and  soot-hed  aLnd
taken away.  Under so great patience and cost, tle
forgiving charities are all out in your feeling, firesh
and clean, and swinging the censers of their worship
to pay the frapgrant honors due.
Take another example, that is short and sharp, but
unites all the elements, either by im-  Another explication or expressly.  A noted English    ar1ple.
preacher, traveling on horseback in the country, is
stopped by a footpad demanding his purse.  Asking,
"Will you let me pray?" he immediately descends
and begins a prayer.  It is fervently made for both
parties, and begins forthwith to be answered by a
thought occurren't that contains the answer; al answer
that makes heavy cost for him, and mortgag'es mnch
that is most precious in life's comforts to the robber.
Rtising to his feet he questions howv a life so unjust
and wicked was begun, charges it kindly to some
sorrowful defect of nurture, some atmosphere of positively bad example.  Still the wrong and danger of
it are none the less evident, for it is, how plainly, a
life that is both against God and against society.
Cornem now," he Says, "let me offer you something
b tter.  Go horme with me and take employment in
my service.  I will see that no human being, not even
mly family, shall know of this amfaidr as long as we live.o
Accepting the  offer, the man took service with his
benefactor, and his crime was never known till it




46               FORGIVENESS
was reported, in a voluntary confession from his own
lips, on the day of his master's funeral. The cost made
by this man of God, in taking thus anl unkno"wn
robber into his family, and trusting his and their
lives to his fidelity, was about as heavy as it well
could be. flow complete also was the resulting forgiveness, we canl see firom  the double trust that followed; the master trusting the man, and the man the
master, for so many years of trial, in a matter always
secret between them.
But we have a larger field of forgivenesses, and we
are always in it; and here it is even
Another.
our instinct to make cost freely, in order
to keep our intractable ugly nature pliant to this
gentle ministry.  We have much to forgive that is not
done against ourselves, but against our friends and
fellow disciples, against purity and truth and love,
against God, and Christ, and religion.  And the offenses done, in so many ways and relations, are often
dreadfully revolting.-cruelties to the weak, violences
to the just, vices all. disgust, mockeries of what is
holy, insults to Christ, so that we are set burning, as
it were, in a kind of divine animosity, such as the
Psalmist utters in what some hastily reprobate as the
scandalous zeal of passion, when he says, HI hate
them with perfect hatred, I count thelm mine enemies."  HIe might have been a very great fianatic in
that key, but he probably was not.  God himself is in
offense  in just that way, and  ought to be; only
he will have it for his merit that, being thus exas



AND  PROPITIATION.                 47
perated, he can, without self-blame, mitigate his offense and  train it to  forgiveness. ]     eluchl  easier
and more natural, at least is it for us to end off our
duty to the incorrigible and wvicked in our concldemnations.  Our drift in this direction is so strong that
we somnetimes let our prayers scorcih heaven over
them.  We forget that we are to gain therm and bring
them into God's forgiveness and o-urs by making cost
for them.  Perhaps we are sometimes willing to have
their sins make large amount of cost for them —counting this, it may be, our righteousness.  No, it is a
great mistake, and we really do not mean it. What
we want, after all, is not to have thlem get their deserts, but to have them recovered to God and forgiven.
And that we shall not obtain for them till we begin to
bear their sin, suffer patiently their unworthiness,
and work and wait in all painstaking on their insensibility; and then, when  our hard way  of naturmal
condemnation is duly softened, there is at least a
chance tlhat theirs may be, No, it must not be forgotten, that beautiful word of the  M[asterm, " Whosesoever
sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them."  WXVe get
other men's sins remitted of God, when we are deep
enough in cost to mremit them  ourselves.  And this
exactly is the secret of these times of religious fervor
in commrunities which are so great a mystery to imnany.
The whole christian mind has forgotten to be a judging and become a forgiving mind.  And it has become
a forgiving mind by the key of sacrifice and painstaking cost into which it has fallen.  This, observe, is the




48                FORGIVENESS
cross, and when a community is in it, forgiveness runs
ffill circle, and the church-state is a state of life.
Now in these three examples given for illustration,
we see how it is that forgivenesses in men are ripened
and fully brought to pass only as propitiations are.
Also that our human instinct puts us therefore always
on making cost when we undertake to really forgive.
Also that human forgivenesses are possible to be consummated only by the help of some placation or atonePropitiation the ment, or cost-making  sacrifice.  The
common exigent forgiving party must be so far entered
of life.     into the lot and state of the wrongdoing party, as to be thoroughly identified with him,
even to the extent of suffering by him  acnd for hill.
Some alterative must be taken by the man who will
truly forgive, that has power to liquefy the indifferences, or assuage the stern, over-loaded displeasures,
of his moral and morally injured, mlorally revolted
nature. He may settle into a callous and dull state,
by just staying at his point of uncaring self-contentbut his callousness will be simply disendowed sensibility, and not forgiveness.  If the offense he suffers
from the wrong of his enemy is -ever to be cleared, his
forgivenesses will be drawn out only by such freedom
in the matter of cost as opens the sluices of his feeling,
and waters the dry rock about which his indignations are smoking.  Suffering, in short, is with  all
moral natures, the necessary correlate of forgiveness.
The man, that is, can not say "I forgive," and have
the saying end it; he nmust somehow atone both him



AND  PROPITIATION.                  49
self and his enemy, by a painstaking, rightly so called,
that has power to recast the terms of their relationship.
So far from  its being an absurd thing to speak of a
propitiation as the necessary precondition of forgiveness, no human creature will ever keep himself reconciled to his kind, without findingg how in solme of its
degrees to practice it.  Instead of being a great theologic mystery, it is even the common exigent of lite.
Doubtless we may live in tile consunming thirst of our
great world-fever and just go along, with no secret
heart's love reaching after any body, but whosoever
longs to live in the bright cordiality of As with us, so
brotherhood, and have the true enjoy-  With Christ.
ment of his kind, must atone himself into the gentleness and patience of love all the way.
Doubtless it may seem  to some to be a hard lot put
upon us, which requires us to be not only well-doers,
but atoners also —the world itself to be a  Our tragic elekind  of mutually  atoning  world-so  ment ecessary.
that we have it put upon us, not only to suffer for our
own sins, but also for the sins of those Who do us
injury.  This, I say, will seem  quite hard to many.
B3ut it will depend on what kind of world we require
God to give us.  If it must be a world made up of
facilities, and favors, and all kinds of pleasantness,
with no hurts suffered, no wrongs done, no liabilities
of damage, no responsibilities of sacrifice, in a word,
if there is to be no tragedy, or tragic side, in our life,
but all sides smoothly rounded alike, then of course a
plan that is to keep us all, and about all the time, at
5




50                FORGIVENESS
making cost in this manner for the forgiving of bad
pleople, may take  on a look very  forbidding  and
tedious.  And yet after all there is no imaginable
world, I am quite sure, that has a thousandtlh part of
the tedium in it which one would have that is wholly
made up of delectations. Insipid, Iuneventful flat with
no great sentiments in it, no heroic side in duty, nothing
heroic any where, nothing to condemn that touches us,
nothing to forgive because we are not touched —why,
such a world would even die of inanity.  No, let us
have tragedy and a strong, large mixture of it. And
then if we chance to be goodl-good enoug'h to make
loss for our enemies —what luxury shall we have in our
forgivenesses and the great sentiments heaved up in us
as in mighty exaltations, by our experience. Of course
it is not to be charged against God that he makes the
bad necessities of our very tragic life. The bad part
of it is all from  ourselves, and the granid atonings
planned for, to be the universal element, are just that
cost of experience in which we are most ennobled and
blessed. Let me have the chance of forgiving my
enemy, and I have more enlargement of life, a more
uplifted consciousness, than if I owned the world in fee.
II.
Finding, in this manner, how our own moral nature,
as such, becomes alienated and averted from  them
The great  that do us wrong and trample the rights
analogy stated. of others, and how it tones itself to a
completely forgiving state  only by acts of cost or




AND PROPITIATION.                   51
sacrifice which are, in proper verity, propitiations of
itself, it should not surprise us to find the analogy
running far enough to comprehend all other moral
natures, even the highest.  And here, as I conceive, we
get our initiatory point for the true understanding of
the christian propitiation.  We have only to go back
on the pathologies of our own niorMal nature, to make
the discovery that we ourselves instinctively make
sacrifice, to gain our adversary; in doing which we
also gain ourselves.  I said that we do it instinctively,
but I only mean that our moral instincts are so far cast
in this mold as to induce this kind of action, when we
are in the  highest key  of supernatural life  and
exaltation.  I wish I could believe that we are always
in this key; for it is the infelicity of my argulmnent, in
this great subject, that I am requiredc to hang it on a
fact, which alas! too many have no witness of in their
own experience.  And my fear is that the analogy I
suggest will be quite insignificant to them, because
they run their life on so low a key, and nmake it so
nearly selfish, that the exalted consciousness, which is
itself so near akin to God, is not on hand to second
what I say. How  shall it seem  reasonable, or even
properly intelligent, to propose  the verification of
God's way in forgiveness by our own, or the fact of
his propitiation in order to his forgivenesses by the
propitiation we instinctively make ready in our own,
Awvhen the mind that is addressed lives in no element
of forgiveness and propitiation, and has nothing in
experience to make so high an ascription seem  any
VI~L~V~VIJLVW  V d~IIVI~L~V  JV ~Ln




52                FORGIVENESS
thing better than a dull extravagance. Let the caution
here given be taken without offense.
Still it will be something for such  to  observe
how  expressly and even formally the indorsement of
revelation is given us, for just this free appeal to the
human analogies.  Thus when CIhrist requires us to
forgive as God forgives, his apostle turns the doctrine
boldly round, requiring us to forgive " even as God
for Christ's sake hlath forgiven us."  By these words
" for Christ's sake," en COhristo or in Christ, he does not
mean, as many understand, on the ground of satisfaction made by Christ-for we plainly enough can not
make satisfaction for the sin of our enemy-but lie
means that we are to forgive, as volunteering in the
cost of sacrifice, after Chlrist's example.  Indeed there
could be no forgiveness in God, on the ground of satisfaction; it would only be his admission that nothing
is any longer due.
Let it not be suspected that we fall into a case of
inversion here, that implies mistake in the argument;
viz., that we conceive Christ in his forgivenesses, or his
No mistake in propitiation, to be following the type of
the analogy.  ours.  Causations and examples imply
a state of priority or precedence, but a mere analogy
does not.  It only signifies tfhat the two sides of it are
in correspondence, no matter how.  Christ, in all that
pertains to his propitiat;ion  and his forgiveness to enemies, firnishes the ideas and helps we work by in
ours, and we are even to allow that we have no complete adequacy without them; but our propitiations




AND PROPITIATION.                    53
and forgivenesses, when these are wrought, suppose
analogical properties in our very nature, by wl-ich
Christ may set us on working corresponclently -wNith
himself, and forgiving our enemnies even as he does his.
Supposing now the fact of such constituent analogies existing both in us and him, certain questions will
arise in pursuing the exposition proposed, that require
to be answered.
1. Is it to be understood that Christ goes to the
cross just to get the reaction of so great  Christ dies not
suffering  on hlimself, and so to mitigate for the reaction
or propitiate his own feeling in the way of it.
of preparing to forgive?  That would be a very constrained, self-attentive attitude, and wAo could not think
of it with respect.  No such thing is implied, or supposed in the human examples referred to.  We do not
ourselves go into sacrifice for our enemy to gain or
soften ourselves, but only to help him  in his trouble,:and minister to his bad mind in ways that imay gain
him  to repentance; every thing we do and suffer is
for his benefit, or for effect on him, only it results
that our sacrifice affects our mind or disposition also
towards him.  We are in a way of being completely
reconciled to him, as we hope lie  sometime will
be to us.  The stress of all we do or suffer is for
him, and in that consciousness it is that we are atoned,
having  all our aversions, disgusts, and condemnations liquefied, or dissolved away.  In this there is
nothing artificial or constrained; we are simply acting
ourselves into forgiveness towards him in our endeavor
5*,




54                 F O lGIVENESS
to bless him nand bring him into a better mind towards
llS.
2. Is it objetecl that God loves his adversary alGod loves his ready, and needs not love him  more to
adversary alreadyr. forgive?  Of course he needs not love
him  more, and it is no office of the propitiation  to
produce in him  a greater love for that purpose.  The
propitiation  itself proceeds from  his love, and  is
only desined to work on other ulireducible sentiments
that hinder his love, in forgivenesses it might otherwise bestow.  Our own love, as we saw, might be sufficient if it were not hindered by certain  collateral,
obstructive  sentimennts, and  God is in this moral
analogy with us.  I-le is put in arms against wrong
doers just as we are, by his moral disgusts, displeasures, abhorrences, indignations, revulsions, and what
is more than all, by his offended holiness, and by force
of these partly recalcitrant sentiments lie is so far
sllut back, in thle symlpathies of his love, that he can
nerve himself to tlhe severities of government so long
as such severities are wanted.  lie is not less perfect
because these antagcohistic sentiments are in him n',but
even more perfect thllan lie would be witllout them;
and a propitatiaon is required, not because they are
bad, but only to move them  aside when they are not
wanted. They are never to be extirpated from the mind
of God, but are always to be in hil  even as parts of
his perfection; only they do not act uniformly into his
character, but casually, when, all things considered,
they should; just as we have casual factors lettimg in




AND  PROPITIATION.                  55
their action. here and there amnong thle conlstant factors.
God has it for a part of his liberty to be held
by  these  casual factors whllen  le should be, and
not held when he can do better workls for his repentant children by letting forgiveness take their place.
Propitiation then, as tile  necessary precondition of
forgiveness, supposes no necessity that God should be
made better.  And he will forgive without dama ge to
his character, just when his love, in making cost for
his enemy, gains that enemy to himself.  The beauty
of the true conception is that God is not obliged, by
his side factors or subordinate sentiments, to be everlastingly disgusted, revolted, heated with condemnation, but that he has self-g'overnment, and world government, and full liberty left him.  His severities of
sentiment remain, just as the Red Sea remnained after
the children of Israel passed through.  And yet they
had passed through.
3. It will be imagined, perhaps, by objectors of a
different class, that God's holiness, or   God's holiness
spiritual chastity, puts him in a condi- does not put him
tion where all the analogies of humlan out of analogy.
forgiveness fail.  It is enough for Lus to be a little
gentled in feeling, to  make our forgivenesses flow.
Whereas he must even morally wrong his own pure
nature, to forgive any transgression without being
satisfied for it —as he can be only when  some other
bea-rs the offense and by adequate suffering atones it.
That is, he can forgive sin only on receiving adequate
play! But rYe never propose that way of forgiveness




56                FOR GI VE NESS
for our human enemy, restricted as we are in our holiness.  It. would even subject a iman to ignominy to do
it-all the more certainly if be is counted a specially
holy man.  It is very true that God's offense toward
sin is deepest because of his holiness.  B3ut the depth
of _bis holiness will match itself also in the depth
of his forgiveness.  And what do we see but that
the holiest men, who are the men most deeply wounded by wrong, forgive most easily.  God too holy to
forgive an enemy'!  itather judge that forgiveness is
itself the supreme joy of holiness, whether in God or
mall.
4. It will be imagined that God is in a different
Godl hlas gov- case from us, in  the fact that he mainernment to main- tails a government as we do not, and
tain.        that he is therefore restricted  in tIle
matter of forgiveness by considerations of order and
public  authority, when  we are  not so restricted.
Hence that we may be softened or propitiated. towards
our enemy by what we do to gain himn, when God can
not be without exacting somehow what the penal institute of the law requires.  I shall have more to say of
this when I come to speak in the next chapter of the
necessities of Law.  For the present I have these two
points to put forward as being in themselves sufficient.
First that no forgiveness, whether by nman or God,
obliterates the fact of a wrong, or at all salves the
wounds of violated obligations.  It operates only on,
or between, the two parties personally.  The bad act
stands forever, plainly enough, for nothing can efface




AND  PROPITIATION.                  57
or naty way alter what is done.  The law and its sanc~tioma also stand as immovable as the eternal moralitv.
And the penal senctions work on still in the'inman by
natural causation after he is forgiven, till they  are
worn  out or winnowed away by the supernatnral
causations of grace in his life. Add to this, secondly,
that we as mortals do in fact govern with Godl, and are
held to the maintenance of good government    with
him. Every law of his kingdom is ours. HIis governing interest is ours. We have the same reason to
be jealous of wrong and shocked by disorder. We
reign with him  in fact in what is his Great Monarchy
and our IRepublic, and we are just as free to forgive
and be reconciled as He.
5. It may be objected that when we are propitiated
towards  our enemy, by the cost we   woe only promlake for him, the whole process takes pitiate ourselves.
place within ourselves, and the forgiving grace is not
obtained of us by the intercession or mediation of
another; whereas Christ obtains the forgiveness of
sins for us by what le does before God, acting in our
behalf.  Even so, by acting before God; and yet not
by  acting before God and obtaining from  God, as
being strictly other.  That would be tritheism  and
not trinity.  Trinity makes him " same in snbstance,"
not other.  We entirely misconceive this acting before God, when we make God one and Christ another
acting in real otherhood before him.  The three are
still the one, and the three-foldling is but a plural in
so many finite forms, used representatively as person



58                FORGIVENESS
ations of the infinite One.  Their very plurality implies their acting towalcrds and before each other, in
which they all become instrumentations for the one,
but never, in any sense, other.  If my right arm had
grammatic personality in the same sense, it would be
acting for me, or before me, but not doing any thing
which I myself, the higher more inclusive substance,
should not be doing for myself. We get vividness of
conception for God by the representative action of the
three; and God as infinite substance could not otherwise be set forth.   They  are  above and  below,
supreme and subject, sending and  sent, moving in
space, taking human body and laying it off, acting
before, and for, and with, in nature and into nature,
but when these grammatic personalities are all resolved in their representative import, God is one,
only so lmuch better known. Hence, or in this view,
Dr. Shedd was right, if only his theory had been
right in other respects, when he conceived God as
laying his wrath upon himself, punishing himself, satisfying his own justice out of his own pangs —" himself the judge, himiself the priest, himself the sacrifice."  And the old reformer, John Wessel, is even
more explicit in his confession, saying —" God himself, himself the priest, hi mself the victim, bfor himself,
of himself, to himself, made the satisfaction."*'  It is
no fault therefore in tlis behalf that the analogy we
draw  from  ourselves, only shows us working out a
propitiation in ourselves.  Christ is not other than
DIe c CzcSj  i'c(rcnatiotCl oiS; C. 17.




AND  PROPITIATION.                  59
God in ally such way that his propitiation is any the
less truly a self-propitiation of God.
6. 3But it may be urged with emphasis and high
confidence by some, as being a great  No derogation
derogation from God's hlonor, to suppose from God's honor.
that lihe is held in detention, as respects forgiveness, till
hle has first mitigated his opposing sentiments, or let
Christ do it by suffering and sacrifice in his behalf.
That there is nothing to support this objection was
just now sufficiently shown; for that which obstructs
fobriveness in him is not something wherein he is less
good than he should lb, or somlething wherein he requires to be made better.  The propitiation only takes
away out of range certain  subordinate and partly
casual sentiments that wait on0  God's absolute princi)les and purposes, to act as dislpleasures and revulsions
may in. the toning of his legal discipline, and act no
longer when their dominating force nmay properly cease.
However, I perceive that speculation will easily
twist this answer out of its proprieties, by questioning
as to that little word when-Is it true that God must
be gained or tempered transactionally, that is by acts
in time, in order to the letting forth of grace upon his
enemies?   Certainly not; there is no such thing as
date in God's dispositions.  They are not dead fact,
but living factors in hIis living nature.  They con
dition each other, as the brain  conditions breathing
and breathing the brain, being such as he generates
everlastingly between what lie feels and what he wills.
Without such consideration,  we seem to be imagilning




60                FORGIVENESS
often that Christ has come into the world to make
God better, and we very nearly say or sing it in a
supposed key of orthodoxy; but if we understand him
rather as having come to show us how God is acting
himself always into the great timhe-currents of our
story, we shall thinllk ]hin far more worthily.  For his
dispositions towards sin are shaped and colored everlastingly by what he thinks of it, and inwardly contrives and does and stuffers for it.  And his blessed
forgivenesses were all in him, and ready grown, before
Christ arrived, and before the world was made; andcl
what lie does among us by his sacrifice is to have its
value in revealing, under time, hllow by sacrifice and
mnulch cost above time, the  divine  charities were
God's propitia- always mitigating his dispositions and
tions above time. flowing out, as it were, by anticipation
subcluingly on his enemies.  The transactional matter
of Christ's life and death is a specimen chapter, so to
speak, of the infinite book that records the  eternal
going on of God's blessed nature within.  Being made
in his image, we are able to see his moral dispositions,
always forging their forgivenesses, under the reactioins
of endurance and sacrifice, as we do ours. And this
is the eternal story of which Christ shows us but a
single leaf.
Behelcd in  its outward hnman incidents, it is the
tragedy of the love of God.  And, the dispositions of
God are so wrought up in it, that he is seen embracing, not the lovely only, as we are wont to speak,
when we imlagine or teach that love is begotten by




AND  PROPITIATION.                  61
loveliness, but embracing the bad or unlovely in prof-,
fers beforehand of forgiveness.  lMiost htuman love is
unsacrificial love, thinking only to make fit answer to
the lovable.  We never go beyond this, till we make
loss, and sacrifice, and cost, for some adversary  of
onrs, or of goodness.  By these propitiated, we forgive.  All God's forgiving dispositions are dateless,
and are cast in this nmold.  The Lambhood nature is
in himln, and the cross set up, befbre the incarnate Son
arrives.  His own love bows itself to endurance, by
thle prescriptive habit of his eternity, and the forgivenesses shown us in their formative era, so to speak,
under the great transaction of Calvary, are in fact
the everlasting predispositions of his nature.  The
cross, atb cetero, is in them-"6 the Lamb that was slain
from the "foundation of the world."
We can not have a God in fit sensibility unless the
ante-mundane touch of it is in him.  I-He can not be a
forgiving God, if lie is yet to begin the making cost
for an enemy.  A  God therefore whose eternity has
been impassible, untouched by suffering experience,
will never be at all relational to my experience. HIe
is wood, he is granite, or no better.  What can
lie do for me, when he can not feel me? and what
can I offer him, when lie can not feel what I offer?
If he is pleased1 with my good, he must have some
feeling of my not good, and  that is dis-pleasure,
which is so far suffering.  Just consider at this gate,
as it opens, what a living God must suffer aind be
sufifering always in his good sensibility.  lie pities.




62                 FORGIVENESS
and pity going throughl a bad soul or body, by inward inspection, has how mnuch to look upon that is
painful.  Ile abhors a wicked and cr-uel soul, and
what is  abhorrence but a recoil that is, at least
etymologically, related to horror.  In a vile and filthy
mind he encounters disgust, and what is that but
to snffer?  All the persecutions of his friends, all the
rage and scoffing of his enenmies, all the hate and
hatefulness of natures made for love, all desecrations
of his honor, all perversions of his truth, impurity,
lust, diseased inheritance-what are all these things
to God's pure sensibility, since he has it, but evils to
bear, offenses to sffer, such1 as can be forgiven only
by  a  nature whose dispositions have been confignred to sacrifice and cost, before  the worlds were
made.  It is in God's character everlastingly, if we
should not rather say his nature, to be always enducring the bad in their badness, and so melting his way
lovingly  through  into forgiveness.  IBenefactor thus
to all, and king of joy as of sorrow  to himlself.  If
his streams ran all one way, lie would be too simply
placid to be great, but he lives in everlasting countertides of struggle and victory-victory bothll over enenmies without and violated good in himself. What is
to colle of all moral natures created, lie well understood before their ereation, and he peopled the world
with thelmn as one girdclig himself for war; that is, to
live and reign by the mnastery of their evil, including
all the disasters to feeling in which evil comes.  Thus
lie began early, as it were, in affliction for the bad, or




AND  PROPITIATION.                     63
only partly good; for "1 in their affliction he was afflictedl and he bare and carried them all the days of
old."  And so along  dlown throl gh the smoke of tlhe
ages-why not say of the eternities —le has been joyously "enduring thie contradiction of sinners against
hiinself,"9 propitiated  by his endurances, and so at
all times ready to forgive their sin.  And this exactly
is the truth that Chllrist impresses by the affectingly
beautiful short chapter of his story-it is the inward
going on of God's nature in the sacrifices of love.  lie
hates and abhors as we do, only never with a trace of
malignity.  His indignations burn hot against the outrages of wrong; just as in whlut we call our remorse,
it is the terrible orl/e of onr own bosom that scorches
and scathes our sin, doing it, as it were, benignantly
and  without injLustice.  So  in  respect of all Gocd's
sensibilities, forgivenesses, and sacrifices.
III.
IHaving made our statement thus of the christian forgiveness and propitiation, interpreted and represented
by analogies in our own lumnan sentiment and prattiee, it now  remains, going into the scripture, to find
how far we are borne out by it in the doctrine proposed.  Everything turns here, it will be discovered,
on the meaning of sacrifice.  And we The scripturehave three sets of words, in our three   statement.
scripture lan~gum aes, the Hebrewr the Greel  and the
English, in and by which the mneaning is to be determined.   In  the  Hebrew  scriptures the word is




64                 FORGIVENESS
uniformly kcaphar.  This is translated in the Septuaoint and the New Testament by hilasdomai.  And
this again is translated in the English by reconcioiation,
atoriemelent, and opropitiation; by the first in a very few
cases only; by the. second almost uniformly in the
English Old Testament; by the third as uniformly in
the Eng'lish New  Testament.  Only the NTew Testament has the word reconciliation, several times over;
translating,   however, another and wholly  different
word, that has no altar significance  at all, and  is
therefore to be wholly disregarded in the inquest we
are making.
We begin then at the Hebrew word 7aophar, which
is, in fact, the English word cover, the idea being that
the sin is covered, hid, taken away by the  sacrifice.
And this idea it will be seen is not far off from  the
idea of a smoothing away of the offense, a mitigation,
a placation, a propitiation  of the mind  offended,
which appears to be an element of meaning always
present in the uses of the word.  Thus, if we step
aside in the Old Testament from  the altar uses of
this word, we fall on examples, in common life, where
Usus loquendi the real usus loulendzi is plainly discovdecisive.   ered;  as  when  Jacob  says, sending
on his drove to meet Esan, his righteously offended
brother; "I will appease himn with the present that
goethl before me."'   The word of appeasement or
propitiation here is kcpltar, the altar word, showimng
beyond a question, what ideas or impressions it has
* Gen. xxxii, 20.




AND  PROPITIATION.                   65
there carried.  We have another example of the same
word exactly correspondent:  " Trhe wrath of a king
is as messengers of  death, but a  wise  man  will
pac2T/y it.7'~  Here tlhe smoothing, mitigating, nmollifying, placatiing, element is conspicuous as before.
Passing next to the Greek word of the New Testament, by which the Hebrew  kct/hacr is translated, we
look again for the true usus loquencdi, to  examples
not occurring at the  altar and  nnder the  altar
forms, because collateral examples are a great deal
more significant and decisive  as to thle true genius
of the word.  Thus we fall on the prayer of the
publican-t' God be merciJAd to me a sinner."' Here
the' be merciful"' is the old altar word of sacrifice
hilaskomcai used  in the  Passive Imperative, saying
literally,'be thou propitiated, or propitiate thyself,
bend thyself on me in  forgiveness "-showing  very
clearly how the element of placation, or propitiation,
has been connected always with the word in the uses
of the altar.  We  also  discover a little  way  off
two cousins in  the family  of hilaslscomnai, zikes and
anileOs which may  be taken  as witnesses  to  the
dispositions of tile falmily.  Thus we read,:s" I will
be mnerciful [propitiated in feeling] to their unrighteousness."  And  again  ~"lhe  shall hlave judgment
without mercy " [unmitigated  ztncappeesecd judgment]
"that showed no mercy."
As regards the English  words that are used  to
represent the two Hebrew and Greek words, the re*Prov. xvi, 14.. Luke xviii, 13. 1I Heb. viii, 12. ~ James ii, 13.
6 ".




66                 FORGIVENESS
markable thing is that they so nearly agree.  Thus
the word reconciliation  employed  in translation_ to
carry a meaining that belongs to the altar, has the
element of conciliation visible on its face.  As when
we read, "to  make  an end of sins, and to make
reconcliation for iniquity, and to  bring in everlbasting rilghteousness," the meaning would not be essentially different if it were written " to make propitiation for iniquity.'`*  The wordcl aton2eme'nt, more frequently used, carries the same element of conciliation  or propitiation in a different manner by just
naming the results; that is to ca-one; for this is the
old English word. in the old English way of printing, ancd the word, in that original use, never meant,
as now, to ma/ke amends, which  is a perfectly uinchristian  use, but to gather into accord as by love
and.  cost and heavy expense of feeling.  The New
Testament English word propitiation coincides with
these  other two, without moree  than  a shade of
difference.
WVe are ready therefore now, after siftinog all these
words with as much of accuracy as we are able, to go
back first uGpon the Old Testament sacrifice and settle
the significance of it, showin g also how, or by what
means, it obtained that significance.  And here the
Old Testament first thing to  be noted  is  that  it
sacrifices.    makes  nothing of the pain of the victim.  Nothiing is ever done to increase the pain of
the animal w1hen slain, and there is never any thing
*Daniel ix, 24.




AND PROPITIATIO N.                  67
said which indicates the least mental attention to
it.  The pain is plainly a matter of supreme indifference.  The next thing is, that there is no vestige of
retributive quality in the sacrifice.  The smloke is to
be rolled up as a sweet smelling savor, and not as a
smoke of retribution. The associations never once
suggest retribution.  Thirdly, there is no comlpensation in the sacrifices.  They are never proposed in a
way of payment, or of obligation compounded.  They
are not satisfactions, nor any way linked with ideas
of satisfaction-no  man's  lamb pays for his  sin.
Fourthly, they are never offered as a legal substitution.  There is a certain mystic and ritual way of
substitution practiced indeed, as when the worshiper puts his hands on the head of the sacrifice, or
on the head of the goat, driven out to signify the
deportation of his sin, but nobody ever imagines,
unless it be to make out some point of theology,
that the animal is held in  legal substitution.  To
have  the sins legally on him, the goat must be
a legal subject, else they are as little onil him  as
they would be  on a barrow or a cart.  Doubtless
they are on him in a figure, and then of course their
deportation is signified in a figure-the reality of
which will be, that the faith of the transgressor makes
what he is thereby helped to believe, an actual and
firee deliverance.
But what of the blood? for the sacrifice is a rite of
blood; as if it were not in God's nature,  some shallow casuist will often object, to be any smore pacified




68                 FORGIVENESS
towards sin, or at all mitigated in his wrath, except
No demand of by the sight of blood! Somebody, that
blood as blood. iS, must bleed for it, else there is no
forgiveness.  In which way of speaking, the impression  is that blood comues into the sacrifice invested
with all our freezing  conceptions of guilt, because
no otherwise but by its horror-drippinlg stains could
God find fit expression made in thle sacrifice, of our
detestation of the sin we come to have forgiven. But
we greatly mistake if we suppose that any so delicate impression of blood was ever felt among those
old pasture-men of the East, with  whom  sacrifice
began; accustomed as they were to the killing of
some  animal from  their herds, at their tent door,
three or four times a clay, and trained to use the
knife even fiom  chllildhood.  But there was a more
genuine, really delicate impression of blood prepared
in  their  minds,  by  artificial, institutional causes,
which  having been prepared for that purpose, were
the reason why so munch  is made of bleeding and
blood in the sacrifices.  The  problem  was to make
the sacrifice a power, by collecting about the victim
intensely  sacred impressions.  And  to  this end a
statute was passed  concerning blood, at a very early
period, which was in fact the fountain of all meanBlood made  ing in sacrifice, even down to the sacsacred for the  rifice of Christ hlimself.*   " For the
altar.       life of the flesh is in  the blood  and I
have given it to you upon the altar to make an
* Lev. xvii, 11, 12, and 14.




AND PROPITIATION.                  69
atonement [or propitiation] for your souls; for it is
the blood that rnaketh an atonement for the soul.
Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, INo soul
of you shall eat blood.  Whosoever eateth it shall
be cut off."' These worshipers of the old time took
nothing in their religious experience by definition or
analysis, they experienced only what they saw or
acted.  And God gave them  a symbol of something
sacred by which to comne before him, viz., blood nmade
sacred by being separated from  every other use; the
idea being that, in having offered their holiest and
best thing to God, they have made an expression that
carries the strongest sense of their sin, and will most
certainly  conciliate the offended  purity  of God.
They have offered up even life, that mystic power
enshrined in blood, the deepest, holiest secret of the
creation, more significant than all the most hidden
treasures and choicest gems of the wolcld.  Bahr,
who has carefully investigated  the  ancient statute
just cited, mnakes the sacrifice " an appointment of
God, to signify the yielding up of the soul of the
sacrificer (symbolized by tle blood or life of the victim) to God as a condition of acceptance."  But it
needs to be added after this, that there is a power and
value in the blood of the rite, over and above what it
signifies to the worshiper in the matter of his owvn
particular use as moving from  himself.  For God
ordains the offering, and it is God that puts the life
in the blood, and hedges about the blood witll all
most scrupulous sanctities, for the fit impression of




70                FORGIVENESS
the worshiper, and also for his own high part in it.
And lihe it is that says-I have givein it to you upon
the altar;  for it is to be th;e token also of mny cost, and
of what I hlave been plecged, ficom all past ages downward, to accomplish fbr the  obrgiveness of the sins
of the world. In this giving up of blood and life
behold what I will sometime do for the reconciling
of transgression. Let this seeIn to be only a conceit,
if any one please, for it is not said in words, but time
will by and by say it loucld enough to end all doubt.
For whether we imagine it or not, this rite of sacrifice
begun, this bleeding out of sacred life, is going shortly
to be lifted in its range, and it has been ordered in
the main for that very purpose.  Just as all the
highler, finer words of our dictionaries climb up out
of low  base levels in things, and take significances
rich enough for their ennobled  service.  What if
there chane to be something herg, in this hmnble
offering of lambs, that will sometime be made to
represent tile sacred and dear life of Christ, offered
up at greater cost to God's feeling than any thing
ever was or could be to ours.  And what if that
simple designation "Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world "-defining nothing, spinnimng no
analogies-were just wept into the world's heart and
left to quicken the feeling of a new life, how certainly would the sinning mlyriads of the world begin
to confess, This surely is the body that was prepared,
this imust be the atonement indeed.
Even so! this is the Sacrifice that all sacrifices were




AND PROPITIATION.                     71
looking after anrd climbing up to behold.  They were
the literal base-level sacrifices, offecl  Figures of the
by priests and by fire upon an altar,  true sacrifice.
atLtoning the man bly what lie offered and also God by
implication-engiaged to be atoned on his part by
these hallowed symbols of cost, in th!e blood and tl:e
life.. Whereas in that other better Lamb of Sacrifice,
that really true sacrifice that was foreshadowedl, tlere
is neither any lamb at all nor any sacrifice, and it is
only meant to be a sacrifice a great way out of correspon-dence, that we may not class it, too closely,
with the very dull and prosy rites which have had
their uses now  fulfilled, in preparing   a language for
something more significant and in a higher key.  The
real truth, if we tell it as it is, makes the sacrifice a
murder, and the blood on Calvary the blood of murder: there is no altar, no fire, no priest; it is simply
the act of a mob outside of the temple and the city
gibbeting the Sacred Life yielded up to their fury.
And what they have done is called the sacrifice, in a
word that would even be irony, if it did not cover
the awfully transcendent, interior fact, of a cost so
terrible, endured by the feeling of God. This is the
blood, and this the life, expected of old, when the
blood and the life were consecrated by the statute of
the altar.  Looking on here with our eyes)  we see
nothing religious, even the offering is wholly blalnk
to us, only that the world itself, shuddering and cllarkening into night, tries visibly to be telling us something of it, if it could!  There is at any rate no




72               FORGIVENESS
atonement in the form. The blood of the murder
buys nothing as in pay, wins nothing as by suit or
compensation, mitigates no feeling of God that we can
see, as by intercession before him; and yet there is
to God, in his own deep nature, a propitiation accomplished for sin, because of the divine Lambhood that
has been lovingly offered in the smoke of so fierce
transgression.
Our scripture excnrsion comes round finally, after
the wide range taken, to be concluded by the famous
fall-period text of Paul in his epistle to the Romans,
So comes the  "' Whom God hath set forth to be a propropitiation.  pitiation, through faith in his blood,"':
&c. I do not cite the whole passage, but only the
first two clauses, reserving the part that is left to be
used hereafter, when the matter of justification is to
be discussed.  Three points noted, in the briefest
manner possible, will sufficiently indicate the import
of the words.  (1.) There is a propitiation accomplished in Christ's life, and especially in his very tragic
death, which prepares a way of forgiveness for the
sins of the world. The forgiveness now will be more
than verbal, it will be real, clean, complete. (2.) It
is God himself who is forward in this transaction"Whom  God hath set forth."  It is not Pilate who
has done it, not Caiaphas, nor the soldiers, but it is
that God has suffered them so far to make irruption
upon his throne, and pluck down him, who by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge was delivered
* Romans iii, 25.




AND  PROPITIATION.                  73
into their hands; for how can it be imagined what
the propitiation can do, save as it is set forth by the
worst that sin can do worsted itself in turn by the
blood of its crime? And (3) this propitiation is to be
received only by faith-a " propitiation through faith
in his blood."   For it is this faith in flact which
makes the murder a sacrifice; which it does by accepting it as the sacred altar-blood and life, and beholding in it that sublime act of cost, in which God
has bent himself downward, in loss and sorrow, over
the hard face of sin, to say, and saying to make good,
" thy sins are forgiven thee."
IV.
The propitiation that was necessary to forgiveness
we have now discovered and constructively verified,
under its human analogies; bnut there is a very imlportanit objection to propitiation itself A great standthat requires to be removed-an objec- ing objection.
tion that is incurred by every scheme which assumes
the word propitiation, as truly as by that which I
have here proposed.  The need of any suchl mitigation or amendment in God's dispositions, supposes, it
is often maintained, to just the same extent, his spiritnal defectiveness; and the fact of his being thlus
amended by a transaction in timne, supposes an improvement, to the same degree, and a correspondent
derogation from  the stability or imamutability of his
character.  I have been discussing, before, an objection closely related to this, and yet very different.
7




74                FORGIVENESS
There the question was how God can lhave his dignity,
when he is supposed to be transaction ally mitigated
by what is done or sufferedl in time? Here the question is, how he can have his dignity, when his eternal
mind itself requires to be propitiated, in orcler to the
supreme act of goodness to an enermy.  The argument of the two questions, wide apart as they are in
their nature, runs more nearly in the same vein than
might be wished. But the objections themselves are
so very important, that small varieties of treatment
may have their use. I lhave said already that the
propitiation, so called, is not a fact accomplished in
time, but an historic matter represented in that way,
to exhibit the interior, ante-mundane, eternally-proceeding sacrifice of the Lamb that was slain before
the foundation of the world. In saying this I am
not striking the predeitination string of Calvinism,
but am simply finding how the everlasting God, in a
particular  year of the  calendar, viz., the year of
Christ's death, was gained representcttivel to new dispositions, and became, in some new sense, a Saviourincredible, impossible as it may seem-and how, in
fact, he proved himself the more grandly, in that he
here sets forth in time and story, what occupies, and&
fills, and glorifies, the whole interior working of his
own eternity, and could by no other method be fitly
revealed to mortal apprehension.  The great salvation
was not, in this view, wrought by the new composure
of God in that particular year, but it was set forth
as an everlasting new composure, so to speak, made




ANTD PROPITIATION.                 75
evident in that year's doings-"l Whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to
declare his righteousness in the remission of sins that
are past, through the forbearance of God."  Faith
only sees, in the outward blessing of to-dcay, what
covers matter going on before, in tlle eternal, inward
proceeding of his mind towards human creatures and
affairs.
Now if it shall seem to some that, in thus removing
our objection, we very nearly make a nullity of the
gospel itself, reducing it to a fact significant in what
it shows only, and not in what it is or does, I will
not stop to inquire how fair the same kind of doubt
hangs over every thing, but will hasten to concede
that a great part of mankind, trained to no such
modes of t-hought, will undoubtedly best appropriate
the gospel, by keeping down as closely as possible on
the level of a transaction in  time.  Indeed, there
is some doubt how far it may be needed for us all, to
stay by tle historic forms, and see the gospel done
transactionally in ti]le-to hear the word of Jesus,
watch his healings, read his face, study his masterhood, bow down with him  in Gethsemane, die with
him  on the cross-only we may have it as our
privilege, I think, when our mind recoils from  the
tremendous difficulty of propitiation itself, to carry
the whole matter up above the ranges of tilne, and
look on him  who stands there " in the midst of the
throne, as it had been a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."




76                FO RGIVENESS
But there is yet another way, if really it be another,
Another solu- as I think it is, of removing this, to
tion.    some it mau-y be, rather intractable obl
jection. We do not properly conceive God's attributes, when we packl them  as so many solid blocks
of perfection in his perfect nature. Least of all do
we fitly conceive his sentiments and dispositions in
that manner.  If we take his wrath-principle as one
block, calling it his justice; his omnipotence as
another, able to do any thing which can be thlought;
his will-principle as another, essentially autocratic and
absolute; his hatred-of-wrong-principle, in deieically
fixed animosity, as another; and then if we lbring
in the patiences, and tender charities, and the vicariously suffering grace, it will be very difficult to
make blocks of thein any way, and, when they flow in
through the interstices, they will have power to move,
configure, comhbine, compelling all the others to offer
them  a yielding side, and to come into a newly constructed whole. Indeed, it will begin to be as if they
were all being  propitiated.  They are  no more
blocks, in fact, but elements of life rather, flowing
pervasively into, and among, and over, and under,
and through, one another —liquids all,flowing in to
liquefy, and temper, and color, and sweeten each other,
in such way as to compose a perfect rule, and a grand
harmonic character.  And this harmonic  character
will so be cast as to keep all purpose, sentiment, and
disposition  chiming  with  the  wants, condclitions,
wrongs, relentings, personal afibetions, providential




AND PROPITIATION.                   77
changes, and prayers of the world.  And what have
we thus, in the eternal going on of God's interior
nature, but an eternal going on of propitiations, ready
for every human creature in his time.
It may occur to some as a very strange thing,
amounting, in fact,. to another objection, that God
should be any way  restricted in his forgivenesses,
when the mere instinct of kind or natural paternity
is so free, and drops out all displeasures  God has no
with  stch prompt facility.  Why iS reluctance here.
God to be gained as one who forgives reluctantly?
Should not such a being have his pardons ready
beforehandl   Why, a human mnother in her simple,
motherhood nature-is she not good eiiough to forgive an  erring  son, without parley, or without a
question?  She may do it, I answer, simply because
she is not good enough to raise the parley, or to make
it a moral affair at all, when of course it is not
forgiveness.  In every true  moral transaction the
thing done is made ready by moral dispositions prepared for it.  Let us not be in haste to measure God's
forgivenesses by the Inother-pardon spilled on a reprobate son. Expecting in God what we boast in her, we
should certainly do Him great irreverence. As if the
mere maternity of natural instinct, having no moral
ingredient whatever, could be cited as a match and
parallel for the clean, everlastingly sealed acceptance,
and moral embrace of God. Just contrary to this,
the wrath or offended holiness, the pure sensibilities,
shocked by disgust, tile moral repugnances and dis7*




78                FORGIVENESS
pleasures, the  immovable indignations, must not
hurry to clasp a wild and filthy reprobate.  Probably
God has nature-sentiment enough in him to do even
that, but so far andcl in that point of view, he woulcd
really need to be made better; to go up out of his
nature-plane into the moral, and prepare a moral
settlement based in a moral forgiveness.  And yet as
we have said many times over, he has done it-did
it eternal ages ago-moving so promptly and with
such spontaneous facility that the grace is..ready
long before the man arrives to receive it.  If there is
any look of reluctance in the, matter, it is that the
propltiation requires to be revealed by a transactional
process and tat that te subjects to be forgiven are so
very slow in coming to the point of faith that makes
forgiveness possible.  And yet, though clone as in
the genelral and before time, it is a grace so personally
guaged andc telmpered when it is ilnwardly pronounlced
thiat each nmay say, along down the ages, with even a
better right than if the lMaster had kissed a farewell on
his cheek-"' wlho loved me and gave himself for me."
Closing hlere my argument for the propitiation, I
think I shall be permitted to speak of the religious
Ideals of   benefits to be expected from  the worGod.    thier and better ideal conceptions of
God, that will of course go with it and keep it coinpany.  Every  stlrongly variant or peculiar type of
thoutght concerning God, carries with it an ideal of
God proper only to itself.  Thuis from his creatorsllip,
and especially from  the great and scientific, world



AND PROPITIATION.                  79
massing facts of astronomy, we are set upon the
idealizing  of God as a being omnipotent.  And so
strong is the imnpression we receive, that it not unlikely gulfs every other, even the impression of his
responsibility to right. He becomes, in chief significance, the Alhmighlty, and what after that, many are
not much concerned to know.  All theological questions involved in human: liberty, are brought to an
end, by the fact that God can do any thing which
either he or we can think.  In the same way, it is
often declared to be the praise of Calvinism that it
makes God "big"'  by the  autocratic rule of his
decrees and predestinations.  So that holding us fast
in the vise of his sovereignty, and bending us down
always under the overhang of his will, the awful discipline makes imprints of authority  and law, that
fasten immovably both society and religion. Again
there is a certain ideal of God which is raised by our
orthodox modes of legal atonement, such as deal in
substituted punishment, satisfactions of justice, compensations,  governmental  equivalents,  remissions
bought and paid for-where nothing turns upon a
sympathy or feeling, but every tlbing on a computative calculation, sharpened to the point of a jot or
tittle of the lav. IHere the ideal raised is that of
an exact or stringently exacting God, and the impression is not altogether ill, if it were not so far mixed
with offense as to cause revulsion only, in all the
broadly generous, thoughtfiully circumspect natures.
Another ideal of God, much valued by many, does not




80                FORGIVENESS
come in as a resultant, but is directly chosen for its
own sake, and is called the Fat-herhood of God. It
has the merit of raising no offense, but there is suLch a
certainty of diminution for God in any merely human
type of paternity, that he is too  inefficiently conceived in it for any strain of high-going rule or encleavor.. What I am  here proposing in the way of
propitiation begins at the summit of God's eternity,
where he lets in sorrow in thle right of his supremacy,
bathing his will in it when he reigns, recognizing
always, and expecting always to recognize, the fact
that it belongs to every moral nature, as truly to
atone its adversaries, as to observe equity with its
friends. iHe is brought downa thus, or, shall we rather
say? brought tp, before the worlds are made, into the
Passive Virtues.  For he it is that accepts them  by
spontaneous choice, in advance of all creatures, and
counts all other good too dry for joy without them.
They are with him in the beginning of his way, and
before his works of old. IfIe creates the world thus in
their counsel, consenting to have it on hand as a bad
world, because in them he has found a ransom.  The
dread possibility of sin, incidental to the existence of
moral natures, does not prevent his act of creation;
for his great love wants them nigh, and the Patience
of Sins is in him, able to bear the cost of their
undoing and deliverance; so that when the outbreak
comes, he is able to let it be, able to suffer it and for
it, able to rule it, in the Kingly lMajesty of his
Patience.




WITtHOUT EXPIATION.                  81
V.
To avoid the confullsion that might be created by
bringing into my argument another and very different
matter, and having on hand for discus-   What of
sion two important issues at once, I   expiation.
have carried along the great subject of propitiation
to its final conclusion by itself.  Still mly argument
is not finished when I thus ignore the other issue referred to, and pass it wholly by without notice or
attention.  I go back, therefore, now  to the point
where that other question might have come forward
also to claim its part in the discussion, and resumne the
investigation at that point.  Having found that the
two words of sacrifice in the H-ebrew and Greek scriptures, cah2char and hziltskomcai, bear a sense of mitigation, and in that manner of propit'liation, I considered the latter to be suffiliently established as the
meaning also of the christian sacrifice.  But it happens that the Greek word is used also in the classics,
where I am  not able to deny that it is largely  or
quite commonly used to signify expiation.  And so
the question is raised whether, after all, expiation is
not a meaning in these words, compatible with the
Scripture uses. In this manner we have the question,
Propitiation, or Expiation? back upon us in the alternative, and the lwhole budget of doubt is loose again.
We are also the more heavily pressed by the question in this form, that our orthodox thleologiansl, and
confessions are all the w-hile saying exsciatio  ifor the




82                  FORGIVENESS
christian sacrifice, without any apparent suspicion
We go to the of impropriety.  They  even go to the
classics.   classic  historians  and  poets, to  cite
instances of expiation as proofs of the necessity  of'
sacrifice, and do it without any misgiving or scruple.
Happily our English scriptures are clear of this impeachment, for the word expiaction is not once found in
them.*  Indeed, I think our iEnglish translators are
shy of so heathenish  a  word, as they very  well
might be.
In the facts that are classed as expiations, there is
of course a very great diversity, but they are discovered, when closely examined, to be all alike defective
Worst and best in  principle.   We may  take  as  a
examples.   worst and nmost shocking  example, the
spectacle of human fathers and  mothers whipping
their children through beds of fire, to please some god
who is turning plague, or battle, or weather against
them.  Or if we prefer to look on a best example
rather, I remember no instance at all comparable, in
dignity or benignity, with the legend of the Roman
Curtius, plunging  headlong  man  and  horse  into
the gulf which had opened in the ground of the
forum, and which it was declared, by some oracle,
should never be closed till the glory of Rome was
thrown into it.  A truly grand patriot we have in the
It is supposed to have come into English from the Vulgate, and
1not till shortly after the translation. However, the translators, who
learned half their theology from the Latin, must have been familiar
with it,




WITHOUT  EXPIATION.                 83
man;  who would yet have been as much more ennobled if lhe could have seen how mean the omacle,
and contemptible the god, and stood back from the
sacrifice.  Clearly enough there is nothing to be carried back into christianity fiom  such examples. A
sufiusion of the mere idea breeds inevitable confusion
in the doctrine, and a great part of the trouble we
have in our ef~forts to settle the christian truth, is
caused by the admission of this false elemnent.
The divergence it creates begins to be evident,
when it is observed that we propitiate only a person,
and expiate only a fact, or act oI' tlillng; wilnning, it
may be, any sort of favor, good or bad, by the pains
undergone. Propitiation seeks the preparing always
of a disposition morally right and good. Expiation
is  indifferent  eariing  never for the What expiation
morality or justice of what is gained,    does.
but only for the agreeableness of it. No rightleous
being or god is propitiated by anly contribution of
pains, as being pains, or by any kind of naked suffering; but such pains are good in expiation according
to the temper of the god, no matter what the motive,
or the meaning, in which they are offered.  The
christian sacrifice of propitiation, we are told, is offered, or set forthl, " to declare the righteousness of
God," and to gain all such as will believe in it to a new
life quickened in righteousness.  In the expiations of
the heathen peoples the main thing is to have enough
suffered, for the apprehended wrath will be stayed
when the rages of the gods are glutted.  No new




84                FORGIVENESS
relationship in character is expected, no ingenerated
righteousness in the life, the distinctive idea being
that the god offended is to have an evil given him by
consent, for an evil clue by retribution, or feared frion
his tokens of exasperation.  It throws in before God,
or the gods, some deprecating evil, in the expectation
that the wrath may be satisfied by its compensation.
The power of the expiation depends not on the sentiments, or repentances, or pionus intentions connected
with it, but entirely on the voluntary damage. incurred in it.  According to the Latin idea, Diis violatis
expiatio debetu —'" when the gods are wronged, expiation is their due''"-and the understanding is that,
when the wrong-doers punish  themselves in great
losses, it buys off the wrathl of the gods and turns
them to the side of favor.
The  pagan  religions were corruptions, plainly
enough in this view, of the original, ante- Iosaic,
cultus-superstitions of degenerate  brood, such as
guilt, and fear, and the spurious motherhood  of
ignorance, have it for their law to propagate. As
repentance settles into penance under this regimen of
superstition, -so the sacrifices settled into expiations
under the same. And the process only went a little
farther, when they fell, as they did the pagan world
over, into the practice of human  sacrifices; for since
the gods were to be gained by expiatory evils, the
greater the evil the more sure the flavor; and therefore they sometilnes offered their captives, sometimes
their sons and daugllters, counting it possible in no




WITHOUT  EXPIATION.                 85
other manner, to sufficiently placaste their envious and
bloody deities. Expiation figured in this manier, not
as a merely casual and occasional part of religion, but
as being very nearly the same thing as religion itself.
For as Tacitus could say, that "the gods interfere
in humnan concerns but to punish," what could men
think of doing, in religion, but to expiate?
How low the pitch given to religion must be, under
such rites, maintained for such  pur-   Expiatiou
poses, may be seen from  the fact that  demoralizes.
almost never, in the expiations offered as in deprecation of hostility and wrath on the part of the gods
appealed to, is any least consideration had of their
character.  They are even thought to be unsaintly
and base, actuated by jealousy of other gods, working
in revenge, and lust, and deceit. As to their justice,
nobody thinks of it, and the question never is, how to
make good before them any fault of crime or personal
misconduct.  The expiation has commonly no fairer
chance because it makes suit to the virtue of the
god; on the contrary, any most politic scheme to get
the advance of an adversary, in coining at the cunning deity's favor, promises not only as well as a
more timidly conscientious appeal, but even better.
Every one, at all versed in the classics, perfectly well
knows that getting  beforehand with the  gods is
the main thing in expiations.  Their very smoke is
the smoke of stratageml.  Thle devotees and the gods
are for the most part liars and cheats together.
Nobody has any doubt of it, or conscience concerning
8




86                 FORGIVENESS
it, and the integrity of the heathen world in general
is just so far labefiact, prostitute, and morally rotted
away, as it has religiouslv  abounded in. expiations.
And yet how many christian teachers and disciples
ilagine that our gospel is to have its gain by followinog the classic expiations, and that the law and justice
of God are to be rightly seconded by their example!
Are nlot classic authorities good?  And  is not our
religion finely complimented by them?
At the same time it is not to be denied that, drawing backl flom the field of the classics into the field of
Scriptnre, it is possible there to hold a severer and
Expiation as  more nearly moral view  of sacrifices,
accepted evil. which still classes them  as expiations.
Sin being a violation of the law of God, incurs, in
that manner, a dread liability of pain or punishment,
and sacrifices, it is conceived, make satisfaction to
God for the offense and consequent bad liability, obtaining, in that manner, a just release.  Thus a third
party, Christ himself, comes in to offer the  suffering of pain as an evil, which is accepted as being a
good enough match for the evil that is due.  In this
manner, lie im-akes amends for the sin by evil paid
for evil due, and that is expiation.  [But the scheme,
if not imnmoral, is fairly unmoral, as it ought to be
nuder that word; showing that God  accepts the
pains of tile good in payment for the pains of the
bad, and is mlore intent on getting his modicum  of
pains tlaan lie is on havriig proper justice done —taking clean away the word and fact of forgiveness; for




WITHOUT EXPIATION.                     87
if the debt of sin is paid, there is no longer any
thing to forgive; substituting government also by a
lkind of proceedin;r that has no relation whatever to
conscience and right. HIappily there is not a single
case of expiation in tile whole christian scriptnures or
any thing in the scripture sacrifices which bears a look
that way, significant enough to support an argniument.
To verify this fact, I would go over a complete revision, if I had the time, as I did in my former
treatise; but I think it will suffiqce just to recapitulate
the points which any one may establish by a very
brief examination.
Nothing  is ever made in the sacrifices, as I have
already observed, of the pains of the animal.  The
occasion itself is very generally regarded as a festire
occasion, and the sacrifices are called  No instances in
sacrifices of joy."  And it is a very  the Scripture.
singular fact to be historically accounted for, that two
of our most merrily jocunld words in English are lineal
descendants of tile same stock -wtitll the altar word
hiltaskomci, and related  of course  in  meaning.   I
speak of the words  /uif.rity and el/iactrcation; which
if they somewhat overdo the gladness and emamncipative grace of propitiatioln, very plainly never felt
the touch of pains and penalties, so greatly magcnified
in expiation.  Abraham  was put through a trial of
sacrifice; or rather was not put thlrough, but stopped
short in the  ilidst of it, to learn tllat a sheep is
better than a man for the offering; with a deliberate
view, no doubt, to his being set up in his family, for




88                FORGIVENESS
all future time, as a bulwark against the unnatural
and monstrous practice of human sacrifice, which was
getting to be the  distinctive practice of his time.
There is no trace of expiation in the passover-rite;
which, considering that it is the original of the Lord's
Supper, makes it the more remarkable; since plainly
there is some reference in the supper to pains endcurecl, though endured, as the apostle teaches, not for
pay but for propitiation.
Expiations never occur on occasions where we most
naturally look for them; as in the judgment of Korah
where there is an outbreak of mutiny and riotous
tumult, and where, as we half naturally judge, a considerable smart of expiation  might cool the rage
of their fever.  By  and by, in the progress of
the story, it begins to look as if the sacrifices were
outgrown, and the human sacrifices of the heathen
are sharply rebuked; "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices 1  Bring no more vain oblations. Wash you, make you clean."  So speaks the
great preacher Isaiah, and Micah follows in a strain
equally pungent- " Will the Lord be pleased with
thousands of rams, or with tens of thousands of rivers
of oil?  Shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
W5hat doth the Lord require of tllee, O man, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and -to walk humbly with
thy God?"  Once more, we discover that a certain
day is appointed to be observed, every year, by the
people, which is to be the specially serious day of




WITHOUT EXPIATION.                   89
their calendar.  It is to be a clay of abstinence anid
deep tlhoughtfulness, in which tile whole nation, considered as being unclean in every faculty and sense-in
their houses, their worship, their priesthood, and their
very altars-is to undergo a complete lustration and
come forth clean.  "' On that day shall the priest make
atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be
clean from all your sins before the Lord.":''  The atonelent, it will be observed, is lustral and not expiatory
— 6 an atonement for you to cleanse you."  This religious day is generally called, especially by the Jews,
their great day of expiation, though never as holding
the term in any closely defined meaning.  The day is
deeply serious and very impressive, but there is really
nothing in it that has any least appearance of penality, or of evil sufferedc to limake amends for evil done.
In this sketch I think it will sufficiently appear
that expiatory suffering is not a scripture idea.  To
further extend the argument is unnecessary.  It was
clear enough in the beginning, that one or the other,
propitiation  or expiation, must go down; the two
being, morally  incompatible.  Which of the  two
it must be, I think we now have no room  left for
doubt.  If the moral pitch. of our gospel is low
enough to be satisfied with a bought salvation, quanltitatively suffered fbor, and paid 3p as in expiation, it
certainly can not rise high enoughl to even think a
salvation unbought, yet distilled in that great alemlbic
of cost-making love wherein God prepares the recon* Comn. Lev. xvi.
8*




90                 FORGIVENESS
ciliation  of hlis enemties.  If, on the contrary, it is
in a pitch of claracter high enough to conceive the
transeendcent mlovements of propitiation, it most assuredly can never sink low enough to count it a salvation thlat pains are simply bought off by pains, in
the close exchange of expiation.
I make this explicit renouncement of expiation with
less satisfaction, that so many disciples appear to be
under a partly superstitious impression of its immense
practical value.  They look  upon it as tlhe  central truth about which genuinely cllristian experience
must revolve.  They conceive a certain mysterious
fitness in it to the needs of the conscience, alleging
that the conscience is no casuist, deals in no refineNo interest of mlenlts, questions never about the delicharacter in ex- cate distinctions, never waits to have
piation.      the gospel smooth  itself out in  the
psychologiC  proprieties; wanting, therefore, never
any thing so much as a good square paying in of
pains for paimns, penalties suffered  for penalties deserved.  Let there be no winnowing out of substance
and power )by our explanations.  Let the emancipation be as under the Roman law, wvllen a slave is made
firee by a blow  on his head.  No matter if questions rise and doubts remain, t!hey come fromn tmhe
head; let tile hlead take care of them, and let the conscience be going its way sheltered by God's peace.
Many teachers muagnify expiation thus under an appeal of ignorance.  They acknowledge that it does




WITHOUT  EXPIATION.                 91
not stand well in speculation, and that many reasons
are lifted up in nlutiny against it.  Still it is the
simple gospel they tlhink, because it makes good the
conscience; for the conscience having no philosophAT
can be pacified only by  a way of settlement that
transcends philosophy, and ignores all casuistries. It
has, at any rate, they say, the necessary ring; for
which reason the strongest, most pronouncecl ideas
of expiatioii are necessary to  tle  best effects in
christian living. For self is thus cut off, and selfendeavor and all the legalities of duty.  Speculation
is given up; for when expiation is taken for the religion, there is no room for speculation left.  And
what shall we look for but to see the simple man be
simply good and righteous? for the reason that he is
taken away fromn all donubting and even opinion.
Now  that such impressions are groundless I most
confidently believe, and also think observation will
show.  Indeed, I will venture  the assertion  that
the most intensely expiational form of christianity, instead of being most roblist and steadfast, is poorest in the general, most unreliable, most frequently
immoral. And that for the almost necessary reason,
that it expects to have salvation by a coarse commercial transaction in the exchange of pains.. Are not
the pnnishments all made up? is not the law quite
satisfied.? aWhat shall we do then but let go concern,
and plunge ourselves in the unnanlyzed, unfilteredl,
waters of salvation?  WThy so delicate in ma]king
critically nice distinctions of things in our approach




92            FORGIVENESS, ETC.
to God, when he expiates our sins by the death of his
Son, without caring to do it in a way that meets our
dainty feelings and convictions. Tio! it is an awful
mistake, to speak in this coarse way of clearing the
conscience.  Such kind of uncaring peace will be
only a dry-rot in the conscience, absolving it from
duty instead of sin, and preparing the man to be religiously and, as it were, devoutly irresponsible.
Looseness and unthinkingness are themselves disorder
begun, and will run to worse andclworse disorder as
they proceed.  Let us know  in whom  we believe,
what he has done, what his atoning is, how he could
and did, tand how he could not and did not, become
our sacrifice. Let us count our salvation a matter
high enough and rich enough to be studied, searched
out, nicely discriminated. No faith in the gross, that
makes a fetich of the cross, is going to stand proof.
The disciple will become distinctly, nobly christian
only when he takes the propitiation as it is offered,
and lives by faith in it, as the tide-flow of God's free
forgiveness.




CHAPTER  II.
LAW AND COMIMANDAIENT.
T:Em forgiveness of sins, already considered in the
chapter on Forgiveness and Propitiation, is a purely
personal matter, in which the Fatherhood love and
feeling and the offended holiness of God are concerned.
The proceeding here is intelligible and simple, because thle forgiveness in question is to be a strictily
Personal Settlement, that and that only.  Then
comes the  1arther question of the impersonal wrongs
of law, and  their Legal Settlemnent.  The Legal
All wrongs, taken as personal ofTenses,  Settlement.
are yet violations also of law, and forgiveness being
personal has no power, of course, to right the injuries
of broken law. The law, too, being impersonal can
not of course forgive any thing itself; or any way
compound its own wrong; neither is it conceivable
that God, as the administrator of law, has any power
to annul the fact of such wrong, or the fact of a damage done by it to the law. Forgiveness, we thus find,
puts a man personally right with God, but it does not
put him right with law, and it is not easy to see that
any thing  can.  The retributive consequences of
(93)




94                   LAW AND
violated law are running still in his nature; only so
far reduced as the moral disorders of ihis nature are
rectified, and tile blight of his transgiressions removed
by the health-restoring efficacy of the regeneration.
MSfade partly or completely whole, le will be partly
or completely clear of the penal effects of the law,
never till then.  At this single point andl so far, forgiveness has to do with law, and law with forgiveness,
and I really do not see that they have a single point
of contact any where else; except as the law continues to press the enforcemlent of a life that can fitly
be forgiven.
And yet we appear to be assuming always, in this
matter of atonement, that a principal concern of the
salvation is to mend up, or somehow  rehabilitate the
law, when the indulgences of forgiveness are allowed;
and especially to find how  the standing offer of forgiveness can be proclaimed without consequent damage to its integrity.  WVe assume, as if any thing
could satisfy a law but simply and eternally to ]keep
it, that the law broken by transgression must be satisSatisfhction of fled.  Not satisfied  by  obedience, it
the law.    lust be by punishmentt    i not satisfied
by the llunishmlent of the wrong doer, it must be by
tile pulishment of a substitute; not by tlhe punishment of a substitute in legal measure, it must be by
some governmental equivalent in tile expression of
slfferingl that will mnend the public honor of the law
and kleep it good.  Meantime, as regarcls this matter of satisfying law, it is a very great question




COMIMAr NDMENT.                  95
whether endurinlg the penalty of transgression in full
measure satisfies it; for the felon'who has served the
time of his sentence completely out, is really no more
approved by the law than he was before. I-e is not,
in fact, approved at all and never can be  till he
makes a new  characeter, and conquers to himself a
new  approbation.  Still we go on con- Inventions and
triving  theologic  ways  of satisfying    devices.
God's law, till, by one or another mode of getting its
penalties made up, we think it is done. - We pr1opose
substitutions for penalty, and compensations for penalty, and transferable merits provided, and righteousnesses made up to even accounts, and sins carried over
by transfer to another, and sins accepted for the sinner in the liabilities of his guilt,with justice executed
upon the guilt thus responsibly taken. Using these for
theologic counters, we go on working out computations
of atonement, and showing how it is tlhat Christ is
able to unlock the gates of law and bring transgressors
through, without damage to its integrity.  To any
christian believer the story ought to be a very sad
one; for the schemes built on these vocables are, of
course, not more genuine than they. I will not charge
that they are an altogether spurious brood, but the
artificial look they carry is conspicuous.  And their
look  is the  more  suspicious that they  take  on
scripture semblances without any scripture  meanings- save  as we distinguish  dimly the  inverted
images a great way off. Their intellectuial figure, too,
is a dismal sign for their supposed affinity with the




96                   LAW AND
gospel; for they do not present a possible idea, but
always instead an impossible.  On the whole, there
is an  aspect of discouragement really  forbidding
in all these endeavors, turning on the satisfaction
of law  or the satisfaction of penalty.  We all the
while suspect some juggle of theologic art in thle
processes themselves.  As if the law were to be somehow gotten out of the way, without fulfilllent-contrary to  Christ's own word when he declares, in
solemn l1rotestation to the world, that hlie is not come
to destroy the law but to fulfill it. " For verily I say
unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one
tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be
fulfilled.'"   In the verse previous it is literally to
"fulfill," but here it is "' be cone to _pass'  as if some
thought of futurition were in mind, and as if lie felt
himself ordained to help on the law, and see it bring
its crowning ideas to pass. A very different matter
from that satisfying of the law which shows a process
provided, by the counsel of heaven, for getti-vg its
penalties out of the innocent instead of the guilty!
The true Legal Fulfillment, which is the present object of our inquiry, is certainly not here.  It will
begin, as to its ruling idea, where Legal Obedience
begins; that is in keeping anld fulfilling the law; for
the law, as we shall see, does not drop us the moment
we transgress, but it colnes on after us, like a faithful
schoolmaster, joining  its discipline with the grace
of the cross and the grace of the Spirit, as
* Matthew v, 17-18.




COM MANDMENT.                   97
truly concerned  as they to  gather us back  into
liberty.
I can not undertake, at this point, to state, in a
formal way, the doctrine I am  goiing to advance,
for that is not yet possible.  I shall be obliged,
instead, to  throw  myself on the patience of amy
readers, and ask them to go along with me, stage
by stage, till I have opened the subject far enough'to mnake it possible. I will then set forth a general proposition that will cover the whole ground
of the chapter.
I know  not any better point where to open the
proposed discussion, than where, at a  Begin at Christ
certain favoring hour, it seemed to be and his comfirst opened to me. Were it not a fact mandrients.
so thoroughly sealed by our dull repetitions, I think
it would certainly be most remarkable, that the man
Jesus —call him  divine, or simply human, for outwardly, at least, he is but a man-should so often and
boldly insist on "; the keeping of his colmmandmllents,"
as the standard test of his disciples.  The wonder is
too, that he does it so much as a matter of course!
And what shall we say of it? -that this humble,
uneducated man, this peasant going as a foot passenger through the world, this wise man Twho is not a
philosopher, this king without royalty or family, whom
nobody has chosen, and wholm  fortune has not put in
a condition to secure him  shelter for his head, lwhose
9




98                  LAW  AND
mission is to suffer, and who only proposes to draw
adherents by the yielding up of his life; that he, a
Who is le, to man so lowly and gentle, should put it
command  the on mankind to " keep his commandworld?      ments"' —is it not a fact most remarkable in itself, and one that may fitly arrest our attention? Plainly it is either a good deal more, or a great
deal less than what we make of it. And have we no
reason to suspect that we are losing immensely in our
outfit of Christian ideas, by the very great inadequacy of our teaching at this point?  Perhaps we miss
any fit impression of it, by referring the Saviour's
injunction mentally to his deific nature, counting it
only a matter of course that he should sometimes
sleak out of his deific consciousness?  And we have
a way of doing this so often, to magnify his condescensions and the winning tenderness of his self-sacrificing devotion, that we scarcely leave him any thing
at all, but in deific right.  We call him  Master,
indeed, as a man, but when he comes to put his
Masterhood on  us, requiring us to keep his commandments, we do not quite imagine that he does it
simply as a man; he is only bidding us acknowledge
his superior right and take the good injunction he is
able. to give, in the certainly defic authority by which
he gives it. No, lihe speaks as the man that came down
from heaven; and there is no great master of philosophy that ever undertook such authority, or that men
would ever acknowledge for one moment in doing it.
Neither Socrates, nor Plato, nor Bacon, nor Kant,




COM MANTDMENT.                   99
ever thoughlt of putting his commiandment on the
world, or of biringing his followers, in the test of their
character, to the keeping of his collnlmmandmenle ts. But
Jesus does it with no token of misgiving.  And he
does it evidently in the emphasis expeeted to be felt
and the impression to be imade, by his own transcelldent personality.   I-He glows, he beazms, he rises in
stature and becomes a half transfigured form, by the
lifted colnsciousness he is in.  That we are going to
understand himl in these commandments as simply
putting us on keeping God's requiremenits, he plainly
does not even imagine.
Our attention then is here called to the Commandments Christ will have us keep as our standclard, and
to the Law of God before enacted to be our standard;
especially  to what they are in their General statemultual relations to each other. And it    ment.
may serve to make our way more intelligible, if we
set up befomrehand the point on which we shall be
moving; viz., that what is called the law is to be consunmmated, brought to pass, fulfilled, in Christ's commnandmlents.  The law, by itself, makes nothing in us
answer to its own high intentions, and is never expected, simply as law, to become a footing of salvation.
7But it is to make a beginning of moral impression, or
enforced obligation, afterwards to be consummated
in the state of allegiance to Christ, and the keeping
of his commandments; where the old enforcements
are substituted largely by a service in liberty; where,
ill fact, a new character is born, answering both to the




100                  LAW  AND
law and the commandments by which the law was to
be fulfilled. It is not to be said that the law is satisfied as being accurately kept —the satisfaction idea has
no place here, unless it be understood as being satisfied iil that it comues at last to be fulfilled.  This brief
statement will suffice to indicate beforehand the doctrine I am  going to undertake, and it will be more
fully and explicitly discovered, in the future progress
of nmy argument.
The two words law and corzmnandment-normos and
entole —will settle into place most easily in our exposition, if we consider them; I., Separately, in what
they signify apart from  each  other; II., In their
offices and nses; and then; III., In their mutual relations to each other.  Only I desire at this early
stage of the inquiry to place it as distinctly as possible before the observation of my reader that I do not
represent, and do not in fact believe that the two
words nomros and entoei$ uniformly hold in the scripture
the precise relative significance given them in the exposition that follows.  They vary, sometimes one falling very nearly into the sense of the other, so that
discrimination is lost. And  sometimes they  even
seeml to cross over and make an exchange of meaning.
Still a very close insertion of the critical kniife will
generally uncover  some  aspect of reason for the
fluctuations discovered.  But it must be enough for
nmy present purpose, as I think it will be allowed, that
the two words commonly and almost always in the
N ew  Testanent, stand in the relative significance I




COMMAN D  ENT.                  101
have given them.  And this will be the more readily
conceded, that I do not use them so muel: or autllority
as for convenience; though I do most certainly dis.
cover in them just the complexions of meaning that
imake them  convenient for my uses. I thlink also it
will be agreed that I subject them  to no violence.
We proceed then to inquireI. What the two terms signify taken separately.
In what is called the law, we have, at the foundation,
that great distinction of our moral nature, which
makles us moral beings by a property inherent; viz.,
the eternal, absolute, self-asserting idea of right; that
which is thle law before governmenlt, and a law to
God in composing his government,  triuly as to us,
after it is composed; tehat in whicll we become a law
to ourselves,. shllowing the work of the law written on
our hearts.  And then we have superadded to this,
for its more specific application, or carrying out into
practice, statutes instituted by God in a way of positive enactment, appointing what we are to do, or not
to do for the due fulfillent of the aforesaid absolute,
all-inclusive law.  These positive word-statutes are
also themselves enlarged and farther expounded, in
turn, by the moral legislations of the Scripture, and
by the common law of society; that is by custom, by
legal definition, by refinements of  estlletic perception, as well as by the drill practice of all the functional experiences. By these two concurrent methods,
divine legislation and the custom  of society, we obtain a moral code more or less complete; that, for
91-}'




102                  LAW  AND
exam-ple, of the ten commandments, and that which
is etllically developed about them and separately from
them.  And then, besides, we have additions in the
MLosaic code, of liturgical law  not moral, by Nwhlich
observances are enjoined that are designecd to help thle
religious worship of the age then present, and to prepare a language of sacrifice for the future uses of the
great salvation afterwards to be completed in tile
sacrifice of Christ-a lind of forecasting  ancd  provisional legislation, whose uses, over and above the
present uses of the altar worship, could not appear for
a long time to come, but when they should arrive
would be " fulfillments 9 properly so called.  Probably this word "tffill" was used by the Saviour in
mental reference, partly, to the futuritions of the law
in this liturgical departilment.
In this description then we have the law +[the nornos];
a rigidly unpersonal, abstract, statutory code of condluct, based in the everlasting, imnherent, moral imperative, that underlies it, and gives authority both
to the Suprenme Legislator and his legislations.  It is
tllhe lawT befre government, and then by government;
eforeed  by sanctions self-pronoLunced, and tllen by
sanctions also that are legally prescribed.  On the
whole we shall probably understand what the law is,
most complrehe-nsively and mlost exactly, if we tavke
the Saviour's own summation of it; for this, it will
be seen, covers in faet all we lhave said both of its
absolute r'hight and its practical necessity.   Th!ou
shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and




C 0 M NMA N 1 r IENT.           103
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with
all thy mind, acnd thy neighbor as thyself.' For if
we call this God's consumlmate act of legislation, it
still was law, absolute, in a sense, before all legislation.
Let us next consider what is meant by the comnmandcment [leztoi7], that which Christ The commandunderstands when lie enjoins the keep-    ment.
ing of his commandments, and gives to be the test
henceforthl of true discipleship.  Any one can see
that the word commandment is generally a less statutory, less tabulated, and more flexibly personal, word
than the wordlaw. As used by Christ, it commands
in the sense of enjoining, and enjoins in the sense of
a personal aulthority, and assumes to be a personal
authority, by reason of the qualities embodied, and
offices performed, in his ministry.  It covers just all
that is commended to man's feeling and conscience by
his life and  death.  Sometimes lie uses the term
" words 9' as the synonym  of " commandments,"9 requiring us to keep his words and have them  abiding
in us.  On a certain occasion he sums lp all his
claims of homage and  obedience under the word
yoke-"'Take my yoke upon you and learn of me."
The yoke is a symbol even of brute subjection, and
is applied for that reason to nations going under captivity.  Put lie softens the term by his most tender
assurances-6l for I am  meek and lowly in heart, and
ye shlallfilnd rest to yourr souls.'*  That is, "c oming
AlMatthew xi, 28-30.




104                 LAW  AND
under ime and my comannndncents, and learning of
mne, ye shall no longer be galled as by living only
under law, but ye shiall be filled with all comfort and
entered into liberty and rest."  Htis ineaning is the
same when he calls himself " the way:" for the comnmandment is no assertion of authority simply, like
the law, but a gently guiding power for the trust of
erring souls. Again, it is another conception of his
commandment that he is in the world as a person to
be followed; a person who types all goodness and
draws all loving holmages into his own likeness. IHe
does not say in the imperative, as the law does, " follow or die," but he says, " whosoever doth not follow,
forsakin  all to do it, canl not, as in liberty, be my
clisciple."  Sometimes he emphasizes his commandment, and draws it to a closer point of homage, by
insisting on tlhat completeness of sacrifice which takes
up even the cross to be with him.  lI-e that loveth
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is
not worthy of me; and he that taketh not his cross
and followeth after me is not worthy of inle."  I-le
asserts himself in like nmanner before Pilate as the
king of truth and so the commander of the world,
saying, "every one that is of the truth heareth my
voice.9'
hle does not mean by his commandment then, or
The command- the  keeping  of his commandments,
ment unlegal. that he is here to put us under syllables
and the statutory dictations of law, such as by their




COMMANDMENT.                   105
exactness and thunderous majesty, made even Mloses' exceedingly fear and quatke," but lie is here as personal commandment, to imlpress what a person ilnayV9
and be what a person can, of supreme light and a.lltransforming  benignity.  So that what lie insists
upon, in the keeping of his commandments, does
not mean a cringing and timorous observance, a bondage of scruple and servile abasement, but a keeping
in dear homages that count their object preciouseven as a miser keeps his money, or the mother keeps
her child, or a patriot his country. How  very different a matter is that grudging, slavisl way of keeping the commandmenlts, that is contriving always how
to pass the test, by being exactly up and even with
them.  The true keeping is different, that of a body
guard, that which is firee as love is, not that which is
in bonds looking after thle jot and tittle lbecaulse it
must. It is the noble formn of dcluty, which thinks not
of what is to be feared, but of what is treasure to be
lovingly guardled. And it is here, at this point, that
the Saviour's test displays the consulnmate worth and
glory of a character, in hinm, complete.
I ought, perhaps, in so many specifications of what
is meant by the colmandment, to name the equivalent Paul gives for it, and so lovingly commends
as if it were a kind of gospel way before the gospel,
viz., the dispensation called Promnise;@
that which came to Abraham  to be
taken hold of by his faithll; that which the law,
* Gal. iii, 14-19.




106                 LAW  AND
coming four hundred years after, could not annul, or
make of none effect; that whiich went with all good
men before the law, according to their faith, and was
their commandment, unpronounced but inwardly felt,
even down to the incarnate appearing.  And then
Christ himself, in his commandmcent, undertakes to
keep good the liberty of the promise, and guide his
people on by inspirations firom  his own manifested
love and sacrifice.
And yet I must not omit to cite.a still better exposition by a still higher authority; that is, by Christ
h ex-  imself. In  one of his farewell disChrist expounlste comrn- courses, reported by John', lie dwells
mandments him- at large on the subject, using, within a
self.
very few  verses, the terms command,
commandment, and comnandments. IHe begins by
comparing their keeping of his commandments with
his own keeping of the Father's, the result of which
will be that they abide in his love even as he in the
Father's.  Of course he does not mean that in the
Father's commandments he is under any legal relation, or any bonds of penalty; such an idea would be
altogether abhorrent.  As little does he mean the
like, when  lie puts them to the keeping of his own.
The state effected will be in both cases the same, an
abiding in love-lie in the Father's, they in his. Ire
goes on further to say that he looks to the relation
that will be established, as a relation of simple friendship, in which they will be governed by no dictation,
- John xv, 10-15.




C 01iM I A N DM  E N T.          107
but simply as a friend governs a friend.  Ye are my
friends if ye do whatsoever I comlnmand you. Henceforth I call you not servants, as I may hlave sometines seemed to do before-ye are not my bondmen,
nor my hirelings, nor my servitors or domestics —but
I have called you friends, intending therein to signify
a state of clearest privity, in which you are let into
my sympathies, and ends,, and counsels, far enough
to be able to command yourselves-even as Christ
was in the counsel of lthe Father without any statutory direction.  Iow  sublfiie and blessed the relationship I
II. The offices and uses of the law  and the commacndment.  And here we shall see, at a glance, that
the law, by itself, is not expected or intended to result
in any complete form  of personal  vir-  Offices and
tue or character.  It is to make a be-       uses.
ginning   in t.he level of constrained motive, using intilmidations for the enforcement of principles, hamrmering in thus, or grinding in as it were, certain first
impressions and first obligations necessaly to character, as being its previous conditions. iMore exactly
still it has for its office, to unfold the moral sense, andcl
break the confidence of guilt, by revealing the dangers of disobedience.  It ordains no fruitional, but a
frictional experience rather, sucih as puts the subject
writhing in condemnations, and conscious bondages,
and apprehensions of evil to come.  Accepted for its
excellence, it would be life, aind this it was designed




108                  LAW  AND
to be) if only it could, but though it is ordained for
life, it is found to be unto death.  But the death is
to be, in fact, a main element of its value. For the
subject, slain by the law, is yet in a training under
it that is a hiighway opening into life.  In one view
it exasperates all the dispositions, working thus disorder, discord, discouragement, and even a kind of
disability, which still it is hoped may turn to benefit
by tlle complete self-forsaking it prepares.   Considered as ordained before transgression it is righlt, because it asserts a claim  to hornage that puts the soul,
when accepted, on the footing of society with  God,
and blessedness in his favor.  And yet, considering
the inexperience and crudity of tlhat state, it could
not be expected to issue in any such way, save as it
issued first in a state of downfall and moral disaster,
to be afterwards muended by a recovery.  "If there
had been a law  given which could have given life,"
says Paul, intinmating his conviction of the impossibility; but it could have a real and powerful ulse, he
thinks, when " added because of transgressions,"' that
is to unfold the consciousness of transgression after
the fact, and put the malefactor sighing for deliverance.
So far tlhe law has no value save as a first stage of
discipline, to be followed by another that will bring
on the discipline to a result that is complete.  It is,
and is declared to be " the minlistration of deatll,"
"the letter tlhat killetlh," and it is only " the ministration of righteousness," " the spirit that giveth life,"




COMMANDM E NT.                   109
that can make it better than a simply disastrous
appointllelt.
What we call the lawT of God then, and what the
theologians have been  magnifying  with  so  great
homage and almost idolatry, is not, after all, as we
here  discover, a perfect institute  in The law no peritself, and was never meant to be.  It  feect institute.
has one inevitable, necessary imperfection, open to
all discovery.  (1.) That it proposes to work only by
penal enforcements, making thleir appeal to self-interested motive and that only, and holding every subject, as far as it goes, fast down upon self-consideration; so that acting by itself alone it will never bring
the subject on to a way of duty fieely chosen for its
own sake. (2.) That it works for tile most part, and
must, by  negative statutes that forbid, and not by
positive that command.  Thus, talking    The law is
for example the ten commandmlents, we negative mostly.
find them just where all low-gv —.rounded evil lliilds are
wont to pitchl their umoralities; saying, " thou shalt
not,   tthou shalt not," in their every article save
the fifth.  There was, of course, no tiaining into
life, under these mere negatives.  If they were able
to keep tile low-bred sinners of Israel back fronm
being as bad as they otherwise might be, and level
them up to a condition of society politically tolerable,
it was all that could be expected, though here and
there sonme one, taken by the Spirit, might be carried
by, into  something higller.  If they undclertook to
keep thle whllol:  tallblee of staltutte, in a way of puncti10




110                  LAW  AND
lionus observance, it -would only make them legalists,
and chain them  down to that mere  statute-keeping
kind of virtue.  The precise  difficulty we have here
with the law is, in fact, that it was only as good and
high as it could be; for the people of that first age
could not even'taklce the sense of any thing above
their mental range.  Thus Ezekiel, the prophet, tells
the people expressly that " God gave themm  statutes
not goodcl,'"  or the best, probably because  they
were too low in their perceptions to be commanded
by any thing better.  (3.) It is another large subNo great in- traction from  the  onomos or the statutespiration.   mode  of impersonal, tabulated  rnlbe
that it brings no inspirations, and yokes tlhe subject
to God by no faith climbing into the sense of his
friendship.  If there were no God back of the law,
the case would not be  lifSerent, save that his idea,
comilng in by way of authority, adds more stringency
to the rules enforced.  What then is more forlorn to
think of, than that such a creature as man, made to
be filled with deific inspirations, and waited onward
in. the everlasting liberties of the righteousness of
God, is shut clown thus under a law-state whic1h provides no stimulations, or visitations of life, more
ennobling than nmere authority and fear?  I say these
things, observe, in no  wTay of complaint.  The law is
just as good as it can be, doing just all for t1he subject in t.he way of legal benefit that it can.  There
is no possible repair of the deficit, but the bringing
* Ezekiel xx, 25.




COMIMANDMENT.                    11
in of a better hope.  (4.) A mere law regimen is of
necessity  in scant  imeasur'e, Lolding  the principal
ideas of love and right in a s1loirt way     Stunted by
that does not -measure -thoem  by God's want of percepmeasures, but by the imeasures of nat- tion.
ural thonught in men and the  natural standarcds of
society.  God's intentious  ini the law  are scanted, of
course, by no such measures, but the mnoral ideas of
men will be, till they are taklen up out of the law and
above it, by thle second stage of discipline to be providecd in the commandiment.
Passing onward now  to this second stage, we hlave
it as our next point to consider tile        Offices and
offices and uses of the comnmandnmel-lt uses of thle conChrlist is giving us to keep as our new  mandment.
standard.  And here we are to notice, first, the enlarged  spread of tile standard.  Under the  terms
love and riyhteolussness Christ goes a full day's journey,
so to speak, beyond tile law as held in nen's thoughts,
opening a vast province of culture, where the evallgelic richles and liberties are gloriously enlarged and
widened in their flow.  According  to the merely
human, or legally humanized  notions, love mieans only
love to onr neiTghbor on the footing of our fellow
nature.  Tile wNord of Clhrist goes fartler-" But I
say  unto you love your enemies, bless themz  that
cUrse you, do good to them  that hate you, aind pray
for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.."
Tmhe law  of natural society is, love the lovely, and




112                   LAW AND
tlhe law  of God conceived  under that restriction
amounts to scarcely more than a law  of good society.
But Christ proposes a nobler and more
Love.
sovereign love-love the rllloeve!y, the
base, tle wicked, the hateful, the disgustfil-instituting thllus a new  divine order of love in sacrifice,
and cost, and patience.  This is the love that goes
under, and up through evil, and  regenerates all it
touches; heaving, as it were, every mountain  of incumbrance that sin has piled on tile worll.  So aamin
there is a righteousness in Chlrist's view
Iti~glteousness.
that the Scribes and Pharisees had not
under the law in their most snluerstitious observance
of it, and scarcely better I fear is our hIalf-colmmellllcial
righteousness, where we assume that right   means
only what is fair, equitable, or just.  To  Christ
there is no right or righteousness that does not go
a long way farther.  iNo man is in the rigllt, or up to
the right, who is not ready for sacrifice and the enduring of cost for the ill-deserving.  And hence it is
that our Great Master is pronounced, as it were, on
cliscovery to the world —-  Jesus Christ tle righteous"
— and the definite article is prefixed, to challenge for
him  his pre-eminent distinction.  Tence, also, that
other pronouncement not less remarkable, " faithlfll
and righteons — [not just, but rihllteous] to forgive us
our sins;" as if God would not think himself comnpletely righteous in his Son, were there any utimost
sacrifice and cost lie could not undergo for thle forgiveness of sins.




COM IMA.NDMENT.                  113
And what a chapter is opened for us here, in these
words love and right, as they will henefoirth be represented in the. life of Christ by commandment.  HIow
far on do they reach beyonrd the measures of the
merely legal code.  In this legal code we live, as
it were, outside of God, under the statute, shrunken
up, and shriveled by the stringency of mere penal
enforcement.  Here, in1 the commlandment, we live
inside, where we range in glorious enlargenment by
God's measures, and are no more scanted in love and
right by the meager notions, whether of Pharisees or
ethical professors.
Secondly, there is) I think, sufficient distinctness in
the fact to require some distinct notice of it, that
we not only come abroad here into wider and more
enriched ways of excellence, but that we hlave our
discipline  by  a different  and  more  Leaving the
genial method.   We leave the  mere          law.
tabulated, impersonal, statutory way of rule, and pass
out into a way of conniandmrent that is personal,
and is, in fact, the rounded  all-containing sway of
persoMality itself.  In simply being whlat it is, it is
commnclndment, and word, and  way, and yoke, mlade
easy;  for it is tlhe living and dying Christ in whom all
the authorities and captivating majesties of good are
contained.  The intimllidations are gone by, at least
for the time.  The word is a -word of Christly inspiration-take my yoke, take up my cross, wallk in my
way, as I live, live with rme, as I die, be joined to lme
in death.  Our life code is given in the person of
10



114                  LAW  AND
Jesus, and  in that Uivizg booze gets authority to be
our commandmluent.  And it is a way of comman.ldment that leaves us free, nay that makes us free.
Legal obedience is gone by forever.  Impulse, inspiration, duties that are imeat and  drinkl-thiese are
the tide sweep of the new life quickenecd in us.  The
Son makes us free, and tlherefore we are free indeed.
The Spirit goes with the word and commandment, as
it does not with the law, wafting us onward, and
where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.  NTay
the law itself, if we use that word, being in us no
more by enforcement, is become the perfect law of
liberty.  And so the result is that when we are
engaged to keep the commandll ent of Jesus, we have
it keeping us, floating us on, tiding us in upon tlhe
divine fullness whllere we rest.
There is yet a third consideration that must not be
Obedience by omitted; viz., that the commallndment
faith.   difeirs from the law as being offered to
faith.  The law is apprehenclded  or expected to be,
only as all statutes are; that is by ocular inspection,
audible pronouncement, andc other like natural ways
of coguition.  Gut the Christ-law, or comnlanda:lent
is given to faith, even as Christ himself is, for in fact
it is himself in the scope of its ideas and resulting
obligations.  It has no penal sanctions whatever, but
spealkingl directly to faith it offers promise, always
promnise, worlking  thus by  comforts, inspirations,
openings upwards into God.  In this way, making
its appeal to faith, it enlarges, lifts, kindles withl




COMMANDMENT.                   115
energy such as belongs to the Mlighty  Great One
whose commandment and way of life it has chosen.
Full account is made in. this way of the fact that faith
is the sunmmit faculty and upper sense of the mind;
that by which all greatest, highest, things enter into
mortals. Looking in here from afar over tlhe battlements into the eternal city, it is as if the word of faith
had taken ns nup thither. We enter, as it were beforehand, by a kind of anticipative apprellension, or
visional beatitude. But the law could not begin at
faith. What could it say addressing faith? Even the
God  of the law must take the prudential footing
in it, setting in authority by enforcements of fear,
and causing sins to wince by their bondages and
dreaded wages.  Faith  gets no  chance till after
another chapter is opened, where some new grace of
life is given to be accepted, or offered to be believed
in. The good God coming in mercy and sacrifice to
save-he only signals to faith. But if the law were
to say believe, setting up statutes for it in penalty,
there would certainly be a very wide chasm between
that kind of artillery and the believing required.
III. We come now to the third and last point in
our proposed explication; viz., the re- The relations
lation of the Law and the Command-  of the two.
mnent to each  other.  They have a common  object, there  is to be no  doubt of that;  viz., to
establish  right  andc finish  up  a truly ennobled
character of deific righteousness in mankind.  But
they never did it, or proposed to do it, by either, in




116                 LAW  AND
its own separate agency.  In the first place, the law,
it is agreedl, makes no righteousness of its own.
Indeed, it is even declared to be the letter that killeth
-orlained unto life, but found to be unto death.  I
think too we can see beforehand, that anly table of
statute working by itself, and forcing on virtues by
motives in the  nature of retribution, must bring
failure  and  precipitation; though even  that may
become the necessary footing of a new  second-stage
movement forward.  Be it so, still they are both in
line together, moving, each in its way, on the conmmon
interest of character.  By one is the knowledge  of
sin, by the other the deliverance from  it; and the
knowledge being necessary to the dcleliverance, has a
certain common value with  it.  We shall discover
thus, as regards the relative action of the two great
factors, law  and commandment, that the law is just
as necessary to the result as the commandment, and
that the latter, taken by itself, can do as little as the
law by itself.  The expectation was, and is, that a beginning mnade under the latter and the legal intimidations, will stamp in such imprints of authority and
obligation, and raise such storms of disorder and wild
remorse within, when they are violated, that the subject, driven out of all confidence in himself, will be
casting about for almost any deliverance from  the
dreadful precipitation that is thrusting him  down.
Whereupon it is the plan to bring Ihim out and up
by his faith in the commandment, or second stage
of discipline, into a state of new-born life. So that,




COMMANDIENT.                    117
between the two, and by one as truly as the other, the
great final end of liberty and holy character will be
consummated.  If we say fulfilled, we mean tile same
thing; for the law, when even calready broken, is to be
fulfilled in the commandment as truly and totally as
if it had never been brolken; perhaps the more completely fulfilled that, after the breach, exasperated
longings, and heart-sinking bondages, and writhings
of remorse, will have created a hell in the mind, that
is to be the eternal possibility of juster apprehensions
and vaster yearnings; such as will be spanning
forever the chasm  that the breach has imade.
It needs also to be -notedl as regards the two great
factors, law  and  commandment, that   ne a factor in
one is a factor in natnre and among nature, the other
natural causes, and the other super- spernatural.
natural.  The apostle  shows them  working  both
toneether-the  weakness  of  one and  the relative
miglht of the other.' For what thle law  could not
do, in that it was weak through the flesh "-that is
thronugh the mere constitution-life in which both law
and penalty are to get their pronounncement-" God
sending  his own  Son  in  the  likeness of sinful
flesh, condemned sin in thle flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in llS, who walk
not after the flesh) but after the Spirit."   Every
thing  is wizeak  on the footing of law, but every
thing  begun  tllere  triumphs in  the  supernatural
vigor of the Spirit; for the commandment, as being
spirit and truth, is supernatural vigoritself.  Penal




118         IMPORTANT  ANALOGIES
causations are the power in the one, and it is a dreadful
power; supernatural'ministrations, separating  the
gulltRy friom  their hidden poisons and their low-brel
disabilities, are the  power in tlhe other.  Natural
causes, appointed to avenge the law, suffer no violence
or displacemlent by tile supernatural grace, but this
latter visitation, quickening good in the man and the
man to good, in a Imanner of silent sovereignlty, makes
the natural causes slacken their hold on him and let
him forth made whole and free.
The law, it is important to add, is inI this view
Law never  never abolished or annulled by the cornabolished.   mandment, though it is a common way
of the evangelic teaching to very nearly say it.  Some
may think it is even said by the scripture; as where
it is declared, "l For there is verily a disannulling of
the commandment going before, for the weakness and
unprofitableness thereof; for the law made nothing
perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did."'*
But this is not said of the moral-law table, as will be
seen at a glance by reference to the passage, but of
the ceremonial law, and specially of tile priesthoodl
which was only a ligllter and very subordinate part
of the law, that was added, ill fact, to be taklen away.
There is indeed a single passage, it must be allowed,
where the law side of the double millistration we are
discussing is spoken of as being clone away-" For
if that wlhich is dcone away was glorious, munch more
that which rnemaineth is glorious."'t  But the real fact
* Heb. vii, 18-19.  t 2 Cor. iii, 11.




IN  C O MAfMT  ON  LIFE.         119
here intended is, beyond a question, that the new free
life of the commandment takes away the subject from
the law, lii 10not tle law  f'om the slubject.  Just as
th1e same apostle says, (" Te are becomle dead to the
law by the body  of Christ."<' H}e does not say for the
law is become dead to you, but ye are become dead
to the law. And yet in still another place he does
even speak of thle law itself as dead. "' But now we
are delivered from  the law, that being dead wherein
we were held, that we should serve in newness of
spirit and not in the oldness of the letter."t  Yet
even here he plainly enoulgh does not mean that the
law is abrogated and gone, in that sense dead, but only
that, in practical living, we go over from the old to
the new, and have our central homage there. [Plainly
enough the law of God never can be taken away
fromi any world or creature; for with it, in close company, goes abroad all the conserving principle, moral
and physical, in whichll God's king5dom stands.
A  thousand crosses, ransoms, atonements, would
leave it exactly where it was. The taking away of
sin was possible, but no taking away of the law.
Tile sacrifice of Calvary itself, set against the law,
would have had as little effect on it as upon the
principles of Euclid.  Thetefore we must never allow
to be slid into our secret apprehension, back of
thought, any most latent feeling that God is at work
in his Son to mend, or mitigate, or get us by, tle
law. It is whole as it ever was. Broken oft, as in
I Romans vii, 4.    t Romans vii, 6.




120         IMPORTANT  ANALOGIES
figure, it is yet not flawed; condemning still and
always every thling in principle it has condemned.;
certain to outlast the world, even as it lived before the
world in the eternal bosom of God.
II.
This very specific and scriptural exposition of the
two great factors, the comnlandmcllent and the law,
and their relative work and office, is a gatllering-up
of material, it will be understood, for tile great Legal
What this ex- Settlement or Consullmation whlich is
position is fbr. the proposed subject of our inquiry.
But we are not yet ready to use this material to the
best advantage, and can not be till we have gone over
another field not scriptural, and brougllt ill the rich
fund of matters there supplied for our help.  KInowing, as we all do, that-God's -way, in casting the
molds of things, is to show us first what is natural,
and afterwards what is spiritual, as it may be signified
thereby; to show us things in human life and society
set to represent, by analogic correspondences, things
of the Spirit and things Celestial, making always the
lower to be interpreters of the higher-nmen's forgivenesses, of God's forgivenesses-the family, of God's
great Fatherhood-the state, of God's infinite kingdom —knowing this, I say, it is the more remarkable
that we miss observing the numerous analogies of law
and gospel continually crowded upon us in our natural
and earthly state. It can'not be that these low-ranging, sub-atoning  ways of discipline, all beginning




IN  COMMON  LIFE.                121
with law and meant to be issned in liberty, have no
important lessons to give us in the field of religion.
Let n-me call attention to a few of tile numerous examples.
I begin with the training of childhoodl, where the
two factors, authority and love, penal  Mother and
constraint and a naturally vicarious ten-    child.
derness in the mother, work together, as the law and
commandment, making up the compound discipline
that is to establish the obedience of the child.  She
goes to her charge thus, in the endeavor to make her
child the man lihe should be. But the restive boy, just
passing out of infancy, wonders that le must be so continually hampered by restrictions. I-le loses temper
once an hour, stands looking doggedly down when
commandedt and shakes off the hand that is kindly
put upon himl. A  little farther on he debates every
tlhing, grows irascible and stormy that he can not
have his own way, when he knows so well himself
exactly what he wants! Which is the most vexatious,
the doing required of him, or the doing forbidden him,
it may be difficult to say; enough that he is twisting all
the while in one sort of annoyance or the other.  Of
course there  is a difference of temperament in
children, and a great many mothers are indiscreet in
the over-multiplication of things forbidden.  Still,
where the adminiistration is most considerate  and
most tenderly faithful,  there will often be stormy
scenes of impatience, and  sometimes punishment
will be unavoidable.  Old enough to sympathize with
11




122         IMPORTANT  ANALOGIES
himselif and galled, as lie thinliks, by real chains, his
very sentiment becomes a pain; is there no relief?
But there comles along by and by, later than  -we
should expect, and late enough to cost his mother
hours of great anxiety, a stray thought in a different
key.  Perhaps it is suggested by what has been
observed  in some other faitily, where a comrade
child is glad  and bright in the sunshine of his
mother's control. ]Now begins revision at the question, not unlikely, is nmy nmother less good than his?
is her control less faithfinlly meant? L might I not as
well be happy and sunny mnyself? And so the result
is that the boy who, at eight years of age, was tearing
himself against every point of maternal restriction,
will finally, at thirty, obey every so-ftest wish of his
mothler as if it were an edict, and will even catch it
by anticipation  before it is expressed.  Probably
the old struggles of his childclood, and the fight of
impatience under his mother's law, are so far gone by
now  as scarcely to be remembered.  And yet that
rule stays by him  still, deep down, central, silent,
and colmlandinig, as it were, in tile very homages of
his grown up sonship.  The fears are gone out, the
discipline is over, all the frictions by which she was
rubbing in the moral of her authority, are spent, but
her motherly right is even the more decisively asserted now  that it makes no self-assertion at all.
This remarkable change is often noticed, and is generally ascribed, I think, to the habit principle.  [But
habit only fastens what has been the way of practice.




IN  COMMON  LIFE,                123
The man therefore ought to be only more doggedly
set in his opposition to rule and authority, because of
the impatience of his childhood. lie would be, if lhe
had  not somlehow  found  his way  out into  the
obedience of liberty.  That transition clearly was not
made by habit, but the habit he is now in, if we call
it by that name, was rather begun itself at the transition.  The spontaneous homage lie now pays to his
mother is pure liberty, and has no legal quality
whatever, save that her law is tacitly centered in him
and he knows it not.
From the family we pass to the school. The behavior here is prescribed  by rule, the   The school
hours and times are fixed, the lessons    discipline.
are appointed. Play meantime is held in embargo,
and idleness put undcler spur. And the result is very
commonly that the whole affair is distasteful-a
bondage, a dreariness-and  all the books, and prescribed lessons, a drug.  And the very reason is that
knowledoge has now to be sought by law before it is
wanted by appetite.  Every thing goes on by statute,
and of course drags heavily.  And so it will be, till
sone grand mind-loving soul comes out in the MBlaster,
making study, Arnold-wise, of the boy, to find what
is in him  and put him  in his line of promise.
The result is now that a fire is kindled and a new
capacity is born.  Ceasing to be a drudge, he now
begins to hunger after knowledge itself, set on by
devotion to study for its own sake, as he once could
not thilik it possible to be.  Sometimes this en



12-1        IMPORTANT  ANALOGIES
thusiasm gets kindled very late.  But after the firo
once begins to  blaze, tlhere  will not be  hlours
enough  in day and night together, to satisfy the
appetite engaged.  The school is now  gone by, we
say, the oldc day of fixed lessons and fixed hours,
and compelled digging at the bools —all the legal ways
of the drill —are spent, and yet we shall come much
nearer to the true conception, if we say they are all
fulfilled substantially  now  in the self-prompted endeavor and free play of liberty.  IKnowledge is now
desired and study pursued for its own sake —just
what the old law  drill of the lessons was for, but
could not bring to pass, till the inspirations came, and
then the work was done.
Turning in still another direction,  we enconnter
Labor and the the institute of labor, organized from
curse.   the beginning by a law that undertakes
the training of men correctively towards ways of
indclustry, and reformnatively out of ways of selfindulgence, which is the bane of all responsibility
and character.  There is no law more truly beneficent.
We call it the law  of thle curse, and rightly, but it
is none the less truly beneficent on  that account.
luscular toil or labor is naturally irksome to men,
and the sweat of the brow is no poputlar institution.
All the worse when compelled  by the grinding stress
of necessity. Any law of work, driven home by that
kind of enforcement, is justly called a curse. But
cursed as the ground is, and cursed as the toil, it is
yet a right good curse, as all workers discover, when




IN  COMMON  LIFE.                  125
they find their way on, througll tlhe compulsions of
work, into the liberties.  When the sense of skill is
waked and the sense of creatorship, when a home is
endowed and tile acres in culture smile their glad
acknowledgment, when children arrive and the little
patrons of the cradle alnd the table look their blessinlg, the drudgery, that was, becomes a privilege, the
industry, a song.   The worker's greatest difficulty
now  is to  set himself limits and take the needed
rest.  To him  now  there is no- curse in lalor.  I-e
scarcely  sees, perhaps  stoutly  denies, the  worldbligllht of transgression itself.  It is even as if thllat
world-blight law were taken clean away; so grandly
is it fulfilled and fulfilling, as regards iho moral intent
of it, in the joyous and free industries that are become the life of his life-drudgeries all in their lawstate, now become the state of play.
Again, we meet another strangely impressive example in the army discipline.  It begins with a code
of rules or camp orders, precise, in-    The army
flexible, unconditionally  severe.   The    discipline.
problem  of the discipline is first of all to mlake the
soldier impassive, and so the squadron, great or small,
a machine.  If the surgeon rates a man as well, he is
well. HI-e is loatfing if lie is not on parade at the
call, and must answer for it.  If his eye is rolling
about and not fixed, if he fumbles inattentively in1
his drill, or because of the numbness of his hands, if
he makes easy times for one foot instead of standing
square on bothll, let himl be put in arrest.   That
1!-*X




126         IMPORTANT  ANALOGIES
homlesick boy soldier who wept himself asleep  on
guardl last night,  thinking of hlis mother, was tried
this morning  and  is to  be shot a'fter breal kflst
to-morrow. Pitilessly hard this law  of the  camlp.
Perlhaps lthere is no element of justice in it, but if
not, there is at bottom  a dread military necessity,
and by and by the men themrselves will discover it.
They will have a commilander, too, not unlikely, who
is much applauded foir his fine heroic bearing in somle
late battle, and will they not begin to be proud of
himr?  HIaving too a great cause, ancd doingf service
with their life for a great country, they will talk their
hearts into magnitude by the same, till thle tide of
sentiment, rising  high i1 their talk, makes their flBag
a power in the beating of their pulse.  So that wllhen
the war heat finally is kindled, as it will be soon,
nobody tfinkils any longer of the tough law discipline
at which the soldier-life began; foir that was meant
to kill'out all the self-indulgences and private wills,
and makh-e clean sweep of all the crotchets and homebred likings, that could not be taken by tIle military
inlSpirations. And now whlen it is doneand the lawforce of the beginning' appears to be quite gone by,
how  conspicuous will it bue thlat, in being seenmingly forgot, it is being only more grandly fulfilled,
than if it were felt in the still unwelcolme stress of
its intimidations.  But nothing any longer goes by
the old camp law; for the men will now comnmand
themselves, or'bid their leader coummand them, into
rougllher and more stringent services than the law




IN  COMIMON  LIFE                 127
itself could name.  Imagine the forlorn hope call to
be now issuedl and that volunteers are waited for;
behold every man is ready to go for his company,
and all insist on being talken.  Why, the christian
lmartyrs, going in before magistrates to confess Christ
and die, are scarcely dishonored by comparison with
these nmen who, to keep tile commn-andment of their
leader, imnarch out into the jaws of death, and consent
to be offered with him  for their country.  The old
precisional drill, that came so hard upon the soldier
at first, it will now be seen is even impotent, in comparison with the new army spirit by which it is superseded.  Which  new  force can march the men
through  rivers up to their waist, and bring them out
not knowing they are wet; or can send them to sleep
without rations, after a hard day's battle, not knowingl
they are lihungry. They are in the cause; and all such
things are the concern of the cause, not theirs.  True
the old drill is still on hand, but the men know it
only as a far-off underground matter that is well
enough to be remembered, but no spring of action
longer.
We have yet one more example, viz., that which
may be cited from  the analogies of the    The civil
civil state.  Iere  we strike an out-        state.
spreading argumlllent that is wide as the world; for
the civil state comprehends all the nations, societies,
and ages of humanity. In one view it is a condition
hbased in the necessity of a supreme order, and is,
therefore, written  tdown by revelation itself as " thlle




128     CONSID)ERATIONS  ItEGARDING
ordinance of God;" headed by a magistrate in God's
name, who is authorized "to bear the sword," and not
"bear it in vain."  The liabilities of this enforced
rule are some of theml heavy, such as those for example of military duty and taxation, and the whole
scheme of order, considered as maintained by penal
sanctions, is naturally unpopular.  Yet not as unpopular as we should think, and likely enough to
be not unpopular at all.  Thus we have always on
hand, in these mIodern times, the question of liberty
and law; and a great many have not learned as yet
what liberty is.  They think it is exemption from
law, and that having no law is the true way to be
free. Whereas the greatest liberty is where there is
most law needing least enforcement; where in fact
tl-le penalties are forgot, and well nigh the precept too; so quietly does it sleep back  of punblic
mlemory. Who of us now, but the mlalefactors and
felons wanting to be safe in erime, ever feel a straw's
Aweight of severity in the law, or even think of it as
law at all. It is light as air to us, and not less free.
~WTe altogether love tile shelter of the magistracy,
and have it as one of our chief cares to provide
a magistracy for ourselves, going into their election
with the greatest vehemence of endeavor, as for what
we most intensely value.  And then our homages
will be to them, scarcely at all to the law.  ~We
think of them never as dynasties farming their people
and the laws for their owmn benefit.  We hlave not
even a jealousy left of that oldl tyranmt magistlracy




THESE ANALOGIE S.                 129
once so oppressive.  But we run our recollections
back to such great chiefs of statesmanship as VWillilam  of Hollandc  and Cromwell, and Washlingtonl
and the mlinor lights closer at hand, who undertalie
to lead the people fobr their good.  Such mlagistiracy
we love and trust, and forgetting the law  we only
think of liberty.
Now by so many instances,'which might be largely.increased in number, I have undertaken to show how
the grand  analogy of letter and  spirit, law  and
liberty, or law and free comnmandmcent, runs through
all the organific discipline of life and society. Every
tiing goes on by this double ministration.  By these
two factors, one preparing the other, and the other
partly replacing and completely fulfilling  the one,
whatever is most perfect and consummnately free in
character and order, is brought to pass.  In thllis
scale of analogies we go up as it were by so many
stairs, and make our landing  finally, at that last
rising where the sinners of mankind pass up out of
their low dejection, out of their bondage under law,
into liberty and justified life.
I ought, perhaps, to just add, lest we imagine this
kind of material to be now  exhausted by the specificati-ons made, that exactly the samte analogy goes
witl every law of duty and mnorality.  Every virtue
begins at law, and is put lifting there, as a plant
unclergrounld, till it finlally breaks iup through, flowiSering into liberty. Thus it is with temlperate living,




130     CONSIDERATIONS  REGARDING
frugality, simplicity of dress, truth of character, aind
withl all the vices to be kept down-luxury, sensuality, show, covetousness, revenge and jealousy, popularity-loving  and  ambition, insincerity anid hypocrisy.  A  law  goes with every commnon virtue, aicnd
against every corresponding vice, laying on heavy
coercions of penal consequence in the first stages of
experience, to be no more sensibly felt, after thle
virtue is set fast, aCnd the spontanreous waft of duty is
come. It is only not clear always, in these innnmllirable varieties of ethical discipline, by what means or
modes of transition, the spontaneous condition will be
reached.   Probably the means will be occasional
and various.
Having made this excursion among the analogical
sub-gospels of our discipline, let us gather up now
solue of the helps and coincidences afforded, to assist
our argulnent in the main question. We find then,
first of all, a two-factor method, like that of law and
grace, employed in  almost every  sort of training
wanted for the advancement of our human state. A
beginnring is made with law and legal enforcement,
and an expectation had of bringing out the subject, by
some more inspiring  influence added, in a way of
spontaneous obedience, which, forgetting the coercion,
mindls only the principle.  A transition is to be made
froml principle enforced by statute, to principle beheldc
in its own attractions and accepted in love for its
own sake.  The good int'ended in the first stage is
perfected in the second as a way of liberty; where




THESE  ANALOGIES.                  131
the subjects are thle more obedient because they are
fiee, and the more free because they are obedient.:But again, the free state, when it is reached,  makes
no compensation to the law-state, and the law-state
makes no demand of satisfaeteion for tile penalties
gone by or discontinued.  Good soIns, and scholars,
and worklrers, and soldiers, and subjects, are at liberty
to be good, wit'hout any complaint froml0 the law they
lhave broken, or any demand of compensation for
the penal sanctions thrown out of right  No comipensaby their becoming so.  The wayward  tiorl wanted.
child of his mother, who is grown up into a dutiful
manhood, b]:as a long debtor-score stringing back over
the lapse of years, but what the reclkoning of so munch
wrong and deservecl chastisement may be, neither
she nor lie can tell.  And ller law makles no demand
of satisfaction; neither has any body so mnuch as a
thought of damage to the maternal authority, requiring to be made good.  In all these sub-gospel cases,
tihe legal and coercive sanctions go by, as it were,
because of their successes; that is because their aims
and uses are fuilfilled, or come to pass.  WXhat better
can law do, as a moral institute, any where, than to
show itself a basis of freedom  in tihe inspirations of
duty.  It is represented by the great general, who,
having  gained thle saving of his country, is not gone
out of lhonor and consequence, because lie has not
still his country to save.
Once more, it is important to observe that, in these
analogic ctases and examples, thle penal enforelenlents




132           GENERAL STATEMENT
appointed are never destructively meant.  They are
Thle penal never plunitive, but only coercive and
sanctions never corrective.  They have it for their very
destructive.                  v
simple office to give cogency to tile lawfbrce, and prepare that assent which makes room  for
the uncoercive, firee-moving agencies, to finish out the
duties in their inspirations'.  The two kinds of action
are unlike in the last degree, and yet they are concurrent; one thrusting on froml behind by coercive
pushes of enforcement, and the other drawing on by
the fervid attractions of love and promise.  Both
together make up the score of so mnany kinds of discipline, strong in their conjunction, weak or even null
in their single operation.  Certain evils that we call
retributive, such as the woes and horrible exasperations of intemperate drink, do appear, it is true, to be
too dreadfully  overmastering in their dispossessing
force, to be thought of as promotives in any sense of
the virtues rejected.  And yet we may very well
ask, what else but such a cogency of warning  can
preventively tame the appetite for drink?  and what
but such a hell in the mind afterward, can  ever
burn a way out of thrall into sobriety and reason?
However nearly destructive  any such penal mlotive
may seeml, there is, after all, no reason to distrust the
beneficence of it.  For if any one suggests the possibility of a plan wbich exposes to no such appetite or
d anger, that is not God's way; he never lets go a
virtue or excuses fronm it, because it will have to
imaster a great peril, but considers rather that lihe gives




FOR  TIIEtWHOLE  SUBJECT.               133
us greater opportunity according to the greatness of
the peril.  And how cheap and slack the poor lworld's
figure would be, going loose in a virtute tliIat does
not include the grand, self-keeping inastelrhood and
majesty of continence.
III.
We pass over now to the main subject for which
this excursion has been made; viz., God's -twofold
iway of training under his law, and the redemnptive grace in his Son.  The matter of The gospel way
this training, as we now perceive, is not  not peculiar.
so peculiar as to make it a case whllolly by itself, but
it holds a place, instead, at the head of a vast, widespread systeim   of analogies that, in their lower grade,
look up  to  be its interpreters.  It  is  grounded
partly, at least, in the same necessities and reasons,
though  moving  in a  scale so transcendent, as to
scarcely allow the relationship of its hulnmbler k-insmen
to be observed.  Here, in this higher discipline, we
are asking always What of the law?-in particular,
what is to be  apprehended for it in redemption.?
what losses will occur to its authority? what compensations will be neededl   what satisfactions must
be provided?   Where one tlling, at least, is quite
certain beforehand, which we mnay have our con-fort
in, carryilng it on with uss  viz., that it is the law of
God, and is not likely to go down, wlhatever we miay
say, or omit to say, or think, or omit to think, concerning  it.




134         THE  PENALLY  COERCIVE
That we may have our mark beforie us, and steady
our thought by it, in the inquiries that remain, I nlow
set forth in formnal statenment tile followinlg conclusion,
which-has been looming up more and mnore distinctly
General state- lupol 11 il  he all t ioe previous approaches.
meot.   [/lat z~our poresent state of flJe, or psrobcation, is a stace of penzaily coercive (discilrw1-ie,  in which tie
cazw, broken by sinl', is sq/jficieltly co7nseccrated by Chlrist,
incarnatect i;nto  and  co-operatinzg  zvith it, -in  his life
and cross.
Three points in this proposed sumlmation require
to be distinctly stated.
I. The penally coercive discipline.  It is not penal,
of counrse, or penalty, in any such sense that it must
The coorcive  be destruction, and can not be discidiscipline.  pline.  In  calling it discipline, I call
it schooling; for schooling is what we mean by discipline.  Calling  it our schoolmaster to bring us to
Christ, we mean the same thing; viz., that it is promotive, corrective, coercive, no  matter  what our
deserts may be, or what penalties in the principle of
desert they Awould bring us.  I use the terms penally
coercive discipline,' in the  understanding that our
training toward God is carried on undler a motivity
thus named, which is not judicially penal, and is not
neant to be; for it is not graded by the desert of
actions, but by what is wanted for the fuiture benefit
and due correction of the actors.   I use the termi
penally coercive, because there is a law sanction in the
discipline, cominig back  upon  actions, in  a certa:inl




DISCIPLINE  DESCRIBED.                  135
way of retaliation or retributive consequence, without being a sabstantive mIeas-ure of their ill-desert;
tile object being not any  making up of award, but
the inmaking us aware of wilhat \we are doinlg and becoming.  It is the lesson we take in Dnr schoolig,' to
i-?make us understand, stage by stage, ourselves  and
the law, and to be an efcient element in securing  our
obedience.
What is penal in our discipline would be penalty,
if it were not discipline; nay, it would  be justice
itself; i. e., justice in its nature, if not in its measure.
For it is exactly what tle laws of natural consequenep
inflict in the name of justice; save that here% in this
temporal and mortal  discipline, they, are colfronted by  a whole  array  of restraining,  mnitigating,
interspacing  pow-ers — Christ, and  the Holy Spirit,
and the Word, andl the Chm:ch, and can all-tempering
Chlristly providence-converted  in that manner into
another sort of economy that, for tlie present, i1ma:kes
nothing of desert and  every thing of benefit,  and
whiich  tlherefore  we call discipline, penally corrective discipline, because it is so fear penal as will make
it mnost corrective.
Only it requires to le  understood thlat, in beeing
set for beanefit and not for punishmentt, tfhere is still,
attimes, arn awful severity in it, and Greatness of the
desolationls wroughlt by it, that seemn   dici1iline.
to evein smoke with judgment.  It clearly  enough
should be so; for a pemnally corrective discipline supposes no delicate handlinl',.  Ilow  shall sin be re



136         THE  PENALLY  COERCIVE
vealed to  itself, save in  forbidding  and  frightful
pictures —in diseased bodies, in dclistenpered thllought,
misadjusted  mind, exasperated pa'ssion, by incapacities  and bondages, anxieties, coinlotions, terrors
of the air and of the ground.  Sometimes the picture will almost take on a look of destruction; because only what is close upon destruction has force
enouglh to be decisive.  The woes thus of our merely
mental experience  sometimes bear an expression of
such unpitying severity as compels us even to shudder,
in allowing that God is represented in them. Still they
are coercive only, and not penal, and it is not for us
to say, in any case, that they are more severe than
they need be.
By this fearful stress of discipline, without judicial
penalty, the due coercive power has been and is to be
mlaintained.  The law  requires no properly judicial
severities for its better enforcement.  There is, indeed,
a justice penalty, or state of penalty, provided for in
God's causations, that is to come into  range when
the other world opens, but it has been held back here,
just to make this a world of probation, as otherwise
it could not be.  Thlere are here no awards of judgment to be taken out of the way, but the coercive
side of the law, and the free grace side of the conimlandment,  work on together, for the same result of
benefit; just as in thle lmumbler analogies I have cited
fiom our common life, the law  side keeps its footing'
even after the liberty has come.   Who has ever
thoug-lt it necessary, in the school, to stop at sonme




DISCIPLINE  DESCRIBED.                137
given point, and take away the coercive rule, to let
the free application begin?
If now it be objected tllat we are already cast, or
held in detention, by the bonds of penalty, which
must be somehow  taken off before we  The two factors
are free to any thing good, that is a have no separate
mode of speaking which supposes that working.
tlhe law has no function left since the fall but to kill;
and that, being once dead, there is nothing left for us
but to stay by our death, till another dispensation,
working also by itself, appears, to bring us life.:But
th.e two are not given to work separately in this maInner, but to work together in composing a complex
discipline-a coercive law  power, to be borne up and
consummated by a life-giving personal grace; anld a
personal-grace power, to be made welcome and efficient by the coercive and appalling arguments of
the law.  Otherwise, if the two have no joint office,
the law has really no benign efficacy at all; it has
nothing to do, and never had, but to condemn and
kill.  We are bound, in just deference to God, to
look for something different, and we have no right to
be satisfied till we findc some righteous moving of
benefit in it. iAs we do, when we find it workling
even in the cross itself, and colmposing  a discipli.ne
with it, for the training and exercise of chllacter.
True it is declared to be a killing or slaying powuTer,
but we must not hold the figure too literally.  As a
mere legal discipline, taken by itself, it would do this
and this only.  It was never meant to be thus taken,
12*




138         NO  ISSUE  FOR  JUSTICE
but to be a factor of coercion, working with the freegrace factor in Christ, and that in turn a factor with
it, both composing the divinely beneficent whole of
discipline togetller.  And if any one may insist on
seeing what place it has for killing in such a work' of
benefitT it Inmuct be enough to say that, while it colmmands for good and good only, its commuand rejected
will be found to be unto death —which is only so far
death as will make it a more convincing and cogent
argument in the discipline.  So as long as the disobedience continnues, it will be piling greater condemnnationsi sublnerging   the will under heavier incapacities, increasing the whlole inward misrule and disorder,
and making the death rmore dead-a more cogently
coercive element, perhaps, for that reason —till finally
the subject, appalled by his condition, and visited by
some unwonted sense of goodness in the  salvation
offered hiim, yields himself tenderly up to that crisis
of discipline which makes it the beginning of a better
mind andl life.  And no matter at what period in life,
\rwhether early or late, the call to repentance may be
made, tliere is never to be a calling away from the
law; for the cogenllcies of te law are always wanted
as truly as the grace of the commandmient.  They
work together-, and are of right never to be separated;
for the killing  falctor, so  conceived, has a really
beneficent oi(ce, indispensable to the true  result.
There are passages, we knowT-, that appear to set thle
two factors, the killing, and tlle life-giving, completely
apart, as when it is said, " For ye are not under the




MADE  UP IN  THIS LIFE.               139
law but under grace."  Put this is a contrast that
holds good only in a certain general way. The meanuing can not be that we are not under law as trullly as
ever, but only that we are not uncler it as going to be
saved in works of legalismnl by it.  Thie being under
grace too, is not a device to separate us fiom the law
-but to beget us anew in the living spirit of it.
II. It is another point to be considered, as regards
our supposed scheme of discipline, that  Justice after
while it includes the law  of God as a   discipline.
necessary factor in its operation, it must not here be
the law as backed by judicial sanctions, but only by
such casual, ungraduated sanctions as will duly enforce the discipline.  There is accordingly no justice
work done here, as we perfectly know.  We do not
live in a scheme of awards, but in a  scheme of
probatory discipline.  Persons are not treated alike,
nor wrongs alike, neither is any thing kept in the scale
of desert.  God reserves the liberty in his own hands,
to turn our experience here in what way of stress or
modified comfort will best advance his good purpose
in us. At the same time, while nothing is being done
with us here in the terms of justice, we are duly
notified  and certified of a time future, when our
present mixed way of discipline will be over, and we
shall be carried on with our bad ways uncorrected,
if so it must be, to be settled on the hard-pan basis
of justice pure and simple, receiving every man according to his work.
Here we touch the province of justice for the first




140         NO  ISSUE  FOR JUSTICE
time, only we have had a certain forelook of it kept
Kept apprised alive in us always,  wlich has had great
of justice to value according to its cogency.  And
come.        that we may not lose this advantage,
ways have been carefully devised to keep the sense
of this dread future alive in us, in a perpetually distinct remembrance.  For while nothing is ever done
here that belongs to justice, our christianity  itself
undertakes to be a judgment day gospel, and Christ
himself to be the judge of the world.  There is also
going on here always a kind of pre-judicial distribution, which bears a look of justice so impressive, that,
by many, it is taken, and even by many preachers
preached, as being tlle very matter of justice itself.
It comes in as the retaliatory or lex tacioz2is matter of
our experience-tthe same which Christ had in mind
when he said, w; ith what measure ye meet it shall
be measured to you again."  And so much is there
of this retributive style in the facts of the world, that
a, moderately  ingenious person will cite instances
enough for a kind of jucldgment-day show, in vindication of almost any right principle-as if Providence
were concerned, by  a kind  of Gatling  delivery,
to pour the missiles of justice into every offense and
offender.  And there is beside a certain aspect of
validity in these facts of qucsi retribution.  They are
such kind of consequences as go  with  the  great
coercive law  of our discipline, to be its vindicators.
We only mristake when we conceive them to be certain
or inevitable in their occurrence, and to be graded




MADE  UP IN  THIS  LIFE               141
always in the scale of desert.  Put irregular as they
are and desultory, they make an element in the scene
of our disciplinle that is even indispensable.  They
shlow us too that while christiatnity is engagced to clear
us of the dread inexorabilities of justice llere, so that we
may have our trial in liberty, it still manages to keep
us in the clear beholding of theml always, that- we
may not miss the benefit of their cogency.
Put what, in this view, of justice as an element of
our religious experiencee-justice in the What to be said
law, and to be delivered from  in the   of justice.
grace of the cross, and justice' in the personal chlaracter of God   I wish it were not to be expected
that some true believers will miss, in the statement I
amu  giving, any such reference to the justice of God
as they are wont to indulge, when they mlagnify the
exemption Christ has bought for us by his suffering.
I suppose it is partly as a result of this piously mealnt
practice, and partly because the justice of God is
closer to the appreciative grasp of their natural understanding, than any other of God's attributes, that
they are so prone to be forward in their admiration of it.  It comes into their range of thought because it is that attribute of God  whlch uses force,
and so becomes the king attribute; as the thunders
of Olympus made Jupiter the father of the  gods.
Andcl yet the word justice dloes not once occur in the
New  Testament, neither does the word j'ust in any
single case where it relates to Christ and his death,
save in  the  little expression, " that he might be




14 — 2       NO  ISSUE  FOR  JUSTICE
just,,"' where it should be translated ~' tbhat he miight
be righteous." ]  lTeantime it is sufiicienutly clear that
Gocdi Iilself does not rate hiis justice as the fore-fi-ont
at-rib:ute of Iris unature.  -lie does not svy, with sundry
teachleris who are in the particular type of sensibility
t;hat most readily  admires this nearly political attribute, justice first, then love and pity afterward.  He
is willing to have us think of him  as slow to anger,
but not as slow  to righteousness, or love, or patience.
And when he is constrained to let sone fire-temnpest
fall onl m-en, he will call it " his work, his strange
work, his act, his strange act;"t as if he had short
love to it himself.  Neither does he ever mnagnify hiumself in that he cain be evenly just in -his judgmentsdoing always and by all rejectors exactly as they deserve-partly, it nmay be, because lie knows that very
imperfect creatures, such as Twe, can do by our enemies
what they deserve, a great deal more easily than we
can what is better than they deserve.   He will, of
course, be upright before  all things else, but the
dealing backi o1 transgressors what their crimes deserve, is a very cifferent matter.  One is God's righteouslness, the other his justice; one his act, the other
his strange act.  Only not so strange that it ca-n not
be done when nothing else can be.
And still that suchl   a special and fondly disproportioe ate esteem  should be  felt towards  the jus-tice
of God, when Chriist dies to win  our deliveranice
from  it, is even the more remarlkable, when the reason
* Romaas iii, 26.  t Isaiah xxviii, 21.




MIADE  UP  IN  THIIS  LIFE.            143
stated for his intervention is so palpably bad,  so
galling morally to our most inborn convictions.  If
w.e look into the eases of mloral analogy that have
befen  ited-the selhool, thie famlily, the army-we cdo
1iot fid that we are disturbed lest the law may be
_-sing  its penalties because of the obedience and
liberty coming ine.   lWhat were the law and the penalties for, but to be fulfilled in just such obedience
and liberty?  Or take the case of intemperance and
the dread-ful woes tha;t are set to be its powers of
coercion.  Why do not the brothers in humanity who
undertake to bring off a victim, feel bound, as vicarious woesmen, to make up the penalties which are
going to be taken away, by a contribution of pains
that will keep them good.  And if they can not give
in pains of dissipation, why not give in pains of good
behavior?  The absurdity of such a proceeding we see
without difficulty, but when we come up into the field
of religion, we drop out the conception of law as an
element of coercive discipline, and take it simply
as a thermometric register, to record, for justice, the
highest point which  the  heat of transgression has
reached.
And then what has been shown by the said lawregister, is going to claimr the awards of    Justice to be
eternal justice shortly, unless there is a  maintained  by
respite obtained by some grace of penlal comprcsation.
suffering, by which justice is satisfied.  The justice
of the law, or the justice of God, in other words, is
expected to be satisfied by penalties undeserved, con



1&44        NO  ISSUE  FOR JUSTICE
tributed by Christ to pay off penalties deserved!
And by such a transaction as this it is, tlhat the
strangely partial deference to God's justice, of which I
just now spoke, is produced by Christ's death. It
is an operation which buys God's justice out of the
world, where it can no longer be found, and does it
by the pains of Christ, which are the pains of innocence! Why, to stay in suell a world, where the holiness of God is enveloped in such a nimbus of confilsion as to principles, might very well be a hardship.
iBesides what do we understand by a penalty undeserved'?  There is plainly no such thing in rerumn
na.tura.  Penalties deserved are simply what a bad
deserving may create. But whvlere there is no bad
deserving they are out of consequence, and what is
more, even out of possible idea. And again, if penalties undeserved are to pay the debt of justice for
penalties deserved, the two kinds have no common
measure, and how shall we state the equation between
theml  How much straight line is equal to how mliuch
right angle?  I-Tow much pain of remorse may be
duly atoned by how much pain of rheumatism? Shall
we change the word then, shall we put the sufferings of Christ against the sufferings of guilty men?
Innocent  suffering  then, to  be   gotten  somewhere, any where, even out of Christ, is to maike
up  the quantum  which the  law demanclds for all
transgression.  Why, such a total, footing up  infinite, would  even  be an offense.  Sufferings are
too much a drug  in God's worlds every  where,




MADE UP IN  THIS  LIFE.              145
to allow his making up the honors of his justice in
their computation.
Blut there is still another difficulty by which our
theologians of the last century began  Public justice
to be sorely pressed.  If the law  is   ilventec.
satisfied, or the justice of God satisfied, by the contributions of penalty Christ has made in his deatlh,
what becomes of justice after that for any body, and
where is the possibility left of future punishment for
even such as die incorrigible  The common way
had been to assert only a partial or particular atonement, made for the elect.  But our New England
teachers were not quite willing to tell the non-elect
that they are clown for justice any way, and as little
to proclaim  a free release to all, on the ground of a
general satisfaction.  They struck for a new theologic
invention, therefore; viz., a public justice for all men,
which is no justice in particular, but only a pool for
such as may come to repentance, and then a distributive justice waiting for each particular man, who
may die in his sins after his day is ended. The public
justice is not made by Christ's endurance  of any
man's penalty, but is a public character of justice
made up for God, by what expression of justice may
be yielded in Christ's death, conceived to be equal
to the expressioil of justice that would be afforded
by all the penalties exacted of all the world. In this
view Christ is the virtual substitute or compensation
for all the pains of all transgression.  Sometimes a
different way of statement is adopted, to escape the
13




146   C HRIST  RECONSECRATES  THIE  LAWiV
obvious objection that, as Christ is supposed to suffer
what is really nobody's penalty in particular, his suffering can not make any expression of God's justice
at all; his death therefore, it is said, expresses the
abhorrence of God to sin, as the penalties exacted of
all vwrong doers would, and so they make up the desired character of justice.  HIow  much is gained by
this shift of expression will better appear, when it is
proved  that God's abhorrence to sin can any -way
find offense in the pure, unsinning beauty of Christ,
so as to be expressed by his sufTering.
This most sorry  theologic invention has had  as
murch  credit gained for it as it can bear.  It is most
distinctly, most provincially  new.   I know  of no
scripture that yields it even a complexion of evidence.
It discovers two justices, or kinds of justice, one that
is for use in this life, and another for the life to come.
The meanings are in the last degree artificial, and the
modes of their relations to each other, and to sin, and
to a -possible way of salvation, are too subtle and confused to be distinctly apprehended by any but persons
thoroughly practiced in the subtleties. I-How much
better is the very simple, almost self-generated statement I have given —no justice at all in this world;
exact, inevitable justice for all incorrigible subjects in
the world to come.i
* My subject is nowise responsible for what the condition of justice
hereafter is to be, but I am so little unwilling to be responsible for
what opinions I have in the matter, that I set down a perfectly frank
statement of them, and leave it without concern to answer for itself.




BY IIS INCARNATE SUFFERING.   147
III. It now  remains to speak of thle last and  most;
distinctively  christian  of the  three points  named  in
my  general  staternent, or  deduction;               Clir.; incarviz., that the coercive discipline we are   nated into the
under-including  the law  element and   coeroine discipline.
what elements of Providential enforcement are  added-waiting  for no  pains  of justice  to
re-establish  it and re-cement its brokel order, is consecrated  anew  forever, and  more  than, consecrated,
enduecl with  transcendent efficacyi   by  Christ incarnated into it, and dying in it and for it.  The coercive
1. The allotments or awards of justice nereafter will not be made
up, it is most agreeable to suppose, by judgment passed on all the
particular acts done, but will be the total effect or damage of them,
so that every man will suffer just what ihe is, or has become.
2. The state of future awards will not be a new probation; God
would doubtless give us fifty new trials if it would do us any good,
but there is not the least probability of any such result, but of great
moral damag'e and confusion rather.  (Vid. Onze Trial Better than
fan1vy,-Sermons on Living Subjects).
3. Still every bad soul will be forever free, nevertheless, to the begirning of a now life, and will have no doubt of his acceptance in it.
4. The bad society will be separate probably from the good, and
that for their own comfort, if for no other reason.
5. From the known effects of wicked feeling and practice in the
reprobate characters, we expect that the staple of being and capacity
in such will be gradually diminished, and the possibility is thus suggested that, at some remote period, they may be quite wasted away,
or extirpated.
6. Of course their suffering will be reduced according to their reduced capacity; for it is no fixed quantity set against the reckoning
of old sins, but is alwaiys to be grading itself anew, according to what
they are and have capacity on hand to be.




118   CHRIST  RECONSECRATES THE  LAW
discipline was organically framed and set in order for
the world, even fi'om  the first, and long ages before
the appearing of Christ.  It included, of course, the
law and, beside that, all the vast material of outward
expression, such as might second or assist the general
endeavor of the discipline —the health or disease of
thle body, the seasons, the bounties of nature, the oppressions and liberties, the wars, tile captivities and
migrations, all the private and personal benefits too
secret to be named, all the ministries of human love
and friendship. These all together are not Christ,
but taken as additions to the nalked authority of law,
they go a certain way to help out its otherwise barely
coercive efficacy.  But a great and  supereminently  glorions  addition  now  arrives-Chlrist is born
into the discipline as before in  operation, and becomes the quickening life and central factor of it.
And this is the change that we celebrate as christianity; a change that is just as great as must needs
take place, when the impersonal and  dry machine
composed  of law  and  world —absolute  law  and
scarcely responsive world —has God's full sensibility
and sanctifying life poured in, to nmoisten the dryness
of the discipline and make it a complete gospel. So
that now it goes no more by thrustings on of enforcement only, but by such1 powers of unenforcement as
may be looked for, in the suffering love and gentle
endurance of the Laumb. The commandment is here
come, and the discipline that was like to be too
nearly penal, working too much in the way of fear




BY  HIS  INCARNATE  SUFFERING.   149
and mere self-interest, and too little in the way of
inspiration, is now to be consummated as a way of
copillete and perfect liberty.
Christ then is here, we now proceed to say, ilncarnated into the discipline we are undler,  His suffering
and membership with us in its adversi- is the incarnaties and trials; in  the enduring of tion.
wlhicl lie is brought into conditions of unspeakable
suffering. WThen we say that Chlrist is incarnate thnus
in our humanity, we commonly appear to mean very
little by it, more than tlhat lie takes on the look and
speaks with the voice of a man. We seeim to think
of him  more as a passenger than as a born resident,
and we only see him on his way trlllo:ll, doing many
beautiful things, and suffering specially nothing except in a sharp theologic crisis at the close. What it
means for him to be incarnate, we do not consider deliberately enough to grasp the idea and measure thle
consequences; and above all the consequences of
personal suffering to himself.  True it is understood
that lie is here as one of us for a time, but what
special cause of tragedy there may be in that, more
than belongs to the average experience of men tIhemselves, we do not perceive.  Besides it is the cross,
we think, that brought upon him all that was to be
accounted specially  severe in his experience.  HIis
incarnationl was no part of his suffering, being only a
matter of less cost to himn probably than our incarnate
state is to us. In this manner we fall out of key as
regards any proper estimate of his life; for the par.
13*




1_0   CHRIST  RECONSECRATES  THE  LAW
ficular crisis of his death, short and sharp as it was,
comprised but a very smlall part of the suffering and
sacrifice hlis mission cost hiinm.
Let us see if we can bring ourselves into a rillht
opinion of what is involved in Chlrist's incarnation,
as respects the lmatter of his sufTering.  It means that
he is incarnated into conmmon condition with us, under
what is called the curse.  He could not reach us as a
teacher, helper, friendc and Saviour, except by conming into  nmembership with us in our human  race
itself.  No plan to work upon us from a point above
us, or one side of us, could operate with any promise
of effect.  fie must become  a habitant with us, a
fellow  nature, a brother, and that he could not be,
without being entered into what is our principal distinction as being under the cmrse.  For this does not
miean, as imany very hastily judge, a state of doom
or punition, but simply a condition of discipline ordained for spilritual profit and recovery.  It means
exactly what I have been settinlg forth as a condition
of coercive distiphine, or as I have once or twice
called it, a condition of penally coercive disciplineadding thlat it is penally operative, in no, sense of
punlition or judicial award, but only in a way to inpress the consequences and demerit of actions, inl
such decgrees of severity as will best serve the moral
benefit of tihe subjects.  The curse, in this view, is
all for benefit, only wolkinlg partly by what is disa.
greeable or distressfulf.  Underneat'h was the word of
the law, then above are harnessed to it, to work with




BY  HIS INCARNATE  SUFFERING.    151
it, all the multifarious cogencies that malke up the
total of our life.  C Christ will suffer nothling as by his
own fault, or to correet him  in his own wrong,
nothinlg to coerce him  in his own choices, and yield
him personal benefit in the discipline.  I-e is here for
no such purpose, but only to briig himself personally
near to us, for our benefit. HIIis incarnation puts him
in thle compass of all that belongs to the solidarity
of the curse, except that he is touched by  none
of its contamrinations.  He will suffer of course from
the wrongs of wrong-doing men, as truly as if he
were one of them  himself; and probably as much
more severely as the holiness of his life, and the
beauty of his actions, will mnore provoke the hostility of the wickedl,  and  he himself be more
tenderly sensitive to injury because of his undefiled
sensibility.
Etaising now  the question, how  far Christ must
needs come into suffering, by a ministry  Scarcely realize
incarnated  into our penally  coercive our own sufferdiscipline, it may be important for us iugs.
first to revise, or make up by a new  inspection, the
inventory of our own suffering.  True as we know  it
to be, that pains send us into the world, and pains
send us out, and that the whole space between our
birth and death is thick-set with twinges, and troubles,
and bad hours, and real or imagined wrongs, each
new successor shuts the gate of oblivion on its preceding out-goer, and we fancy that we really suffer
nothing, but are all the while just coasting along the




152  CHRIST RECONSECRATES THE LAW
shores of comfort. True we are not so m1uc  happy
as comfortably not happy, not so much well as without distress. It is much as if an enjoyment were
graded for us by a sort of dumb toothache scarcely
perceptible.  And yet there are times of pungent
suflering coming upon almost every one of us-storms
of  disease,  bitter  mournings, prospects  blastedl,
treasons in the house-even that large half of the
world who think they have been always going colnfortably on, have yet suffered immensely in the total
of, their hurts and fears, and wrongs. There are
many, I know, who make it a point of honor to laugh
at all such computations of suffering, much as if it
were the way of good navigation to throw  the logbook overboard and put the foul weather days under
oblivion. They had much better keep the log-and
use it.
Secondly, we observe that our hauman  suffering
No principle does not conme by any principle of deof desert in our sert, and therefore make less of it.
suffering.   There is plainly  enough  no law  of
penalty or justice in it, and that, if we could keep our
conscience from  sometimes applying it, amounts to
something like a discovery, we think, that it has no
meaning, and amounts to little or nothing worthy of
attention. We do not observe that the main stress
of it comes in the principle of solidarity, where, as regards the more deserving, it has even a kind of substitutional look. tHistory is full of it.  Suffering is,
in a sense, thle staple of history. It falls on men by




BY  HIS  INCARNATE  SUFFERING.   153
generations, nations, kingdoms, and continents, massing its subjects, and taking them on thle side of their
social liability and necessity, where the curse of sin
falls heaviest.  And the woes that pour in thus, by
latitudes and longitudes mapped for suffering, are
fearful and sometimes horrible even beyond thoughtdrougnlt, and blight, and frost, and famine, pestilence
and plague, earthquake and llrricane, cities on fire,
kingdoms soaked in blood —all which come as a good
God sends them, partly to show us for our benefit
that his discipline overhangs all mortal peoples and
affairs; which also, when he wills it, can find how to
make itself subcluingly felt. It is here, it is every
where, and it comes in no slight reckoning, as we
sometimes  sleepily  imlagine —the  whole  creation
groaneth and travailetll with it.
Thirdly, we fall into another oversight, in turning
to no right accounnt the admitted fact  Why do the
that so many of the best, and purest, best and purest
and sweetest, of the race do actually suffer?
seem to suffer most. It is as if the solidarity-principle  just referred  to, turned its masses of bad
liability down upon these hapless victims of sorrow
and distress, to get an argument particular enoughl
for the heavy-going, lumbering world to feel. We
think it hard, we ask how can a good God do it? and
yet they are the more hlonored on this account; being
chosen for their suffering office, because thlei suffering will draw sympathy, and thaw  out thle firoEzen
apathy of such as, deserving to suf-er thelnselves, could




151   CHRIST  RECONSECRATES THE  LAW
suffer only with small effect.  Who will care w hat
they may suffer themselves? what himan tear will
they set flowing, when they only take their pains in
due proportion?2  But there  is a  feeling loosened
always by the terrible woe that a good man  sufifers
after the Christly fashion, by which we are all the
more tenderly affected, that lhe appears to be suffering, not on his own account as truly as on ours.  lostt
beautiful is the office which these lower, sub-Saviour
sufferers are called to fill.  And how touching is the
argument they give us, to correct the nmistake into
which we so commnonly fall, when we recollect that
Christ is the exceptional man, upon whoml no penalty
can fall, and let ourselves down thus upon the impression that his liabilities of suffering are smaller even
than if he were a strictly hu-mnan person.  It does not
occur to us that in being pure and spotless far beyond the examples just referred to, he may be chosen
of God to go as far beyond them  in suffering, as they
beyond their fellows.
Just here, saying no more of our under-estimate of
Clhrist's suffering, in the under-estimate we have of our
own, I think we imay begin to feel the window lifted
Suffers greatly were te fsh  ir blows, ar ows and to Ihave
because of his the suffering of Christ's mission opened
purity.      to our discovery, in a way to cause no
revulsion.  He suffers heavily because he is pure, and
just according to his purity; for there is nothing in
him to sort with the curse lie is under.  The blight,
the pain, the stormy troubles, aind the bitter hate are




BY  HIS  INCARNATE  SUFFERING.   15
not for him.  His pure, sweet nature, tainted by no
evil touch or stain, the immernll2se sensibilities of his
divine illnocenco, recoil friom  the  gentlest penalties, with a feeling dreadfully revoltecl, such as we, in
thle blunted sensibility of sin, can not even imagine.
It is as if the condemnations of God were upon him
-as they are on all the solidarities of the race into
whllich he is come.  The disgusts generated in the
penal discipline of character, fill his pure, great feeling
with revulsions known to  him   but unimaginable
by us.  lile suffers all the suflering of mankind, not
as we do in nlere sympathy with the suffering itself,
but as beholding it in its guilty causes-loathing it
because it is so base, because of its fallen glory, and
because it is so bitterly poisoned by injustice to Goda suffering in which the displeasures of God and his
compassions are united by a conjunction that is itself
the utmost possibility of suffering.
It is also another aggravation of Christ's suffering,
that he has so much mind, and a per-   Suffers accordception so piercing, to apprehend the ing to llis amount
utmost significances of acts and causes, of mind.
and consequences.  Little minds have little sufferings,
according to the insect measures of their possibility.
What do we better know  than that minds in high
culture are capable of greater pains under insult and
wrong?  Thus if suchl a man as Wordsworth, or Goethle,
or the elegant Cavour, had been taken captive by
some wild cannibal racee, and compelled to look on
the preparations for liis sacrifice, it would not be so




1o56   CHRIST  RECONSECRATES  THE  LAW
much the dread of death that would cost him suffering, but it would:be tile horrible conception of being
himself incorporate in these ferocious and disgusting
rnonsters.  His tastes, his imnaginations, his conception
of what belongs to all dear sensibility in life, would
set him  in convulsive shudder.  In whicll we have
only a most feeble, far-off illustration of what the
great Christ-soul must suffer in the approaching scenes
of the crucifixion.  HIe had come down out of the upper world, where he had been partaker, from the first,
in all God's opinions and sentiments' concerning sin.
Ie did not conceive that the crowds of raging persecutors gathlered about him were simply unfortunate
or lunatic, but that they were maddened penally by
their discipline, for though it was not on them  as in
punishmen t, it was powerful enough in  its wild exasperations, to show them  what sin is, and raise a
frightful argument against it. I-Ie saw their curse in
their sin, and the pungency of his suffering was according to the full and divinely cultured perception he
had of it, of its relations to God and the world, and
of the possibilities of character.  He had read the
true conception of it in the bosom. of the Father, and
now he has it on him  and feels the horrible touch
of it.  These bloodthirsty Fejis of the priesthood
and the people are conspiring his death.  What a
conception that a being so great, so interlocked with
divinity, is going here-to be actually murdered! does
he not, should lie not, feel it himself, according to the
perception he has of its criminality and the astouncd



BY HIS INCARNATE  SUFFERING.   157
ing impressions it will raise in all the good great minds
of the glorified.  What a response has he in it to the
all sacrificing and most tender love in which, by hlis
act of incarnation, he takes the sin of the world upon
him  and makes his life a sorrow.
Once more, Christ suffers thle more heavily, no
doubt, that he is in a failing cause.  And the misery
is not so much that it appears to fail, as that it should
be thrown and trampled by just that  Suffers in a
which only tlhe penal madness of, the  failing cause.
world- could  incite.  It sinks under the hatred of'
goodness, such hatred as only bigotry instigates, by
thle arts and  semblances of hypocrisy.  And  this
hatred hovers about his path in all his rounds of ministry, dogs him  in his journeys, makes a larger and
continually widening conspiracy.  By and by his disciples begin to act shyly, and apparently try to get
away from him.  Only the dear children, as it were to
show  how  much more reliable  inspiration is than
prudence, cling to him still, and pay him their heavenlifted Hosannas, when the full-grown wise drop away.
He is therefore in a double sorrow now, that his disciples, who so much need his presence to keep them
in any sort of courage as respects tle faith of a kingdom, are going here to encounter a loss they are little
qualified to bear, and he himself to encounter a far
greater loss fiom their desertion, in the stress of his
last hours.  0 what a hell of selfishness and falsity is
this, that such a friendcl as Christ can not fasten the
faith of his friends! It even puts a lot of shame
14




108   CHRIST  RECONSE'CRATES TtHE  LAW
upon Ihll, that he has undertaken'to do and suffer so
numch for creatures so bereft of dignlity by'the aw-ful
undoing of their sin.  Could he looek oan h-eroes gatlhering to him  and round him, ready to bear his cross
after ilm, souls made great and strong by his presencelee
among tllem, it would  greatly mitigate the pain of
his approaching fall - But to see all courage oozing
out, and all faith vanishing, in advance of his ftall
hour, adds a touch of ignominy to his end mnore nearly
insupportable than any other.
Let us glance now  at three or four of the scenes
where Christ's great suffering is most remarkably dclisplayed, and also the fact that he has it upon him,
consciously, as the curse or penal shame and disaster
of our transgression.  First, I name the temptation, at
The tempta-  which his public- life began.  IncartiOn.    nated into the curse of tl-le world, he
is now  to have his part in a state demonized by evil;
and it will be the point of his first great trial to mnaster all the physical taint of his birth, and  so far
humanly  corrupted participation.   Another storm,
let loose upon him  by the new-born consciousness of
his MIessiahship is the felt solidarity of the sin-wrath,
rolled  in  now  so tempestuously, that it takes a
whole forty days to get that full possession of himself
and his plaLns, that will enable him  to go out upon his
work.  [Meantimne lie is closeted in the grim  wilderness, wrestling with the troubles that crowd upon his
mind ancld disturb his counsel, and even forgetting that
he is hungry.  Angels comle about to minister, and




BY  HIS  INCARNATE  SUFFERING.   1o9
it appears to be intimated that the wild beasts are
drawn togyether round himn  by strange sympathy with
some awful sorrow  perceptible eveni to them.  It is
not con-mmon to class this scene w,'ith  other scenes of
suffering in Christ's life, but it has an aspect dreadfully
forlorn, and a sin-stamp quite unmatched  unless by
the crucifixion.
The weeping of Christ over the city is told in fewer
words, but it is the more important  Iis weeping
because it is so casual in the occurrence over the city.
as to show  what feeling he is in habitually —wllat
lmountaili  loads of sorrow  from  the blasted, guiltstricken world are always upon him-" If thou hadst
known in this thy day the things that belong to thy
peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes!"
But we pass, at this poinl, to tile agonies so called
of the garden and the cross, both of which are often
conceived to borrow their intensity of suffering from
tile wrath or justice of God, let fall upon the suffener
that lie may take the brunt of our penralty, and coinpensate or satisfy the law in our behalf.  " Tihe cup,"
it is im.agined, can mean nothing less than this.  It
can  not be the " cup of trme7i1/"y;9 or "the eup of
acstomnish/lct," but rmust be 6 thle cup of justice," because nothing  less than  the justice-  The cup and
power of God's hand upon the sufferer,  tle agony.
could prodlce  sucll demonstrations.  It may be so,
but I see not hlow  any on-e can be sure that he might
not suffer as severely under the solidarity principle or
the world's penal-sanction causes, as he would under




160  CHRIST RECONSECRATES TIIE LAW
justice. Be that as it may, we have a most improbable, perfectly incredible mixture, when he is set before us, under such a conception, calling on ]his poor
disciples, in his awful prostrations, to stay by hlil
and help him —yes, help him to bear God's justice!
To his groaning on the ground, and his body dripping
blood from  the pores, they might possibly give the
comfort of a little sympathy, but if he is being
wrenched in this manner by the justice of God, what
right have they to help him  agaionst that? True the
suffering is strangely severe, and yet indications of
the same kind are reported  as having  sometimes
been observed in the case of men suffering under
great mental distress. 2Morever demronstrations of this
nature appear  to  be  quite sufficiently accounted
for, when three facts are brought together; (1,) the
structural frailty of the physically human person, too
little able to support the reactions of a superhuman
sensibility; (2,) the extraordinary movement on that
sensibility, by tle madness and wild exasperation of
so great multitudes hasting to precipitate themselves
unwittingly on him in a deed that comprehends both
sacrilege and  murder; (3,) tlhe  mortal exhaustion
th at las now come upon him by his brotherhood relation, so long continued, with humanity; where lie has
nothing to receive, only wrongs and disgusts to bear,
and sympathy and suffering patience to give.
As regards the cross, taklen often for a scene of
divine justice, the argument would be much easier and
better supported, if the problem were to show that the




BY  HIS INCARNATE SUFFERING.   161
justice displayed is a visitation of God upon  tlie
people.  They really seem to do all in  No law of jusa way of judicial blindness, and takle tice over the
on the lunatic airs of their dispossession, crucifiion.
in ways of cunning and prejudice and passion that
completely represent the penal madness of sin-Pilate,
Herod, Caiaphas, the soldiers, the multitude, all in
character under the curse together. And when tllat
awful word is spoken-" This is your hour, the power
of darkness," we even shudder at the suggestion.
And yet it is not these, we hear, but Christ himself who is under the ban  of justice!  Innocence
gibbeted and dying by what every body pronounces
the most horrible murder on record, he is having laid
upon him, we are told, the justice of God,cand these
monsters in their murder are God's ministers, doing
the justice upon him! The mixture of idea, character,
and fact-the Good lBeing using wickedness, and wickedness doing the honors of justice —make up a compound so incongruously bad that we are cruelly revolted by it.  Yes, but the Saviour cries out himself" MIy God, my God, why hast thou fbrsaken me?" And
this, we are taught, is a plain declaration of the judicial w-ithdrawment of the Father.  Does any human
creature then believe that C!lrist is actually complaining here, in his last breath, of being left to die desertedcl of God, or under the ban of his justice? Interjections are never to be taken pathologically in this
manner; for what is this outcry but an interjection
of distress vented in scripture words crowding at the
14*"




162   FIGURES  OF SACRIFICE  AND  LAW
moment on his brain?  And he as little means that
God has deselrted  hiln as the Psalmist hiumself who
was coming out shortly in praise —" For he hath. not
despised nor abhorred the affliction of tlle afflicted,
neither hath hIe hid his face from him., but wVhel lhe
cried unlto him he heard."'X' God had forsalen himn
yet now he finds that he had not hid his face! Furthermore what does Christ promise the poor malefactor dying at his side, but that he shall be with hinl
this very day in paradise?  He seems to have forgotten that he is under thle justice of God! Was lie not
also saying a little while ago in glorious confidenceTherefore doth my Father love me because I lay
down mly life for the sheep."  Aiind again-" I have
glorified thee on the earth, and now I come to thee."
And agalin, about the same tile, in the same confidence-" Thlinkest thou that I can not now  pray to
my Father, and lie shall presently give me more than
twelve legions of anigels?"  It could not on the whole
be more clear that Christ caime to his cross in the fiull
colnsciousness  of  the  Father's loving  accord  aind
sympathy, and that on the cross itself, lie was hovering in thllought round the gates of paradise just waitimSig to be openecl, and behoxlding, close at hiaid, " the
glory that lie had with the Father before the world
was.
IV.
I intimated some pages back a design to examine a
few of the principal texts most commonly and con* Psalms xxii, i and 21.




MUST  BE CORRECTLY  INTERPRETED. 163
fidently cited, to show  that Christ was dealing with
God's justice in the suffering of the cross, and that', in
this great transaction with justice, we are to conceive
him  as fulfilling the principal errand of his ministry.
M'[any persons will be held by a certain traditional ring
of scripture in such authorities, and w-:ill not think" it
possible that these passages, so deeply imprinted by
the iteration of years, have been really turned away
from  tlleir original meaning by clumsy and false uses,
and made to give a testimony that was never in
them.
I wish it were possible in advance to rid ourselves
of a certain hard-favored, narrow literalism, that lives
on proof-texts made by paying no regard to the poetic
genius of religious language, and by seizing on single
clauses that, in figure, seem  to favor a- certain point,
paying no regard to other clauses in other figures,that
require to be accepted as qualifiers and correctives.
This whole proof-text region has a most sterile, truthforsaken aspect, and no ploughing through it of ridicule and remonstrance, appears to do nmuch for it.
The man who pours in a pitcher of milk to raise a
cream  on the sea, has about the same chance of
We have no literal language  for religious CCSS
WVie have no literal lanlguage  for religious ideas.
The exactest things that can be said  No literal lanmust be somehow  taken as in  figure, guage for relias when Christ made answer to Peter glon.
-that one  must forgive  his brother  not  seven
times only, but " until seventy times seven."  There




164  FIGURES OF SACRIFICE  AND LAW
we have it, as by aritlhmetic, but the man  who
should go back on his multiplication table, and draw
out his conclusion that we are to forgive just four
hundred and ninety times, would even raise a smile
among the proof-text scholars; and none the less, if
he were to add, that the number seven is a sacred
number, to be exactly taken always, according to the
proper exactness of reverence! In the expression of
religious ideas we are ourselves under the same law.
Thus I knew a little child who had been kept back
some time from the story of Christ's death, lest she
might be overmuch shocked by it. She was abundantly shocked when it was at length  given her, as
her evening prayer made evident-" 0 Lord I am
sorry you  died; I wish you had not saved us!"
"The wicked little reprobate," some fiery St. Dominic of the former ages might have exclaimed, but our
literal teachers now would, I think, be a little more
lenient. Was there ever, in fact, a more genuinely
touching, sweeter prayer?  Though taken by the letter, it would not be as good.
But there is a more particular consideration here
that has a more particular application; viz., that terms
of praise and personal gratitude almost always carry
an over-tinted color, and set their subject forth in some
Gratitude is free picturesque way of success. In an old
to exaggeration. IRoman  prison more or less infected
with poison from the region of malaria not far o;f,
destructive fevers comle and go, and many of the
prisoners die. At length word is brought to a certain




MUST BE CORRECTLY  INTERPRETED. 1605
monk of the city, who has learned to follow his MAaster
well and faithlfully, that a notable prisoner, long time
ago his private enemy, is beginning to sh]ow the tokens
of the fever.  Whereupon the godly nlonk says-" I
must go to him then, since lie is my enemy, trying, if
I can for Christ's sake, to save him.". He goes. By
his faithful nursing and attendance the criminal is recovered, and he himself, taking the infection, dies.
Now in turn the rescued man, throwing out his soul
in words, vainly tries to express the inexpressible
tenderness of his obligation.  li-e writes and talks
nothing butl- gratitude all his life long —testifying "O
lie bore my punishment "-" he became the criminal
for me "-" stoodcl in my lot of guilt "-"- suffered all
the bitterness of my bad desert."  It will not be
strange if he goes a long way beyond the redemptive
fervors of Scripture to say-" lie took my debt of justice "-" satisfied the judgment of the law " —  bore
the very sins I put upon him " —meaning, of course,
nothing more than what he had been saying before.
Finally, some time after the parties are gone, when
their story itself is fading away, some one undertakes
to make up his account of it; and, dull-lleaded, blindhearted literalist that lie is, he takes up all thle fervors
of expression just recited, showing most conclusively
from the words, that the good -monk actually got the
other's crime imlputed to him, took the guilt of it, suffered the punishiment, died in his place, and satisfied
the justice of the law that he migllt be released. The




1G66  FIGURES OF SACRIFICE AND LAW
application of this belongs to almost all the scripture
terms we have in question.
The strongest and most relied on probably of all
the proofs of a judicial signiiceance ill the ease is thisChrist made a   1 Christ  hath  redeemed us froim  the
curse for us.  curse of the law, being made a curse for
us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that lhangeth
on a tree."'2   But observe here, at the outset, that the
curse of the law  is exactly not the justice of God,
but the penal-sanction discipline we are under.  For
the reference here is not to the denouncement by
Moses of outward damage and loss, arrayed as curses
to deter the people firom  disobedience,t-for Christ
certainly had not ulndertaken a redemption fiom these
— but to what is called rmnore distinctively the curse at
the original institution of our penal discipline itself.T
Into thlis, as we Lave seen, Christ was incarnated, and
hlere was to be tile field of his redeeming work.  It
only occurs to the  apostle as a verbal coincidence,
thoughl a little out of line as to any precise accord of
nmeaning, that Christ crucified  is to be more fitly
called a curse, that any malefactor left hanging on a
tree is by a maxim of the law so regarded —" Cursed
is every one that hangeth on a tree."~  The rhetotic
of hlis gratitude scorns detention by an over nice
verbal exactness.   Enouglh  that hle  will magnify
Christ's coming down to be with us, under the worldb!iglt of our sin, where tile corporate frenzy, rage land
hate trample and tear his  divine person  as if lihe
* Gal. iii, 13. t Deut. xxviii, 16-19.: Gen. iii, 14-19. ~ Deut. xxi, 23.




MUST  BE CORRECTLY  INTERPRETED. 167
were no better than a malefactor, as he is a member
now of tile race.  The retributive liability he is in, is
severe en-oulgh to bear even a look of justice.  We
only happen to know  that no suffering of our own
under tile curse is justice, and that he is suffering
with us in our lot as it is.  If we call it penal, as I
have called the disciplinary sanctions arranged for us,
it is not the penality of justice.
Peter declares himself in -terms very different as to
figure, but  closely  correspondent in  The declaration
idea,'"Who his own self bare our sins    of Peter.
in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to
sill, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes
ye, were healed.9':   It is difficult here to imagine that
he  himself very  closely  considered the items, or
sub-clauses of his statement-how  the sins came into
Chlrist's body without malsing him a sinner, and how,
not being a sinner, he bore them, and what for, and
with what effect-but two things are specially evident
in his words, and in these their main significance lies;
(1,) that Christ is so far entered by his incarnate personality, into the curse, or penal woes of transgression,
that he has them in himself, and is lifting them off by
the beautifully softened power he gives them  in the
felt conjunction of his suffering sympathy; (2,) that
no thought of compensation is here being made to
God's justice, for the terminal effect is to be in us;
" that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness."  Besides it is to have its effeet like all penal* 1 Peter ii, 24.




168   FIGURES OF SACRIFICE  AND  LAW
sanction discipline, in a complete healing up of all the
sears of transgression-" ll    For by his stripes ye were
healed."  In the next chapter Peter holds the same
general idea-" For Christ also lath once suffered fobr
sins, the just for the ulnjust, that he might bring us
to God."'7   It is not said that he suffered in the
terms of justice to buy us off from justice, but siimply
in self-sacrifice to bring us off.
Sometimes Christ's own language is cited, when he
declares that "the  Son of Mlan came, not to be
Christ gives a  ministered unto, but to minister, and to
ransom.    give his life a ransom  for many."t  Is
not a ransom  a price paid commonly to buy off captives and criminals?  Yes, and very commonly not.
" I will ransom  them from the power of the grave,"'
does not mean that God will make payment to the
grave for obtaining a release.  To hang the conclusion
of a judicial satisfaction for sin upon this mlere word,
just as capable of an idea less revolting, is a very
sad illustration of what the proof-text making process
may do.  How  different the dear great thought of
Christ when he says, I came to minister and not to
buy, to offer up my life as the quickening power of
unbought life in  you.   And  this word  bought,
"bought with a price," we need not go over the same
argument concerning that.
It was most natural that the putting over of sins
The scape-   upon criminals, and especially on the
goat.   lhead of the goat, to signify by his being
* 1 Peter iii, 18.   f Mark x, 45.: Hosea xiii, 14.




MUST  BE  CORRECTLY  INTERPRETED. 169
driven out into the wilderness, the deportation of sin,
should become a favorite symbol often of the beautifil.
office taken by Christ, in the assumption of our sadly
broken, dread-fully enthralled state.  As when Paul
declares, "' For lhe hath made him to be sin for us, who
knew  no Sin; that we might be made the rig-hteousness of God in him." -~  I will not go into any argument here to show  that no sin of ours ever could
be entered into the pure soul of Christ, or could
stay  there for one  mortal breath  without being
burned up in the flame of his purity.  The apostle
plainly enough means to assert no such assumption
or transference, but simply that Christ bowed himi self
on our lot of sorrow and painful, wrathful disorder, in
a mind to die into us and let us die with him.  Becoming sin for us in this manner, his hope is that we
may be made the righteousness of God in him.  Not
that imputed righteousness which many think evens
up the score of justice, but that living righteousness,
also in a dilfferent sense impuLted, which is the righteolnsness of God himself, and is "' by faith  unto all
and upon all them that believe."
It now remains to take a little more deliberate review of the fifty-third of Isaiah, which, I think, may
well be rated as the most wonderful of all human compositions.  We have in it a general stock fund opened
of vicarious images and offices, set forth  Isaiah's meanas pertaining to a certain nameless per-  ing stated.
son never heard of, and visibly quite unknown to the
* 2 Cor. v, 21.
15




170   FIGURES  OF SACRIFICE  AND  LAW
prophet himself.  Far back in the darlk of his only
half-historic time, when the Greeks are scarcely beginning to be Greece, lie brings forth his man of the
cross, showing him  only by tokens that he does not
ulnderstand himself; and the picture is so Christly,
that criticism, turning every way and searching right
and left for some original in story, or poetry, out of
which it could be made, is obliged to utterly fail and
desist.  If heaven was ever opened, it was opened
here, and the note of vicarious function, running like
a voice of litany through so many terms and images,
softens our wonder into worship.  All the greater
reason that we should not let our reverence be t-urned
to superstition by the narrow, over-stringent literalism
of our interpretation.  Thus when the Evangelist
Maatthew* says of Christ and his healings,' That it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet
Esaias, Himself took our infirmities  and bare our
sicknesses,"9  a very little good sense will forbid our
imagining that Christ literally took all the diseases
of his patients-their fevers, blindlnesses, palsies, leprosies-on himself; and will put us under a caution
against the too literal construction of the other figures which follow.'t  When the prophet says, " wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities,"'
it is not to be doubted tlhat he conceives some kind
of penal infliction in the sufering endured.  And
then the question follows, whether it is the penality
of our state of discipline, or of justice itself, which
* Matth. viii, 17.. Vid. Note p. 44-5, former treatise.




MIUST BE CORRECTLY INTERPRETED. 171
has no place in this present world?  And then still
another question, whether the two prepositions for
mean for as in payment for our transgressions, or only
for iln the sense of being incurred by him in his engagement in our behalf. It is important also to note
the final clause-" and with his stripes we are healed,"
where the figure of healing gives a function to the
suffering that never can be.made to go with justicejustice does not heal. It follows "6 and the Lord hath
laid on him the iniquity of us all,"' and perhaps we
take it as a solemn announcement of the very impossible fact that our sins are literally transferred to the
sufferer. Whereas it is plainly enough, as we just
now saw in another example, a form of language
generated by the scapegoat ceremony, where the priest
confesses the sin of the people on tile head of the
goat, and he is driven off into the wilderness to signify the deportation of the sin. The sin is not on the
goat, the whole ceremony is vehicle, contrived to
signify, as in form, simply God's deliverance of the
people from their guilt. So when the Lord lays the
iniquity of us all on the divine sufferer, deportation,
deliverance, not punition, is the gist of the meaning.
Another phase of the picture is brought forward,
when the prophet says —" Yet it pleased the Lord to
bruise him, he hath put him to grief.' The Jewish
habit was to refer every thing good and bad to God's
will —" Is there evil in the city and the Lord hath not
done it 2"-and precisely how far the prophet would
go in ascribing the 6 bruising"' and the "grief'" to




172    GENERAL  RESULTS ARRIVED  AT
God's will, in distinction from  the wrong doing of
wiclked' men, we may inot be able to say, but if, in
~soume sense, he would charge it all to God's infliction,
it does not follow that the infliction is judicial penalty; for it can as well be penal-sanction suffering, as
we certainly know that all other suffering in this world
is.  In the same verse again the prophet calls up a
sacrificial image-" When thou shalt make his soul an
of'erinug for sin.": But an offering for sin takes it
away, never as being payment for it, but as being a
token that expresses contrition; in that way a liturgical help to repentance-just that which Christ is to
be, in a much higher and more comnpetent way, in
the sacrifice of his death.  Once more we read-"  he
bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the
tranlsgressors."   This word bare is not a word of
punishment, but a word of burden; signifying  the
charge or load which a friend takes on him, in the
woe or fall of another, by the stress of his dwn vicarious concern for him.  Thus God was declared to be
afflicted in the affliction of his people, "and bear and
carry them  all the days of old."  Thus also Paul
exhorts the Galatians-" Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law  of Christ;9 meaning by
the law of Christ the life, the manner, the spirit of
Christ —in a word, the commandment.  We come out
thus, at the close of this wonderful chapter, chanting
its liturgy of sorrow and vicarious passionl long ares
before the Suffering Unknown MEian appears; having
seen how the wrong, the curse, the penal blight, the




IN  THE CHAPTER.                 173
general sin-stamp marks every thing in the picture,
and how he, with it and not of it, ministers by suffering, and blood to mlake intercession for thle transgressors; and yet we have come upon no token lere of a
judicial substitution, or a judicial suffering, or of any
thing done for the satisfaction of justice in the payment of its penalties.
It only remains now to sum  up the results arrived
at, as regards the subject matter of thle chapter.  The
law part of our coercive discipline was  Results of thlle
never expected to  establish obedience    argument
and righteousness by itself; neither wvas it expected
to be a complete governllent by itself'] ling no otler
means or method intervene to bring away from  its
condemnnations, without first paying up its dues of
penalty.  On the contrary it was designed, firon the
first, to be joined with other means, working by other
methods, and both together to make up the complete
order of discipline for men; which discipline is to be
kept on foot with every man even to the last, no part
of it being displaced by substitutional or compensatory
agencies.  One part never brings away from the other,
and has of course no price to pay for release by the
other, the comrlon concern of both being  how  to
fashionr a character of perfect obedience and rigllteous
liberty.  At first the law  and its enforcing agency
has greater prominence in the discipline, and appears
to be less conspicuously helped by the attractive and
gracious powers that are to operate conjunctively with
15.




174    GENERAL  RESULTS  ARRIVED  AT
it.  These are the good inspirations of public history,
the great acts and characters of righteous rmein, the
bounties and beautifulL things of the world, thle blessings of health and family and property, great escapes
and deliverances from peQil, the festivals and rites of
religion, thle hymns of thle temple worship anld the
word of the prophets, all working with the law as
gracious ancld softening influences, to raise up fear into
love,,and obedience into liberty.  These and such as
these were the powers that went before, to represent
Christ in the discipline, down to the time of his full
appearing; and then from that tilme on, the discipline
begins to seem  rooted almost wholly in llim and his
glorious overshadowing personality.  The legal asspect is now  no longer prominent, andl the law  appears to be fulfilling  itself in the  comnmandmelnt.
The discipline we called coercive, takes on the look of a
saving power, and we call it a gospel of salvation.
We find a full competence in it now to the mastery
of sin.  Tihe motivities of the law, acting  always
by  appeals  to  self-regard,  operate  strongly  by
the vice of their very nature, to fasten  the  bad
state of sin, and make it a state of thrall.  That
death-fall, that  collapse  of  possibility, by  which
man is so fatally broken, as regards any gathering
up of himself into good, is even nmade more hopeless, or at least scarcely more hopeful, by the pressure of mere legal enforcement, for the fault of it
is thlat the imotivities and the man are on the death —
side of sin togeth.er.  It can press the subject on], but




IN  TtIE CIAPTER.                175
it can no t dcliw him off. What is wanted here is a new
motivity, inspirational in its nature, spontaneous, and
firee. And therefore it is that Christ comes over into
our discipline fromn  his own divine side, and brinlgs his
everlasting liberties with him.  So that being incarnated into and dying into our world-discipline with us,
his glorious and sublime personality overtops every
thing in it and ns beside. Ihle can show us, and does,
how  liberty call even die, and he gives it as our
tender call of brotherhood to die with him, into his
liberty.  For now, and by our faith in his person or
transcendent personality, we both die and live, and the
lmastery of our sin is complete.  The abstract, tabulated law is fulfilled and crowned in the personal comman dtLent.
Equally true it would be, at the sarne time, if we
should invert all this, and say that the law itself is
made personal by the insertion of the Christly love
and feeling into it. We are wont to imagine, and are
all the while saying, that it is the sin of sin to be
takling down the authority of law; and we sometimes
think of it as a hard, non-elastic and frangible pillar, flawed and broken, which can no way be repaired,
and can only be replaced on payment, by something
different; whereas all the grand authority it had, and
nole, is made good by the tonic life aind sovereign
vigor of the cross. It is as if the tables of the ten commandments themselves, after Mloses threw them down,
were mended by passover blood sprinkled on them.
So when Christ dies into the law, it becomes itself




176 GENERAL RESULTS ARRIVED  AT, ETC.
commandment written out in blood and sacrifice; as
mluch more sovereign over human hearts and consciences as it is more thoroughly personal, and having
an authority from the cross which no thunder of Sinai
couldn impress.
It is not our conclusion then, that the commandment takes away from the law, or the law from the
commandment, but that they mutually endow and
uphold each other; locked together in a complete
whole that is one and indivisible.  God, we say, never
made any so great misfit in a plan as to organize a
great first half of it, that he must somehow, any how,
at any cost, get rid of, before he could bring it on to
success. That is not his way. On the contrary his
beginning will reaech through to his end, and the law
and law-sanctions, never abated or bougllt off, will be
working faithfully on, with all the gracious powers and
tender motivities in Christ-part and  parcel with
them, in the one comprehensive purpose; even as the
lightunings and the dews take part together in the
growth of the world.




CHAPTER  I1l.
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
WE most properly begin our discussion of this great
subject at the text of Scripture whence, in a sense, it
has its own beginning —" Whom God bath set forth to
be a propitiation, throtgh faith in his blood, to declare
his righteousness, bfor the remission of sins that are
past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I
say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just,
and the justifier of hinl which believeth in Jesus.'"*
The first clause of the passage respecting propitiation has been expounded already in the chapter given
on that subject.   Our present concern is with the
latter clause, relating to th& alleged declaring of God's
righteousness and the purpose or intent of it.
The " declaring  " here intended is not so much a
declaring in words, but more in a way of manifestation; as by the facts and acts of Christ's Gorn. iii, 25-6,
incarnate ministry, considered  as the how understood.
revelation mladeeof his divinely great character, wllich
is itself the righteousness of God.  The original word
for the declaring is in-slhowizng, endeixis, that whicll,
being displayed inwardly, begets an inward impres* Ro1m. iii, 25-6.
(177)




178         THE  SCRIPTURE  WORDS
sion.  It is more important, however, rightly to conceive what the declaring,  or in-showing, is fbr; viz.,
that when God's excellence is declared, it will both
show us how, and why, he was able to overloolk, or
pass by, the sins of past ages which he suffered in so
great forbearance;* and how, as respects the sins of
this present time, he is able to be "' just' eno-ugh, that
is great enough, in the power of his "r righteousness "
to make righteous him  that believeth-every one, that
is, whose heart is opened by faith to the possible reception of his character.  For this, if we rightly understand our word, is what justification signifies.  It is
that which takes away our condemnation; setting us
in confidence with God, by setting God in upon us, in
such transforming power that we become new-charactered from his righteousness.
If now it should seem  that I put a strain of hard
practice on these words "just" and "' justify,"' when
Our confusion  I convert  theml  in  this  manner to
of words.'righteous "  and "make righteous," it
must be enough to answer, that the hard strain came
long time ago, when the "righteous " and " make
righteous " were  displaced by  "'just and  justify,"
and torn away from their natural kinsman' righteousness," in the beginning of the sentence.  By a most
singular fatality it has colme to pass, i this manner, in
our English version, that where the Greek Testament
gives  us three words, noun, adjective, and  verb,
dikcisosq.nt, dikcaios, and Cdiciaiouztcs-all of one root,
Vicd. Thloluck in loco.




AND  THEIR  MEANING.                179
we have two sets of words in the English to represent
thenml; oHne from  the Saxo-n, riygAteoesness, and  two
from  thle Latin, just and  jtstbJy.  Wlhelnce it results
that as tile Latin words jtlstitict, justus, cs'C., have two
sets of meanings; a legal or judicial, as pertaining to
the penal redress of crilmes, and a moral, as relating
wholly to character; the two nationalities of tongue in
onr English version throw us into a jumble of ambiguities, where we have as good chance of mental
confusion as the worst enemy of truth could desire.
I really wish it were possible to be rid of these
Latin-born terms; for that syllable jus puts us thinking inevitably of something done for law and justice,
and  gravitating always downward on ideas simply
political; when we perfectly know, or imay, that the
Greek words translated by them  have never any but
some far-off reference to law and justice, even when
applied to men, and mullch less can be expected to
have when used as staple wordcls, to signify the moral
excellence, or holiness, or righteousness of God, set
forth to quicken righteousness in us, and beget in us
a character graciously derivative from  his. Plainly
enough there is no such quickening, reprodcltive
power in justice.
This very strange anomaly of our English version
even challenges attention from  the scholars now engaged in a version of our scriptures.  There probably
is not another version in the world that does not
translate these three words all by words of the same
stock, and it is a verbal wrong and corruption of




180          THE  SCRIPTURE  WORDS
learning  not to do it.  Thus even Luther, w]hose
theologTy, at this point, bore a stanp of legalism  so
decisive, translates nevertheless-"dcleclare the righteousness," " tlhat he may be righteous," and "'1make
righteous "-gerechtfgkeit, yerecht sei, and gerechzt mach.e-.
The Donay and other Frencll versions, following naturally the Vulgarte, read jmstice, just and justify.  And
it is also a fair question whether it would not be
better for us to get all our three words from the Latin
instead of retaining our present very absurd mixture.
For it will be seen that the expression " to declare thle
justice of God" would then hlave to be expounded so
as to carry only the moral idea of righteousness; when
of course the other two woikds would naturally follow
the lead which the first has given.
It is, in fact, the sense of our Scripture that all these
words are to- have a moral, never a forensic, or judlicial, significance.  For in the Old Testament the noun
is translated righteousness, times without number, and
when translated justice, as it is twenty-five times, it
is justice always in the sense of righteousness.  The
adjective is also translated righteous on almost every
page, and just, always in the moral sense, about fifty
times.  There may sometimes be a semblance of judicial meaning in the translations of the verb, but the
semblance even is comlmonly doubtful.  The Htebrew
has a causative mood for the verb, called the Itiphil,
and our principal question here relates to the mleaning'
under that mood, as in the word j3Gsty i —. e., justlnake, or cause to be just, or pass as beilg just.  Is




AND  THEIR  MEANINGo                 181
it  this  judicially, or mnorally,  as if it were  to
righteous-make, or cause to be righteous?' Turn
many to righteousness,' is the translation of Daniel's causative;%  "justify  mLany,   the  translation
of Isaiah'st-where  the words translated  are ex-.
actly the same.  Plainly enough there is no thought
here  of the many being judicially  acquitted, but
in both  cases only of their being made, or caused
to be righteous.  In the New  Testament the noun is
always translated  righlteousness,, never justice; the
adjective, righteous about fifty times, and just about
tllirty, though never in the judicial sense, unless it be
in the text we have under examination; the verb is
always translated to justify, because we have no other
causative or Hliphil word in English, to fill the place.
3But who can. imagine that these two latter words just
and justifier are intended to be talken away fiom their
family relation with righlteousness in the very same
sentence, and made to carry a different and more'legal
meaning?  There was never such an example of bad
writing in the world.
Perhaps it is too much to expect that the three
words here in question will ever be substituted by
three  words  in  the  samle  root-rela-  No relief, truth
tion.  In  that case what appears to must consent to
be the unquestionable truth of our in- her disadvantage.
terpretation must consent to hold a place of disadvantage and maintain itself, unsteadied by the scripture help it would have firom  a more homogeneous
* Daniel xii, 3..   Isaiah liii, L1.
16




182          NO  POSSIBILITY  OF A
translation.  Probably, however, no very greatc detriment would be suffered if due care welre always taken
to understand the words jz'st and j'usjfy, as having,
like the word righlteousness that precedes, a purely
moral significance-that God is just as being righteous,
and justifies simply as communicating his own character, and becoming thus a righteousness lupon us.
Hitherto  this caution  has not been observed by
theologians, and the words have been very commlnonly
construed by them  under the judicial analogies. Indeed the very clause, thus commonly abusedl, is continually cited as authority to show that it ought to be!
Does it not read " that he miglht be just 2" —just, that
is, and yet the justifier, because he has so exactly satisfiecl the immuntable justice by his sufferings! I-low
can a text of scripture keep its balance when it is
already overset by the bad theology it has created
under its bad interpretation, wanting still the bad interpretation to keep itself alive? The prospect in this
view, that any concurrent interpretation  will somelow be reachedl, is at least remote.   As Protestants we very generally agree that there is a gospel
truth which is fitly to be called justification by faith.
We acknowledge it even comumonly, to be the arlticulus
stctntis vel caclentis ecctesice; but as yet we hlave only a
semblance of agreement in it.  Some deny it altogether as they think, who yet more practically believe
in it than others vwho maintain it. We do not agree
as to what the justification means, and we differ as
mumch as to whlat is the mleaning of the faith. Great




LEGAL JUSTIFICATION.                  183
multitudes accept the doctrine only to fight for it as
an idol of sectarian opinion.  A wiser and more truly
christian multitude find their hecart's rest in it., and are
in it as the peace and liberty of God.  Of these latter,
too, many who have learned to believe more academically and  scholastically than is convenlient, give it
still a form  in their doctrine, which is not tile truth
discovered in their hearts, an-d imake a clnurch article
of it, as Lnther himself did, whicll is only impossible
and revolting.
Now this remarkable want of agreemelt is largely
clue, as I conceive, to the impossible problem  almost
always on  hand; viz., to make out a Legal justificarational statement of what in fact does tion impossible.
not exist, a justification that stanlds in the satisfaction of
God's law and justice.  I propose, accordingly, to open
the discussion at this point; removing if possible the
false assumption referred to.  The law, it is conceivedl
must be satisfied, or the penalties must be satisfied, else
there is no possibility of deliverance; for God will be
false to his law and justice3 if lie does not somehow
provide what makes the release of transgression consistent with the honors of his government.  Chirist
therefore has contributed in penal suffering, we are
told, what exactly compensates the law, or evens the
score of justice; so that he whvo believes may be justified
-legally justified.  Or according to another scheime
which is different,  aind is called  thle governmental
scheme, God's justice will consist iin the expression
made by his penalties of his hatred or abhorrence to




184           NO  POSSIBILITY  OF A
sin; which expression he is bound to make, but is allowed to make without penalty when he mlay, does in
fact make in the suffering of Christ; for this sulffering
is only so far in the nature of penalty as to yield tlhe
requisite equal expression of abhorrence.  The law is
satisfied, not by a substitution of sun-ering for suffering,
but of one expression of abhorrence for another; a1lowing thus it is imagined) a large economy in the penalty to be exacted.  The invention is rather ingenious,
but has no complexion of authority in the Scripture.
Whatever may be thought of it, the problem it undertakes is so far tile same as thle satisfaction scheme proposes; viz., to find how  a legal justification could be,
and was, provided.
Now  this legal justification, coming in one way or
the other, is completely made up, as we may see, beJustified be- fore all repentances; for the law is satfore faith in this isfied, the punishiment accepted, either
legal way.    -in its pains or its adequate expression
of jtistice, and the sinner is, at least, so far justified,
that his account stands even.  Ile certainly is either
justified or not, and it makes very little difference
whichll; for if. we imagine that he has only a grouvd
of justifieation  made ready, waiting  the condition
precedent of faith, there is no faith waited for in tile
ground as such, that can do any good.  There is no
transforming eflicacy in the faith of any mere fact, and
the iore illplicitly one believes in the ground, that
is) in the even score of his transgression, the less likely
is he to be concerned for any thing farther, or to be



LEGAL  JUSTIFICATION.                  185
lieve in any thing better. Is not justice satisfied? is not
the lawv  satisfied?  What concern then shlall lie have
for these, when they are in fact gone by, and never
can be set up again for uses and retribuntive proceedings in any future time or world?  VWhat is wanted
now is no mere credence for a factr, but a faith that is
faith, and the ground so called is only a hinldrance or
impediment.  For the faith that is faith will believe,
not in that, but in a person; viz., Christ the righteous,
passing over the  sounl to him.  It is such a faith
as yields the soul trustfully up to his pure life and
all-transforming grace of sacrifice, and such, in that
manner, as becomes a new-sprung life in the righteousness of God.  ]But such a faith the supposed ground
does not meet or match; one is not for thle other; andl
if the transgressor ima,gines that he is justified on the
score of the ground, lie migh't as well be justifiedl before the faith as after it, for the ground only  lelps
hlim  to be at pease in his sins, and'lhis faith in the
ground still leaves him thlere.
It is another fault of this legally grounded justifieation that it consents by definition to a really appalling fiction, proposing1  to justify or  The Pppalling
pass the slubject, not as being just, but       fiction.
as if he were just, when confessedly lie is not. WhMich
makes the justificationl only so far real that it excuses
the law, when it does not excuse or any way approve
the rmran.  Or if the  lman himself is justifiec, as alwe
continually hear, and not the law  excused, there is
then no longer any place left for forgiveness.  Indeed
YI~VI- L~ IVL~VI ~VIJ r-~VVVIVI a-xV-  V




186           NO  POSSIBILITY  OF A
the man himself would take a singular liberty,. in
risking God's  forgiveness for what lie has already
justified.  We find him stranded thus in fact between
two fictions; a forgiveness that has no opportunity,
and a justification that has no truth.  Is it any wonder9 when a double fiction is thus let in at tile center
point of our gospel, there should be some lack of
integrity in the life and practice of its disciples?
And there is yet another fiction set upon the doctrine,
before it is finished, that is even worse and farther off
Another   from  any real truth.  As it is agreed
fiction.    that the law  requires a perfect rigllteousness, nothing is justification which does not bring
the perfeet righteousness.  Tlien it follows, the theologians tell us, that any thing is to  be considered a
righteousness which answers the demand of the law,
and as Christ suffers in penalty what exactly answers
the law, lie is fairly said to provide us a righteousness.
And then, if we look into the righteousness so called
to find what is in it, we discover that the termn a
righteousness means no righteousness at all, but only
tllhat Christ contributes  penal suffering enough to
make us fiee of the law under sin, even as if we had
not sinned, or were perfectly righteous.  So far it is
just as good as a righteousness, but, alas! how little
does that mean! Our fall, our loss of righteousness,
our dreadful hfell of character —over this wte are now
allowred  to lay the plaster called a righteousness!
A  righteousness that is in fact mere suffering, and
as far as the  mode  of the fact is concerned, hlas




LEGAL JUSTIFICATION.                 187
nothing to do with righteousness at all, but only with
providing a way of safety for unrighteotusness.  A
theologic invention more dreadful than this, it is
difficult to conceive.  It was not inventecl as a fraud
-I  have no  such thoughlt-but the integrities of
righteous living are of necessity broken  and badly
corrupted by it.  It is a gospel which represents a
mere pay-bill in penal suffering, set forth and commanded to be preached as being an actual gift of
righteousness.  If it seems to be a ground for hypocrisy instead of justification, the intention we are sure
is not as bad as the look.
It is only an extension of the charges I am malking
in this line that the christian state of justification,
when based in the faith of a mere legal satisfaction
for sin, is a really ignoble matter in the   The justificaexperience, sordid  and  low   in  its  tion itself is
motive, rising scarcely, if at all above  ignoble
the level of a jail-delivery transaction.  The transgressor has learned that his penal accounrt is lmade
even. Whereupon he congratulates himself that he
is now safe, and need no more be troubled in his confidence; for the justification Christ has bought for
him. before the law, makes him  free of the law, and
what more can he want?  H is faith is in a mere political law-work that he has taken for his gospel, and
has nothing in it that belongs to the noble confidence
of justification in its true christian idea. For to be
"made righteous " in the righteousness of God, which
Christ declared by his death, is to receive him in such




188           NO  POSSIBILITY  OF  A
manner, by faith in his person, as to let in the inspira.
tion. force of hlis transcendent life and character; a
nmatter hlow clifferetC, how grandly free, how -unselfishly glreat, lifting tile human experience up into ranges
how  consciously divine.  I do not say, be it observed,
that where the justified manla  supposes and believes
in a doctrine of satisfaction rigidly legal, his experience will of course be gradel as low as his doctrine.
HIe will have sentiments often that are less prudentlial
than his faith, and will be more friequently quickened
by the righteousness of God than he ought to be.  I
only say that his doctrine itself ranges low, and, as far
as it operates, will have a chilling and degrading effect
in his experience.  His legal justification state is bad,
working only incapacity and detention.
Rehearsing these objections to any and all schemes
of legal justification, it is a most happy sign for my
doctrine, in the chapters on Propitiation and The Law,
that they make room  for no such doctrine, and leave
u-s no conceivable want of it.  By the law, as there
conceived, we are only held in terms of penal cliscipline and not of desert or vindicatory justice, and the
discipline is satisfied never, save -when it is fulfilled, or
consunmmatecl in a character delefically righteous.  As
tihe trial goes on we suffer scorches of law, and twinges
of condemnatory pain, but our lacerations are 1neasured by no principle of desert.  Thley are not meant
for justice, but to work  conjunctively always with
revelations of goodness and love concerned to win our
obedience.  These revolutions in the cross and its ar



LEGAL  JUSTIFICATION.                  189
guments of mercy, do not undertake to master the law
for us and pluck us out of its hands, as if it Awere a
beast of prey, but they join hands -with it, and g;ve it
welcomle as a powe-r working with thleln in the same regenerative pu.rpose, even when it worketh chl-lastisemnent,
All thoughts of a legal justification are, in this viei,%
out of place, we can make no account of it.  The
wrath to come is by supposition yet future, and the
dispensation of justice is not yet arrived.  Nothing
penal mixes with our discipline, only so far as it will
help our recovery. Of course there will be scars of
wrong  clefacing  us, poisons of disease  circulating
through us, disproportions and disorders stealing in, so
that if we pass out of life nneonformed to God, these
will be carried on as bad causations with us, to begin
the new  state of justice.  And it will be a state emphatically new, making distributions henceforth in the
scale of desert.  For such a state there is of course no
justification there.  Only the bad causations can be
called off here and taken quite away by what is fitly
called " the justification of life;" that which heals all
scars, extracts all poisons, tunes all discords and disorders in harmony, because it is a being entered into the
righteousifess of God, where the soul is new-charactered in the life and character of God.
Thus far I have been occupied mainly with matters
negative.  I now pass on to verify the loctrine already
vindicated, and very plainly assertedl in the passage
from  the epistle to the Romans, at which this dis



190      THE TRUE  JUSTIFICATION  IS
cussion began; viz., Ohat the true christian j'stifcation is
that iwhich mCak'es rigyhteotus.
if Christianity, or ti e christian Scripture, has any
thing to boast, it is that it proves its grandcl superiority
Consider the  and shows the manifest seal of God's
word rigllteous. inspirations, in having given to the world
far back, in advance of all other literature, this most
noble, stately, intellectually massive namle for character; viz., RIGnTEOUSNESS.  We have  other words in
the scripture and out of the scripture, built on different symbols, that answer well many of the requisite
nses of morality or moral obligation, and sometimes
of religion, but none that carry the distinctions of
character with equal force and sharpness.  Lawz is a
word more nearly  political and parliamentary, and
better for a legal virtue than a free.   Obedience supposes some other nature in a superior relation of
authority, which leaves no room, save by a large accoinmodation, for its application to God.  Justice [Latin, justitia] was even a more favorite moral word than
rectitudo among the PRomans because of their intensely
legal character, but the forensic and judicial habit of
the word associates always a false element, wihen itis
applied to mloral uses.  Goodness is a word truly divine,
when used by one who is in a spiritual habit, but it
will be observed that unreligious minds are always
sinking it to things done with generosity only, or out
of a merely kind  disposition.  Love is the popular
word of scripture obligation, partly because it has the
disadvantage of being only a word of the affections.




TO  MAKE  RIGHTEOUS.                191
demanding always some intellectual word to sharpen
its applications, and be a regulative standard of its
mneasures, times, and occasions.  Highller than all these,
and least ambignous, and sharpest in the moral ring
of it, is right or righteousness.  The other flags require
holding, all of them, but this can hold itself.  A
right line is the most inflexible of all symbols, and
having this central image of necessary meaning in it,
corrupt uses can not warp it; still it stands to its integrity as the plainly divine, visibly eternal, word for
character; declaring with Solomon, "Let thine eyes
look right on, and thine eyelids look straight before
thee;"* where —it may not be amiss to mention the
fact-this word straighzt is represented in the Septuagint by the Greek word dilcaic. What then but a
first interest plainly of the world does Christ fulfill, in'I declaring"  by his death  " the righteousness of
Godl?"
We think it may be that we are just now coming
at the fuller and more complete ethical development
of this word right, having  it for our conclusion,
scientifically fixed and generally accepted, that moral
obligation is grounded psychologically in  tle one
necessary idea, or absolute law, of right; a conclusion
which, whether one observes it or not, only brings out
our supposed science upon the old scripture standard,
which resolves all true character into right living, or
righteousness. We can see too for ourselves what immense advances of thought have been made in this
* Prov. iv, 25.




192      THE  TRUE  JUSTIFICATION  IS
direction, by simply adverting to the times of Plato
Plato reporting and the studies of right, or justice,
Socrates.   which he and his Great Mfaster have
given us.  "Justice"' [(dicaiosla re]'" is the viritne of
the soul," he says, " injustice the vice.  The just soul
then and the just man will live well."'  Speaking
also from his merely conscious experience, and not by
speculation, he reports a certain harmonic order in
the soul, when it is in righteousness, as if there were
some hidden tuning power in it, producing " a correct
arrangement of the parts towards each other, or about
each other."  But when he comes to the reporting of
Socrates in his scientific debate of right or justice,
he reports him  frankly confessing that he is strangely
mystified, or even balked by the  problem.  This
autocratic, all-piercing, indivertible idea, coming clown
upon all mind and  making all thought quiver to its
touch, whence comes it? and what is it? and whither
is it going? ". Well," he says, " my excellent friend, if
all this be true I still want to know what is justice
[i. e. right].  Thereupon they think that I ask tiresome
questions, and am leaping over the barriers, and have
been already sufficiently answered, and they try  to
satisfy me with one question after another, and at
length they quarrel.'For one of them  says that
justice is the sun [sun of righteousness?] and that he
only is the piercing or burning element which is the
guardian of nature.  And when I joyfully repeat this
beautiful notion, I amn  answered  by  the satirical
* Republic Lib. I., Cap. xxiv.




TO  MIAKE RIGHTEOUS.                193
remark:'What! is there no justice in the world,
when the sun is down?' And when I earnestly beg
my questioner to tell me his own honest opinion, he
says,'Fire in the abstract;' but that is not very intelligible.  Another says, I No; not fire in the abstract, but the  abstraction of  heat in  the  fire.'
Another man professes to laugh at all this, and says,
with Anaxagoras, that justice is soul [whose?] for
soul, has absolute power, and mixes with nothing, and
orders all things, and passes through all things. At
last, my friend, I find myself in greater perplexity
about justice [right] than I was before I began to
learn.":
Dear great Master, how  far off is he in these affecting  mystifications, and half-worshipful homages,
from any solution of this mighty word! Only this is
clear, that he finds no reference in it to judicial analogies.  What appears to almost take away his breath
is the deific mystery of emphasis in it;  Psychological
commanding from  behind all curtains    results.
and pillars of the creation; a causality every where
hid, yet every where visible; the sun that malkes internal witness night and day; fire without combustion
always felt; mind undiscovered but pronouncing itself
in the silences of thought; a mystery to be always
debated, and  yet in  deepest  amazement obeyed!
Truly these two thousand years and more of debate
have brought us over long reaches of distance, to
settle us on the basis of morality we now commonly
* Cratylus.
17




194     THE  TRUE  JUSTIFICATION  IS
think we have established; viz., everlasting right; a
mere idea, that, in being simply thought, gets authority to command the world!
And yet all these advances were practically, thoughl
not psychologically, given us, full another thousand
Abraham before or fifteen hundred years before the time
Socrates.   of Socrates himself, by the word of
our ancient scripture.  Far back of Plato and the
Greek philosophy, back of the seige of Troy, back of
the story of the Argonauts, either back of the times,
or in the times, when the Aryan tribes and Vedic
singers were pasturing their cows on the plains of the
East Country, our Bible scripture shows us Abraham,
the grand herdsman father, expostulating  sharply
with God, as if citing the categorical imperative to
soften his undue severity —  Shall not the Judge of
all the earth do right?"-  IHowever we can  see a
little way back, that Abraham  is not talking here
in the strain at all of the school ethics, but more as if
the softening touch of some divine evangelism  were
upon him. IIe has come forth, as we see, out of the
Chaldee country, leavened with a more than moral,
a grandly religious, training in the Righteousness of
God.  Others too are in the same, for he finds in the
New West a priest of the Most HIigh God, Melchizedek, whose very name shows that he is called by his
countrymen, after the principle itself of the religion
he ministers,  feZczhizedek, i. e., King of Righteousness.t
And then, as if to signify that he is in the secret,
* Gen. xviii, 25.    f Gelo. xiv, 18.




TO MAKE RIGHTEOUS.               195
whether he knows it or not, of some divine evangelism
going before upon him, he is put down as the IKing of
Salem too; that is, King of Peace; where we find
him in the very same conjunction of ideas that belong
to christian  justification.  And the  people  and
prophets coming after, warm their souls in the same;
as Isaiah, for example, when he writes-" Ancl the
work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect
of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever."*
Which conjunction  again is noted  as a properly
christian coincidence by the Epistle to the Hebrews"First being by interpretation king of righteousness,
and after that also king of Salem, which is king of
peace."  Now this may seem to be altogether fanciful,
as every thing said of 3M/elchizedek is wont to be; but,
-observe, I say not a word of the person of Ml[elchizedek, as to who he is, or whence he comes, or what his
relations to the christian future may b e —for it really
makes no difference whatever-I simply find the two
words that are elemental in the experience of justification set religiously together somehow, it matters not
how, and upon that fact I hang the conclusion that
righteousness is already become the word for holy
character. Abraham brought it from the East, and
found it also in the West.  And if now we add,
what will by and by appear more fully and partly as
an article of reason, that the being made righteous in
the righteousness of God, is a truth as old as the
world, and applicable to  all moral natures  in
* Isaiah xxxii, 11.




196      TI-IE TRUE  JUSTIFICATION  IS
itL, we shall have how little reason left to apprehend
something fanciful in this conjunction of words, that
we know we find  among our antiquities, and that
bring us out their ideas in the easy way of silence, and
covertly as it were from  themselves.  It will not appear that there is any such putting forward of riglhteousness as a standard of character, in the nearly contemporary literature of the Aryan people, which, if it
be as old as our scripture, or even older, has no
name or definite conception for God, and whicll I do
not find, by my restricted and rather second-hand
knowledge, to have any rugged and rigidly determinate notion of duty, such as we name by the word
righteousness.
But our scripture revelation does not stop in the
antiquities of Genesis; but marks two other great adGod declared -vances to be distinctly noted.  In the
as the spring of first it shows all holy character in tmen
righteousness in to be a grace derivative from the rightmen.
eousness of God.  Thus we have the
Psalmist singing out his blessed promise even before
the days of Homer-" He shall receive the blessing
from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his
salvation."*  And the prophets coming after echo and
re-echo  the same inspiring  hope; one protesting
"This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lordcl;'t
and again, "'le hath covered me with the robe of
righteousness; for as the garden causeth the things
* Psalms xxiv, 5.    t Isaiah liv, 17.




TO  MAK-E  RIGIHTEOUS.              197
that are in it to spring forth, so the Lord will cause
rigThteousness and praise to  spring  forth  before all
nations;"* another, by a certain unmatched boldness
of thought that comnprehends all that is highest in
God as the eternal source and fund of character, declaring,' this is the name whereby he shall be called,
THTE LnRD oun IRIGHTEOUSNESS;"t another declaring
Christ ill his grand prerogative as Redeemer-" and
to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in
everlasting righteousness."'   These wonderful scriptures, presenting God as the causative power of righteousness in all mortal natures, have only a sound of
unmeaning jingle, I know, to imany, the repetition
of them does not even move respect.  And the reason
is that we have put thei  for long ages to a theologie
use so mechanical and hollow  that the living sense of
them  is dead.  God undertakes in them, how visibly,
to kindle the hope in us of a glorious new character
from  himself-which we, alas, conceive only to mean
that he has bought us off from  thle punishment of
our sins!-having provided us a righteousness.
Descending to the New  Testament, we have the
Saviour himself testifying in his very first sermon"6Blessecl are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled."~  I-Ie does not say,
observe, they that hunger and thirst after a righteousness, but after righteousness.  And again he declares
at this  earliest moment of his mlinistry'-" Seek
ye first the kingdom of God and his righteous* Isaiah lxi, 10, 11. { Jer. xxiii, 6.: Dan. ix, 24. ~ Matth. v, 6.
l?~ —




198      THE  TRUE  JUSTIFICATION  IS
ness."*  A  most bold. thought to put in any mortal
mind that it is to seek the righteousness itself of
God!  Accordingly his new  dispensation is  called
the ministration of righteousnesst and that,too, plainly
in the sense of justification, because it antagonizes
and quells, when embraced, the ministration of condemnation.  To the same point comes another deelaration; that "now' the righteousness of God without
the law  is manifested, being witnessed by the law
and tle prophets, even the  righteousness of God
which is by faith in Jesus Christ unto all and upon
all them that believe."4  It is not, observe, a grace of
penal suffering for, but a grace of righteousness,unto
and upon all them  that believl.  Hence the call of
our salvation is "to yield our members instruments
of righteousness unto Godl,"' as if nothing now were
necessary to put us fully in God's character but to
yield our whole nature believingly up to his all transforming righlteousness.   Thus when God has all our
faculties offered Lup together to the harmonizing power
of his righteousness, and  to  inspired  co-working
with it, they will be instruments discoursing only
music firom that time forth.
Wh1at I am here advancing then under this lead is
the fact of a grand, stock character in God, that has
been and is to be forevermore the spring of all character in his believing people.  Thus it was long beibre any one ever had a thought of the possible satisfyig'r   of God's law  and justice, by a contribution of
* Matth. vi, 33. ~ 2 Cor. iii, 9.   Reom. iii, 21-22. ~ Rom. vi, 13.




TO  MAKE  RIGHTEOUS.                199
pains to fill the legal quota of transgression, that
Abrahalm, believing God in the promise of an heir,
had the faith counted unto him for righteousness.
Simply because every one brought home to God in
such a way of faith, passes into God, so to speak, and
is hid and covered and charactered in all action by
his righteousness.
PBut a higher, finer point is finally reached, or finally
will be, in -the scripture development of this ideal
standard.  We are not only to have our righteousness
derivatively from  God, but God himself, as being its
eternal source, will be in it, after a  God'srighteousstandard more perfect than we, to this ness and that of
hour, have commonly been able to im- the market, different.
agine. I-ow seldom  do we think it requires any thing above justice and equity and fair
consideration. Whereas God would not be right or
righteous to himself, if he could think it less than
wrong to not make cost, or endure even a cross for his
enemy.  Hence the representation that his Son is set
forth to be a propitiation, because righteousness or
right conviction-the eternal law before government
-required it of him.  Whence it follows, in a reverse
order, th'at the blood and sacrifice of his Son declare
" the righteousness of God in the forgiveness of sins."
All this "' that he may be righteous," not just in the
retributive sense as our version is supposed to represent, " but righteous "-and have it seen that for righteousness' sake, he will forgive at bloody cost; so to
new-character in rigllteousness him that believeth in




200      TIIE  TRUE  JUSTIFICATION  IS
Jesus.  And how beautifully is the conception borne
out, in the words of apostolic epithet under which he
is presented-" Jesus Clhrist the righteotes."  I-e is
called the righteous, observe, as if this were somehow
the most emphatic and principally distinctive designation of his person.  And that the epithet is used
with a deliberate reference to the cross and the sacrifice for sin, is plainly seen from the words preceding;
" we have an advocate with the Father;" as if he were
"tzhe righteous " in that very grace itself.  The same
thing also we have once more in the same epistlelie is faithful and just," [that is righteous] " to forgive
us our sins."'Where the unhappy translation, just,
really mocks the significance of the words; for who
will imagine that God is faithful to forgive sins because he is forensically just?  What, in fact, are we
shown all the while with so great stress of misbegotten argument, as that God can not forgive sins
without something done to satisfy his justice and take
it out of the way? Here then it is that we behold
the sublime peak of obligation where true righteousness culminates; viz., that it is to be fulfilled, and can
be, only by sacrifice. Righteousness and sacrifice are
even relative ideas.  That Christ himself had this impression is sufficiently clear from  his promise of the
Spirit coming to reprove the world of righteousness, because his death will have taken him home now to the
Father to be seen no more.  The pure great image
of the righteousness of God, will now be discovered
* 1 John ii, 1.




TO  MAKE  RIGHTEOUS.                201
in his reascension to the Father, showing plainly that
lie is not a being of this world.
FHow  clifferent a mlatter now  is the justification
that comnes of justice  satisfied, from  this  overspreading, all-assuring character il tile   Legal justificarighteousness of God.  One believes in  tion cold and
the cold-iron click of the turnkey open-  poor.
ing his door; the other in the sunrise and the softglowing, free-breathing  radiance of the morningalways to rise and glow  and breathe and be fresh
morning for the soul's high liberty.  And how strongly cast the contrast is we all discover, in the shock of
incongruity it gives us to simply substitute justice for
righteousness in the scripture uses.  We can not read
" sacrifices of justice "-"justice fiom  the God of his
salvation."-" the Lord  our justice "-" Blessed are
they that hunger and thirst after justice for they shall
be filled "-" so by the justice of one the free gift
came on all "-" the justice of God which is by faith
of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them  that believe "-" much more doth the ministration of justice
exceed in glory "-" new  heavens and  new  earth
wherein dwelleth justice;" indeed there is scarcely a
passage, I know not one, in thle Old and New Testament, that will not groan almost audibly when the
word justice is stuck upon it as the synonym of righteousness.  So clear it is that any proper and true
justification is a state renewed in righteousness-thlat
and nothing else.
Two other points concerning justification still re



202   JUSTIFICATION  IS THE  NORMAL
main, the presentation of which could not well be
intermixed with the largely scriptural and verbal discussion of its nature just now closed. And first of
all it needs to be observed, in order to a full understanding of justification, that it comies in the divine
idea not after sin as a fact or condition previous, but
was to be unconditionally every whei'e and forever.
For according to the original normal state of being,
God was to be a power all diffusive, a central, selfradiating orb -Sun itself of Righteousness, shining
abroad on all created minds and overspreading
them with the sovereign day of its own excellence.
The plan never was that created beings should be
righteous, in such a sense, by their own works, or
their own inherent force, as not to be derivatively
righteous and by faith.  They had and were eternally
to have, their righteousness in God. Remaining upright, they would consciously have had their righteousness in God's inspirations, and would have been disturbed by a contirary suggestion.
Hence the dismal incapacity of sin; because it separates the soul fiom God's life-giving character and inspirations. I-Having Him no more, as the fontal source
of righteousness, it falls off into an abnormal, self-centered state, where it comes under mere self-interest,
and struggles vainly, if at all, in the tangle of that
kind of endeavor to recover itself to its own ideals.
Works of the law, dead works carefully piled, willworks, works of supererogation, penances, alms, austerities of self-mortification-none of these, nor all of




STATE  OF BEING  RESTORED.            203
them, make out the needed righteousness.  Still there
is a felt deficiency, which the apostle calls "a coming
short of the glory of God."  Nothing will suffice for
this, but to come back, finite to infinite, creature to
Creator, and take derivatively what, in its nature,
must be derivative; viz., the righteousness that was
normally and forever to be, unto, and upon, all them
that believe.
Here then is the grand renewing office and aim of
the gospel of Christ. Ile colnes to men groping in a
state of separation from  God, consciously not even
with their own standards of good, and, what is more,
consciously not able to be-self-condemned when they
are trying most to justify themselves, and despairing
the more, the more they endeavor to make themselves righteous by their own works-to such Christ
comes forth, out of the righteousness of God, and
also in the righteousness of God, that he may be
the righteousness of God upon all them  that believe,
and are so brought close enough to him in their faith,
to receive his inspirations.  And this is the state of
justification, not because some debt is made even, by
the penal suffering of Christ, but because that normal
connection with God is restored by his sacrifice, which
permits the righteousness of God to renew its everlasting flow.
When I speak thas of the connection with God as
being restored by the sacrifice of Christ, let me not
be understood as meaning by the sacrifice, only what
is tenderly sympathetic and' submissive in Christ's




204    JUSTIFICATION  IS THE  NORMAL
death.  I include all that is energetic, strong, and
piercing; his warnings, the pressure of his discipline,
all that is done, by his powerful ministry and doctrine
to save us from  the wrath to come.  His sacrifice is
no mere suit or plaint of weaknless, for the righteousness of God is in it.  When, the metallic ring of
principle, or everlasting right, is heard in the distress
and wail of the cross, the sacrifice becomes itself a
sword of conviction, piercing irresistibly through the
sinner, ancd  causing  him  to quiver  on the point
by which he is fastened.   Mlere sympathy, as we
commonly speak, is no great power; it must be somehow a tremencdous sympathly, to have the true divine
efficacy.  Hence the glorious justifying efficacy of
Christ; because the righteousness of God is declared
in h-is sacrifice.
Again, secondly, a more deliberate statement of the
relations of faith to justification appears to be demanded.  Though the righteousness of God  is deFaith howre- clared and made to shine with its true
lated to justifica- divine lustre and glory by Christ, still
tion.         the justification is not conceived to be
an accomplished fact, as indeed it never can be, prior
to faith in the subject.  It is justification by faith
and not without-" and the justifier of him that believethl in Jesus."'  What is this faith, and why is it
necessary?
It is not the belief that Christ has come to even our
account with justice; neither is it the belief that he
has obtained a surplus merit, which is offeredl, over




STATE  OF BEING RESTORED.               205
and above, as a positive rigohteousness, and set to our
credit, if we will have it.  Neither of the two is a
fact, or at all credible aiiy' way.  Nor would both,ll
if believed as mnere facts, do any thing more for us
than a belief in any other facts.  Our sins do not fly
away because we believe in a fact of any kind.  We
can even believe in all the historic facts of Christianity, as thousands do, without being any the more truly
justified.
No, the real faith is this, and very little intelligence
iso-equired to see the necessity of it; viz., the trusting
of one's self over, sinner to Saviour, to be in him, and
of him1, and new  charactered by him; because it is
only in that way that the power of Christ gets opportunity to work.  So the sinner is justified, and the
justification is a most vital affair; "' the   Faith dejustification of life."  The true account    find.
of it is that Jesus, coning into the world, with all
God's righteousness upon him; declaring it to guilty
souls in all the manifold evidences of his life and passion, wins their faith, and by that fiaith they are connected again with the life of God, and filled and overspread with his righlteousness.  And there springs up,
in this reconnection of the soul with God's righteousness, a perfect liberty and confidence; for it is no
more trying to climb up into a righteous consciousness
and Lconfidence by itself, but it has the righteousness
by derivation; flowing down upon it, into it, and
tllrough  it, by  the  eternal permeation of God's
Spirit.  And just here it is that Christianity wins
18




206          LUTHER IS DISCOVERY
its triumllph.  It shows man how to be free in good,
and makes it possible.  The best that all other religions and moralities can do, is to institute a practice
of works, and a climbing up into perfection by our
own righteous deeds; but the gospel of Jesus comes
to our relief, in showing us how to find righteousness,
and have it as an  eternal inspiration; "even the
righteousness of God that is by the faith of Jesus
Christ unto all and upon all them that believe."'*  In
it we do not climnb, but rest; we goad ourselves into
no impossibilities, groan under no bondage that we
can not lift; sink into no deep mires because we try
to struggle out. We have a possible righteousness,
because it is not ours but God's; Christ received by
our faith, to be upon us and for us, all that we could
wish to be for ourselves.  This is the transcendent distinction, the practically sublime glory of our gospel,
our great all-truth-Justification by Faith.  Here is
conquered the grandest of all problems, how to put
confidence in the bosom of guilt, and settle a platform
of virtue that shall make duty free and joyful under
all conscious disabilities.
Here it was that Luther broke into ecstasy, and
a great bewilderment of change that le could not,
Luther's great for the time, understand. Hie had been
discovery of jus- trying to be justified by works; that is,
tification.  by fastings, penances, alms, vigils, wearing down the body under the load of his sins, and
crying to God in his cell, day and night, for some deR-tom. iii) 22.




OF JUSTIFICATION.                  207
liverance that should ease the torment of his still and
always self-condemning soul.  A  right word. from
Staupitz let him see the fool that he was-that Christ
would  take  him  because he  was guilty, hlaving
died for him  because lie was guilty, and not because he was righteous.  At that point broke in, what
light and confidence! His emancipated soul burst off
all its chainls in a moment, and took, as it were, the
range of heaven in its liberty.  I-e was new himself,
the world was new, the gospel was new.  It had not
entered into his heart to conceive the things that were
freely given hli  of God, but now he has them all at
once.  Justification by faith, justification by faithhis great soul is full of it; he must preach it, lie must
fight for it, die for it, know nothing else.
In the inspiration of this truth it was, that his great
career as a reformer and spiritual hero began.  If any
thing will make a mnan a hero, it will be the righteousness of God upon him, and the confi-   Luther's head
dence hie gets in the sense of it.  If lie  did not undercan be eloquent for anly thing, it will be  stand his heart.
in the testimlony of what Christ is to him, in the now
glorified consciousness of his inward life. But we
must not fall into a very great mnistake here.  Luther
is, in fact, two, not one; viz., a  Christian, and a
theologian; and his Christian justification by faith,
that which puts snlch a grand impulsion into his feelinlg, and raises the tone of his manhood to such a
pitch of vigor, is a very different, altogethler separate
matter, from  that theologic contriving of his head,




208           OBJECTIONS STATED
which he took so confidently for the certain equivalent. Taking this latter, it would be difficult to find
how any one should become mu-ch of a hero, or be
lifted to the pitch of any great sentiment, in it. In.deed, the very great wonder is, that a mlan so intelligent should imagine, for a moment, that he was fired
with a passion so mighty, and a joy so transcendent,
by the fact that an innocent being had taken his sills,
and evened the account of justice by suffering their
piunishment! This he thought he believed; but we
are not obliged to believe that he did. Really believing it, and conceiving what it means, the fact
would have set his stout friame shuddering, and turned
his life to gall. The truth indeed appears to be, that
his heart sailed over his theology, and did not come
down to see it. WVe find himn contriving, in his
" Epistle to the Galatians," how Christ, having all the
sins of mankind imputed to him,'; becomes the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, and
blasphemer, that ever was, or could be, in all the
worldl;" and his doctrine is, that suffering the just
wrath of God, for the sin that is upon him, Christ
makes out a right of justification for us before God,
which is colmplete, because it completely satisfies the
law. And then to be just cleared of punishment, and
believe that lhe is, he conceives to be the very thing
that makes his glorious liberty and raises the tempest
of his joy!  The manner appears to be hideous,
the deliverance to be negative and legal only; but
his heart is ranging high  enough, in its better




AND  REMOVED.                   209
element-the righteousness of God-not to be offended by the crudities he is taking for a gospel.
But this is not the first time that the hlead of a great
man has not been equal to the understanding, or
true interpretation, of his heart.  Indeed, nothing is
mlore common, as a matter of fact, than for men of
real or even the highest intelligence, to so far misinterpret their own experience in matters of religion, as
to ascribe to it, and find it springing radically out of,
that which has no sound verity, and could never have
produced such an experience.  Let no one be surprised, then, that Luther's justification by faith, that
which puts his soul ringing with such an exultant aiid
really sublime liberty,' makes a plunge so bewildering
into batheos and general unreason, when it comes to
be affirmed theologically in his doctrine.  As lie had
it in his Christian consciousness, the soul of his joy,
the rest of his confidence, the enlargement of his
gracious liberty, nothing could be more evidently real
and related to the deepest realities of feeling; but as
lie gave it in his dogmatic record, I confess that calling  it justification  by  faith —arl iczlas  stc.7it's, vel
cadlente.s eccesicc —I could more easily see the church
fall than believe it.  Happily our very great reverence
and admiration for the man may be accomirnodated in
the confidence that any one may reject it utterly, and
yet receive all that his faith received in his justification; and may also be withl him  in profoundest sympathly, in the 7magnmficat he chants, and, with sulch
exhaustless eloquence of boasting, reiterates, in his.1 Rx



210           OBJECTIONS  STATED
preaching of the cross and the glorious liberty it
brings.  Certain it is that no man is a proper'Christian, who is not practically, at least, in the I)ower of
this great truth.  If any thing defines a Christian, it
is that he is one who seeks and also finds his righteousness in God.
II.
I am well aware how insufficient this exposition of
the great Christian truth, justification by faith, will
be to many-to some, because it is a truth that can be
sufficiently expounded by nothing but a living experience of its power; to others, because they have
already learned to find their experience in words and
forms of doctrine, by which it is poorly, or even
falsely represented. What questions the view  presented  will encounter, especially  from  this latter
class, I very well know, and  will therefore bring
the subject to a conclusion by answering a few of
them.
Do we not then, by holding a view of justification
so essentially subjective, virtually annihilate the disJustification tinction between justification and sancand sanctification tification a This is one of the questions,
not confounded. and I answer it by saying that if the
two experiences were more closely related than they
are commonly supposed to be, I do not see that we
need be greatly disturbed on that account.  Still they
are sufficiently distinct.  According to the Catholic
doctrine  they are virtually identical; because the
"making just," or "umaking righteous," whiclih is con



AND  REMOVED.                  211
ceived to be the sense of justification, is understood to
be a complete subjective change, one that goes below
consciousness and makes the soul inherently  right —
which is the very significance also of sanctification.
But if we only conceive the soul to be so joined, by
its faith, to the righteousness of God, as to be rather
invested by it, or enveloped in it, than to be transformed all through in its own inherent quality; if the
righteousness goes on, even as the sun goes on shining
when it makes the day, and stops of necessity when
the faith withdrawn permits it to go on no longer; then
we have a very wide and palpable distinction.  The
consciousness of the subject, in justification, is raised
in its order, filled with the confidence of right, set free
from the bondage of all fears and scruples of legality;
but there is a vast realm back of the consciousness,
or below it, which remains to be changed or sanctified,
and never will be, except as a new habit is generated
by time, and the better consciousness descending into
the secret roots below, gets a healing into them more
and more perfect. In this manner, one who is justified at once, can be sanctified only in time; and one
who is completely justified is only'incipiently sanctified; and one who has consciously " yielded his members as instruments of righteousness unto God," may
discover even more and more distinctly, and, by manifold tokens, a law in his members not yet sanctified
away. There is also a certain reference in justification to one's standing in everlasting principle; whereas
Sanctification refers more especially to the conscious




212           OBJECTIONS  STATED
purity of the soul's aims, and the separation of its
moral habit from evil. By another distinction, justification is the purgation of the conscience, and sanctification a cleansing of the soul's affections and passions. Both of course are operated by God's inspirations, and are operated only in and through the faith
of the subject.
There is indeed no objection to saying that, in a
certain general way, they are one —-just as faith is one
with love, and love with regeneration, and this with
genuine repentance, and  all good  states with all
others. The same divine life or quickening in God is
supposed in every sort of holy exercise, and the different names we give it represent real and important
differences of meaning, accordingly as we consider the
new life quickened in relation to our own agency, or
to God's, or to means accepted, or trusts reposed, or
effects wrought. In the same way, justification is
sanctification, and both are faith; and yet their difference is by no means annihilated.
Another question likely to be raised in the way of
objection  is, whether, in the kind of justification
HIow related to stated, I do not give in to the rather
imputation?  antiquated notion of imputed righteousness? To this I answer, that if the notion supposed
to be thus antiquated, is the theologic fiction of a surplus obedience, over and above what was due from
Christ as a man-contributed by him in pains and
acts of duty from  the obedience of his higher nature
— which surplus is imputed to us and reckoned to our




AND REMOVED.                    213
account, such inputation is plainly enough rejected;
still there will be left the grand, experimental, Scripture truth of imputed righteousness, a truth never
more to be antiquated than holiness itself.
The theologic fiction more fully  stated appear-s to
have been something like this: that Clhrist, taken. sinply as a man, was undcler all the obligations that belong to a man; therefore that he was only righteous
as he should be in fulfilling those obligations, and had
no righteousness to spare; but that, as being the Godman, he was under no such obligations; whence it resulted that, by his twofold  obedience, passive and
active, he gained two kinds of surplus righteousness;
a passive to stand in the place of our punishmlent and
be a complete satisfaction for it, and an active to be
set to our account as being our positive obedieneeboth received by imputation.  And so we are justified
and saved by a double imputed righteousness, one to
be our suffered penalty, the other to be such an
obedience for us as will put us even with the precept
of the law. It is even a sad office to recite the
scholastic jingle of such a scheme, made up and received for a gospel.  Plainly it is all a fiction.  The
distinction of a passive and active obedience is a fiction; the passive obedience being just as voluntary as
the active, and therefore just as active.  The assumption that Christ, to put righteousness upon us, must
provide a spare righteousness not wanted for himself,
is a fiction that excludes even the possible coiinonia of
the righteousness of God. And a still greater fiction




214            OBJECTIONS  STATED
is the totally impossible conception of a surplus rigllteousness.  Christ was just as righteous as he should
be, neither more nor less, and the beauty of his sacrifice lay in the fact, not that it overlapped the eternal
law, but that it so exactly fulfilled that law.  His
merit therefore was not that he was better than he
should be, but all that he should be; for if he was
perfect without the surplus, then lie was more than
perfect with it, and we are left holding the opinion,
that there is a righteousness above and outside of perfection! Still again tile imputation of such a perfection to us, so that we shall have the credit of it, is a
fiction also of the coldest, most unfructifying  kind,
and impossible even at that.  What has any such pile
of merit in Christ, be it suffering, or sacrifice, or punishment, or active righteousness, to do with my personal deserts?  If a thousand worlds-full of the surplus had been provided for me, I should be none the
less ill deserving if I had the total reckoning in possession.
The experimental, never-to-be antiquated, Scripture
truth of imputed righteousness, on the other hand, is
this:-That the soul, when it is gained to faith, is
brought back, according to the degree of faith, into its
original, normal relation to God; to be invested in
God's light, feeling, character —in one word, righteousness-and live derivatively from HIlim.  It is not mlade
righteous, in the sense of being set in a state of selfcentered righteousness; to be maintained by an ability
complete in the person, but it is made righteous in the




AND  REM~OVED.                 215
sense of being always to be made righteous; just as
the day is made lImninous, not by the light of sunrise
staying in it, or held fast by it, but by the ceaseless
outflow of tlhe solar effulgence.  Considered in this
view, the sinning man justified is never thought of as
being, or to be, just in himself; but he is to be counted
so, be so by imputation, because his faith holds him to
a relation to God, where the sun of His righteousness
will be forever gilding him with its fiesh radiations.
Thus Abraham. believed God enough to become the
friend of God-saying nothing of justice satisfied,
nothing of surplus merit, nothing of Christ whatever
-and it was imputed to him for righteousness.  No
soul comes into such a relation of trust, without having God's investment upon it; and whatever there
may be in God's righteousness-love, truth, sacrifice
-will be rightfully imputed, or counted to be in it,
because, being united to Hiin, it will have them
coming over derivatively from Him. Precisely here
t]lerefore, in this most sublimely practical of all truths,
imputed righteousness, Christianity culminates.  Here
we have coming upon us, or upon our faith, all that
we most want, whether for our confidence, or the complete deliverance and upraising of our guilty and
dreadfully  enthralled  nature.  HIere we trilumph.
There is therefore now no condemnation, the law of
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus bath made us free.
If we had a righteousness of the law to work out, we
should feel a dreadful captivity upon us. If we were
put into the key of righteous living, and then, being




216           OBJECTIONS STATED
so started, were left to keep the key  ourselves, by
manipulating our own thouglhts, affections, actions, in
a way of self-superintendence, the practice would be
so artificial, so inherently weak, as to pitch us into
utter despair in a single day.  Naothing meets our
want, but to have our life and righteousness in God,
thus to be kept in liberty and victory always by our
trust in Him.  Calling this imputed righteousness, it
is no conceit of theology, no fiction, but the grandest
and most life-giving of all the Christian truths.
We have this imputation also in another form that
is equally  natural and practical.  Thus, instead of
We also to having our faith imputed unto us for
have our right- righteousness, we ourselves teach our
eousness puta- faith to locate all our righteousness putively in God. tatively in God; saying " The Lord our
righteousness," " Christ who is our life," " made unto
us righteousness;" as if the stock of our virtue, or
holiness, were laid up for us in God. All the hope of
our character that is to be, we.place, not in the inherent good we are to work out, or become in ourselves,
but in the capital stock that is funded for us in Him.
And then the character, the righteousness, is the more
dear to us, because it is to have so high a spring; and
God is the more dear to us, that he will have us hang
upon him by our faith, for a matter so divine. And
the joy also, the confidence, the assurance and rest —
all that we include in our justification —is the more
sublimely dear, that we have it on a footing of perrnitted unity with God, so transforming and glorious.




AND REMOVED.                    217
There is, in short, no truth that is richer, and fuller of
meaning and power, than this same figure of lmental
imputation, in which we behold our character laid up
and funded for us fin the righteousness of God.  In
one view it is not true; there is no such quantity, or
substance, separate from  him,, and laid up in store for
us; but there is a power in him everlastingly able to
beget in us, or keep flowing over upon, us, every gift
our sin most needs; and this we represent to our
hearts, by conceiving, in a figure, that we have a stock,
just what we call " our righteousness," laid up for us,
beforehand, in the richly funded stores of his eternity.
It is no fault then of our doctrine of justification by
faith, that it favors a notion of imputed righteousness;
for in just this fact it is, that the gospel takes us out of
the bondage of works into a really new divine liberty.
IHere, in fact, is the grand triumph of Christianity;
viz., in the new  stage of righteousness inaugurated,
which makes the footing of a sinner good, and helps
the striving bondman of duty to be free; even the
righteousness of God  that is by  faith  of  Jesus
Christ, unto all, and  upon  all them  that believe.
When this is antiquated, just then also will salvation be.
19




CHAPTER  IT.
THREEFOLD DOCTRINE OF CIIIST CONCERNIN"G IIMISELF.
IT must have occurred to a great many disciples,
working in the interest of doctrine, to inlagine how
great a thing it would have been, had Christ himself,
in his own superior, unquestionable competence, seen
A great omis- fit to frame a statement for his followers
sion of Christ re- of what he himself conceived his gospel,
gretted.     or the doctrine of his gospel, to be. It
may even have been a subject of wonder, sometimes,
that he did not do it. All the greater wonder, that
he could have done it so easily, and saved, or at least
greatly reduced, the necessity of misunderstandings
and controversies often painful.  And yet, if I rightly
conceive his meaning, he has, in fact, done it; presenting us a complete and explicit summation of the
results he will have accomplished by his life and death.
For this appears to be the significance of what he puts
forth in his promise of the Comforter.*  His very design is, if I am  right, to show us in this passage, the
doctrinal outfit he will have provided for the Spirit,
coining now to take his place.  It is expedient, he
* John xvi, 7-15.
(218)




THE OFFICE  AND A.RMAMENT, ETC.  219
says, for him  now, since he has done, as in terms of
body and space, all which can be doine under such
limitations, to wvithdraw  from  visibility, or go away.
In this kind of ministry having come to his limit, only
by another can his work be fulfilled. A traveling grace
can not, by supposition, be ecumenical.  I-e puts off
What is wanting  now is a distributive now locality and
power that can be present every where,  form.
and occupy all places, without travel or transition; a
Spirit universal that has the liberty of the world.
The new ministration of the Comforter, now  promised, is to be exactly this; a Christ delocalizedcl, invisible, nunder no  laws of spatce, and  practically
universal.
Three things, in particular, are to be the outfit of
his working in all the ages to come; which thlree
things he now  calls "' the things that are miIle; because lie has prepared them by his life and death, and
gotten them ready, as in word and form, to be the instrumnental forces of truth  and  spirit invisible or
out of form-" le shall glorify me, he shall receive
of mine, and shall show it unto you."  They compose
a creed, as he gives it, in three articles;    His three
for tllough he does not give them to be     articles.
a creed in our sense of the term, he does give them to
be a brief summation of what he has done, set forlth
in their potential value, or practical significance.  I-e
will go forth now, no more as in body, but as alldifflusive, every where present Spirit, reproving the
world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment —




220             TI:E  OFFICE  AND
"Of sin," he says,'" because," being what I have been
and doing what I have done, "' they believe not on me."
"Of righteousness because I go to the Father  -
borne up in ascension to worlds above the world"and ye see me no more.'  " Of judgment because
the prince of this world  is judged "-cast down,
crushed and visibly brouglt under.  In Christ's own
opinion, as we see, these three things are the substance of what he has done for the world, the equipment he has made ready for the Spirit, and put
in  hand to be the  operative force of his regenerative ministry. for the world.  In the use of this
divine armament he becomes, what is here given to
be his designation, the Spirit of truth;  for the
threefold substance of doctrine lhere set forth is to be
his implemental power.
There really appears to be no word of scripture
which has fared as badly, at the bands of preachers
The wordCom- and commentators, as this word Cormforter a mistake. forter, of which I now  speak. I say
this considering the difficulty of finding any word in
Englishl that will fitly  represent the Greek word
Paraclete.  It is once translated Advocate.*   The
commentators  suggest other words suclh as IJeTper,
Counsel, Teacher, Intercessor.  The very poorest, thinnest representation ever proposed, or adopted, is our
English name Comforter.  And it is all the worse
that it is evidently intended to be taken as being
naturally descriptive; for another  word  is  even
*1 John ii, 1.




ARMAMENT  OF THE  SPIRIT.               221
palpably mistranslated to conform to it-" I will not
leave you comfortless "*-where the word " comfortless " represents the word orplaCns in the original, the
Saviour's design being in that word to say that he
will not leave  his  disciples  deserted, robbed of
company and counnsel; a very different matter from
being left uneomnforted.  As if their being unlcomfortable, or not sufficiently  comforted, were a principal,
or prominent concern of the Master; a friend whose
dignity it was to hold the rational and manly view of
all experience, and have it as a matter conceded, that
the best thing for them will sonmetimes be to fall ont
of condition, and be as grandly superior to all selfsympathy in the loss of earthly colfirts, as lie has
been himself.  No, there is no such feeble, over-soft
sympathy in the Saviour's mind, in this parting hour,
that he should be conltriving how  especially to put
his disciples in comfort and leave them  so. Besides,
his concern here is not for his disciples, but specially
for sucll as lie calls " the world;" for it is the world
he is going to convince and bring to righllteousness.
And if the Spirit to be given is to be a gift having
special reference to this, which appears in the manner of the language, the name Comiforter is a nalnme
wholly inappropriate.  To be comforted is jlust the
thing the world as such does not want.  And the
Saviour has a much heavier and nobler concern;
viz., tile organizing of a grace for the world, snch
as he is just mnow  bringing to completion.  He is
* John xiv, 18.
19":




222              THE OFFICE  AND
planning to unlocalize, universalize, and make victorious, the great salvation he has undertaken fbr
mankind.  And his idea stands on the face of the
word lhe adopts for the designation of this promised
ministry, whether we can finld an English name for it
or not.  It is Paraclete-Para near, 7dcetos call-the
MTear-caller, the Briinger-in, for salvation; a word in
no  soft, soothing key, but a bugle note of summons 1rather, such as the work of the Spirit, in the
in-gathering and organizing of the everlastinl  king-'dom, fitly requires.
As we strike this conception we begin to see how
grand a thought is in the Savionur's mind when lihe
namles his three things.  They are as far off, all, from
the insipid offices of comfort as they can be, and are
rightly named as reproving powers —' reproving of
sin, of righteousness, of judgment-just such offices of
truth, and piercing conviction, as the great Bringer-in
of the world imLust needs fulfill.
At the sane tinme I quite willingly concede that
there is a certain superficial aspect of fairness, in the
e dispenses  representationls that interpret the promcomfo r t, of ised Spirit by the words Comfor ter and
course.      Comfort; for it may be imagined, from
the words "' Whom  the world can not receive,":t that
the promnise is to have its value in the experience only
of dlsciples.  But when construed  in that way, the
express terms of tle threefold promise, in the sixteenith chapter, are even all of thelm  denied any
John xiv, 17.




ARM.[AMENT OF THE SPIRIT.              223
chance of imeaning at all.  Besides the grand effect
is formally declared to be, in a "reprovinig of the
worcld"'-raising sentiments of conviction, sensibilities
of character, impressions of jaudgnent, in the world.
And we are not required to run our interpretation
directly against this passage by insisting that the
other-"' Whom the world can not receive 9"-must be
taken in the largest meaning possible; for it probably
means only that the world as world, unmoved, unreproved, dwelling wholly apart from God in the blindness of nature, can not thus receive or entertain the
Spirit. Nothing is more affectingly true.  Holding
this view of the scripture in question, I am  not required to say that the Holy Spirit of promise is to
have no office of comfort included in his work.  He
is to fulfill every good office in his ministry, even as
Christ himself did.  But it will be as far as possible
firom any right statement of his mission, that he is to
be, in chief and in a degree most of all significant, a
dispenser of comfort.  Christ's own last words in the
inspiring strain of comfort and courage and patience
under persecutions to come, are full of beauty and of
tender cheer, but it is not proposed that the Holy
Spirit should always or ever make that kind of comfort any principal object of his work.  He will comfort where he may; convince, correct, fortify in patience, chasten, bring low, confound by rebuke, where
hle must.
Taking  now  this general view of the  Spirit in
Christ's three points above stated, there ought to be




224         THE  REPROVING  OF SIN
some light for us in them, if we go over them carefully and make up our conception from them, as we:easily may, of the gospel doctrine designedly summ.arized in them. We shall get in this manner, a
fresh coining of the gospel idea, clear of all the con-:structive  wisdoms'and  uw-isdom.s heretofore propounded as the inevitable theologic truth.  For this
three-menmbered gospel,:set off and labeled numerically for the ontfit of'the Spirit, appears to have
carrcely taken the attention hitherto of the formularies and school functionaries.  Wherefore:it is left
us, or:appears to'be, for,our privilege, to draw first
lessons here of:atonement from'the lips of Christ
4himself.
It may not'be amiss to suggest, as a reason for this.oversighlt, that the preachers:and commentators ap-'Christ not to pear to htave  been too much occupied
-be overlooked rwith the stress Christ lays on the work
here.       of thle -Spirit, to -observe, at all, the,rather:silent implication of his reference to the part
-he himself is:to have in the worm'k.  It is not simply
promised, we are to,observe, that the Spirit will do
these thlings, but -that he will.:do them  inz and by the
energizing pouwers of impression -now made ready for
his use. In the fi:rst it is as if it were said, "'They
shall look on me whom they have pierced."  The conviction w'rought by tihe Spirit is:to come of what
Christ has, been to men, who yet do not believe in
him.  So of the "rigfhteousness;" it shall be what
Christ himself has revealed by his life and death and




BY  UNBELIEF  IN  CIIRIST.             225
ascension to the Father.  And the same is true as we
shall see of the world reproved " of judgment."'  The
Spirit will be the ageHnt, Christ the power.  WVe do
but half conceive the Saviour when we refer all these
three-fold results to the Spirit; for I-Ie works them,
if it all, by a dispensing of Christ from the magazine
stock he has furnished.  In this view we now return
to the threefold matter of tlhe promise.
ARTICLE I. Of sin because they believe not on me.  In
recovering our fallen race to:God, the first thing is to
beget in them  a fixed conviction of their fall, and
the thraldon of their guilt, as creatures  alienated
from God.  And this Christ thinks he is doing; for it
is "'the world" observe that he will thus reprove.
-Iis thought is, we can see, that from this time forth,
as the result of his incarnate life and death, there is
to be a new sensibility to sin, not only in individual
persons, but in the world itself, such as never before
was observed.  I feel quite sure too that a sufficiently
sharp investigation would show  it to be so; that religions sentiments and convictions run  deeper and
carry more heat thlrough mind, since Christ's day than
before, in all the peoples that are in the   Newv sensibilknowledge of his cross.  I recollect no ity to sin under
instance of -iemorse, for example, in the Christ.
literature and story of the Greeks, that holds any correspondence or comparison with examples that are
even common in the Christian nations.  And what is
closely related, the sense of sin is llsharper and more




226         TIEE  REPROVING  OF SIN
heavily pronounced in the Christian peoples and literatures than elswhere.  Indeedl, I might almost venture to say that there is no proper sense of sinl outside
of the gospel religion.  There is sensibility enough to
Sins, not sin, wrongs  suffered, and  a considerable
commonly felt. sense of wrongs done.  But these 1are
sins only, not sin.  The state of sin as a con dition of
life underlaid with guilt, infested with poisons, anid
become a second nature in the run of its bad causations, is a quite different matter.  Only a very few
of the first minds out of Christianity such as Plato,
Seneca, and others, are observed to become distinctly
conscious of sin, whereas in the saving work of the
Spirit under Christ, no one, however humble or weak,
is conceived to be in the possible range of a true conversion to God, who is not prepared to it by the conviction of sin as a state. No man is converted to a
new life under the consciousness of a sin, or this, or
that, or even many sins, unless there is implicitly
joined with that consciousness, or included in it, the
sense of a guiltiness that is chronic and by the subject
himself incurable.  Hence the Saviour says "of sin,"
well understanding that it is sin he is required to cure,
and  not sins that he has undertaken to simply correct.
And, in order to this, some plummet of reproving,
deep enough to reach the bottom of the sea, needs to
be let down in guilty bosoms, and make report to
them of what is commonly hid in the ooze that underlies their consciousness.  It is remarkable in this view
that the appalling chapters of reproof and juldgment,




BY  UNBELIEF IN  CHRIST.              227
whichll  occur in the world's history before the crucifixion scene of Christ's death, almost none of them,
strike deep enough to plough up and set in true conviction the radical fact of sin, as distingulished from
particular sins.  Is there not some reason to doubt
the possibility of doing more, until the moral consciousness of the race may be made capable of it by
ages of discipline?
I-Ience the floodl, in whatever degree of universality
we conceive it, was not so much God's argument with
sin, as his act of extirpation, washing Defects of the
the world clean of it. HIowever, it has  old methods.
had a valuable efficacy doubtless ever since, as a witness of the divine displeasure against the ways of
license and revolting wickedness.  The fire-blast that
fell on Sodomn  and Gomorrah, and the earthquake
shock that swallowed them, have been used in all
ages since, as appeals of warning.  We ourselves have
many times heard such al)peals, and their fiery terrors
we have seen chasing guilty souls up out of the plaini
into the mountains of refuge, till we have sometinles
cloubted whether more of hurry and panic than of
true conviction, is not sometimes instigated by them.
No one doubts that alarm may sometimes be stronger
than consideration, and that when it is, more of
damage will follow than of benefit. In the giving of
the law at the foot of the thundcering, smoking mount,
an  impression  of God's authority  was made by
the sceneries of the occasion, that must of course intensify; the dread of sin, though it miay not have had




228        THE REPROVING OF SIN
any great effect in awakening the consciousness of it.
And there was the less reason to expect any such result, in the fact that the statutes of the law refer only
to sins of particular action, and not to the state of sin
itself as a matter of much deeper concern. The same
thing is to be said commonly of tile stinging reproofs,
and fiery rebukes, hurled at the sins of the time by
the old preachers of Israel, in what was called their
prophesying.  They shot point blank every time, and
kept the  air ringing with  specific and particular
charges, which gave them a sufficiently pungent mninistry, but they could not move the deeps of character
and  conviction, as they would have done had they
been able to speak more reflectively, threading the
sensibilities back of the sins, and blazing their torches
in the caverns of the soul where sin itself is hid.
About the most inmpressive exhibition of sensibility to
sin, wllich occurs any where in the times previous to
Christ's coming, is shown us in the scene that follows
the discovery of the book of the law.*  Partly because of the tenderness produced by a mental retroversion, that imagines how the wrath of tile Lord
must be kindled by the neglects of the fathers, "not
hearkening to the words of the book," but allowing
it to  be lost along  the lumber of the temple
chlamber. It is felt now as the public sin, a kind of
original sin, that has been running down through long
ages and generations gone by.  The whole people
were deluged thus with guiltiness coining down upon
* 2 KIings xxii, 8: et seq.




BY  UNBELIEF  IN  CTHRIST.             229
them  in thle line of their family blood and affections,
and the ling rent his clothes in their midst, and wept
before the Lord.
I sketch this outline simnply to show how difficult a
thing  it is to raise a true sensibility to sin, such as
that whllih made itself evident in the   lIow Christ
time  of the Pentecost shortly  after himself reproves.
Christ's ascension.  And this scene of the Pentecost
was a kind of first-stage proof of Christ's mneaning
when he said, " Of sin because they believe not on
me."  His understanding was, in these words, that he
was going by his death to move onil the hardness and
blindness of transgression, by a comparatively new
method, giving us, in that fact, the first articlle of his
gospel.  lie is not going to shake the security of sin
by terrors of any kind. I-le will paint no sceneries of
wrath on the sky.  lIe will not arraign, ol reprove,
or denounce more pungently than was ever done before.  He will have simply proved himself to be the
friend of ian, by the sublimlest and most disinterested  charities and a character so great all round
as:to be more thaln mortal, and beside this will
have done nothing, to so muchl as remnind.mien of their
sin.  Only being such in the worthl and more than
human beauty of his life, he will simply let the
wrong that is in guilty bosoms break itself upon his
silence, aind prove what is in it by its act of murder! 
And not even the mnurder is to implicate more than a
very few persons.  Only the race, looking on, will
coifess, " these were mienll our fellow Im-en," as all the
20




230  THIE  REPROVING  OF RIGHITEOUSNESS
people did Awho came together to that sight, and beholding the things which were clone, without being
active in them, smote their breasts and  returned.
-lere, now, is another way of reproving  that cuts
the world clean through.  Every man sees what is
in man-in himself-by the impatience that could
be mortally  exasperated  by goodness, and  rush
upon the Son of God himself in a deed of munrder.
And the conviction thus wrought is no dry hammerstroke under the law, of which we sometimes hear,
but it has a quality more personal than legal, running
fluid in the form as all personal feeling will; a newborn, silent, all-pervading sensibility to sin, such as
Christ himself expected.  Furthermore, it is not
stated in a way to magnify the flagrance of bad
action as a positive ill-doing, but the sin is to be revealed to itself in what it does not, rather than in
what it does.'( Of sin because they believe not on me;"
for the not believing is itself a token how significant,
when a grace so beautiful andl grandclly impressive is
revealed. And what, in fact, is the proof most appalling of the sin-state of the world, but that it can
look on so great glory and still not believe?
Neither is it any answer, at this point, that not believing is no crime, because we are under no obligaGuilt revealed  tions to believe. For man is made to
by ulbelief.  be a believing. creature as truly as a
reasoning cre'ature.  I-He is even to apprehend the
highest reachl.es of truth and being, by believing what
belongs to fait, and can no otherwise be receivedo




BY  CHRIIST S ASCENSION.              231
So that when he lives in a way to never behold the
greatest and most captivatingl realities crowded on h~,is
faith, lhe lives below  himself, " alienated firom  the
life of God by the ignorance that is in him because
of the blindness of l:is hleart."  Indeed, the sin of sin
is more than any thing else, in the not believincg of
whrt-at is best revealed, most credible, and lholiest to lbe
received. Even as the great assembly of the Pentecost began to feel when the guilt of their unbelief,
displayed in the scene of the cross, began to be jnudgmnent revealed by the preaching of Peter.  And so
thatt wordl- Of sin because they believe not on ne,"'
has been fulfilled in its power from that day to this.
A1TIcLE II. Of rightzeoutsness because I go to the Facther
and ye see me no more."  The statement here made is
condensed to the last degree, but I think we can not
miss the idea.  Chrllist is not any the more truly righteous, as we all can see, that lie dies and goes home
to the Fat-her, to be seen no more.  But, being as
truly righteous, we can, beyond a question, far better
appreciate his righteousness after he is gone, than we
could if l-le still remained cwith us.
All great excellence and transcendent worth of
character are partly unappreciated, till they are seen to
be consulmnated in the article of death.   Reamoval conMATany hard accusations dloubtless fell on  summates great
Enoch, before the day " when he was character.
not, because God took him."  Bioses was how often
chided and rebelled against, and never measured in




232  THE REPROVING  OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
the greatness of his worth, till God called him  up
into Nebo to die, and buried him there himself, in a
-place that only hle shall ever know.  Socrates was
charged with many crimes, and especially with corrupting the youth, and refusing clue honors to the
gods of his people. But when he took thle fatal cup,
refusing, as a matter of supreme duty to the state, to
accept the chance of flight provided by his friends,
what was there left for his people, but to turn his
sentence back on the life of his chief accuser, drive
his conspirators into exile, and raise a statue to him as
tihe righteous man, out of their own hearts' devotion.
Aristides had been called the Jtast, that is the riglteous, till some of the people hlad become quite tired
of it.  Finally, after having proved his capacity many
times over as one of the greatest commanders of his
country, and his title as thle Just a great many times
more, by acts and arbitration judgments bearing the
stamp of his wonderful uprightness, he became extremely old, growing all the while more cheap in
his virtue as he grew more customary in it, and finally
fell out of life and his many public o'ffices and trusts,
as a man almost forgotten by his people. But when
they heard of his'sublime povertyS-that he could
only be buried at the public expense —tley woke up,
as it were, at the discovery of so great public honor
and fidelity, and found no way possible to pay their
debt but by lavishing thus late on his family, rewards
that were due them only as bearing his name.
Now these humble, merely human examples fall a




BY  CHRIST'S ASCENSION.              233
great way short, I know9 of the case for which they
are cited, but they let us in very deep nevertheless
into thle secret of the Saviour's meauling when lie
says —6 Of righteousness because I go to the Father
and ye see me no more."  lie understands that when
he is gone, ascended to the Father in a Christ counts on
way so impressive, a great revision will a great revision.
commence, and a great discovery will be made. IIe
had come down out of the righteousness of God in his
advent, he had given it for beatitude to his followers
to be'"hungering and thirsting after righteousness"
-  seeking  first the righteousness of  God " —he
had been himself a remarkable man in his life, sufficiently remarkable to be considered a prophet; yet
one thing more he still perceives is wanting before
his followers will begin to imagine the deific property
in his character; he must go back into God as lie
camne forth out of God, and when his death and reascension have taken him  quite away, great revisions
of thought will come, and the true  deific rigliteousness will begin to beamn out upon tllem, and the
unmatched glory of his nature will be fully discovered.  Discovery most transcendently  blessed  and
powerful, how shall they name it but to say-The
Lord Our tRighteousness!
There has never entered into human t-hought before,
any so pure image of good, any so glorious conception
of the righteous in character.  Mlen had framnecd high
thoughts before of the abstract righteousness of God.
Now they have it dewed with personality, exampled
20*




234 THE  REPROVING  OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
and offered in terms of human life and sympathy.
God is not greater of course in his righteousness
than before, but the manly voice and bearing, and the
well doing and well suffering, have 1made him  closer,
more congenialy, powefuilly great.  And Clhrist does
not conceal it friom  us that, in this matter of the
righteousness to be discovered in his departure, lhe
expects to have a warmth and glory added that will
make his life a seminally quickening force in unlbelieving minds-a reproving that will be the living
ilnpression of righteousness.  And his expectation
is ab-Lndclantly  justified.  It has not only operated
as a new creative force in multitudes without numnber of guilty, morally fallen men, but it has leavened the general mass of Christendom  with a sensibility to character before unknown.  [Mlen hear a
The new be- Christly  accent in principles, perhaps
gotten seilse of without  knowing  it, and love, and
character.   truth, and equity, in one word righteonsness, holds a closer and more tender proximity
than ever before. And the explanation of it is in
what the Saviour says-" He shall reprove the world
of righteousness, because I go to the Father and ye see
ime 110 mnore."
I will only add that there is a very great importance inl this Second Article, in the fact that it yields
No legal justi-  an inference so conclusive against tIle
fication here.  paymaster  scheme   of  justification.
And it is the more conclusive that nothing is ad



BY  CHRIST'S ASCENSION.            235
vanced antagonistically, but only in a simple way
of promise and hope for righteousness.  There is no
legal substitution nanled or even thought of by
Christ, as that having  satisfied the law by surTering-,
he has boulght a complete legal righteousness and so
has laid a ground of justification. His reproving of
righteousness is to be a quickened sensibility for righteousness itself, and a new capacity of great character
thus prepared-that and nothing more. And if he
had been asked whether he expected to buy a new
righteousness for us by his cross, and have it put to
our account, so that we can be justified and delivered
of our sins, I really do not think he would have
understood or conceived so much of theology. No,
by his reproving of righteousness lie simply means
that he will put us in the power and occupancy of it;
which he will do by the revealed image given us of it
in his life and suffering; without thrusting us into
any of the speculative and scholastic subtleties that
have since been the annoyance of his people. Having first, by the loving sacrifice of his death, reproved
the unbelieving of their sin, he next finds how  to
impress their sin with the manifested glory of righteousnress-giving them a new sensibility for both,
one as malady and the other as cure-knowing well
that when our thought gathers to his reascended
person, considering again what the true glory hid in
his descended person was, it will be as if the spaces
between us and God were bridged, and his righteousness were now with us and upon us. For it is in




236    THE  R1EPROVING  OF JUDGMENT
fact the righteousness: of God declared or shown, that
we may be made righteous in it, as Paul himself explicitly teaches. In the simplest possible form of conceiving it, " Christ is made unto us righteousness."
Or the same thing is said in other words equally
plain-" That we might be the righteousness of God!
in hinl."  And it is beautiful to see how Luther, in
his comment on this reproving of righteousness, drops
out his litigiousness: and his scholastic legalities of
justification, to speak of the overspreading, inwardly
transforming righteousness, as if that in fact were all.
Thus, chanting as it were his hymn, he says-" Now
lie did not go thus to the Father for his own sake;
but, as he came for our sakes from  heaven, and became our flesh and blood, so for our sakes he went
up again, after he had completed the victory over sin,
death, and hell, and entered into that government,
whereby he delivers us from all these, and rules in
such manner that his kingdom is called, and is, righteousness; that is, sin and evil must pass away therein
from  before God, and men become righteous before God
and well pleasing to hIim."
ARTIcLE III. Of judgment because the prince of this
world is judged. Tle judgment of which Christ here
speaks is to be understood, of course, as being effected
by himself in the joint agency of the Paraclete, just
as, in the other two cases, the reproving of sin and of
righteousness are declared to be. And by adding this
last article, his syllabus of doctrine or magazine stock




IN  TH-E CASTING  DOWN  OF ACCUSEItS. 237
of spiritual armory is made up. For when the transgressor is reproved of sin because of his unbelief, and
has the righteousness of God revealed to be upon
lilm  when  believingly  accepted, evi- The judgment of
dently one thing mlore and only one is  this world.
needed to cut off delay and determine promptly his
decisive choice of salvation; viz., that some stunning
blow of judgment be laid on the idols of his worldworship-tlle fashions, follies, splendors of condition,
expectations of wealth and power, that fasten him  by
their detentive grasp. When these gods of the earth
are laid low and stripped of their fascinations, then
the Spirit will have every thing at his advantage,
and his triumph will be easy and sure.
Christ' means exactly this when he says, " The
prince of this world is judclged."  lIe is recognizing,
I conceive, the fact that evil, though in its -very nature
a disorganizer, is yet a fearfully despotic organizer
also; using all the over-captivating shows and fascinations of our temporal state, to build a kingdom in
the bad and of the bad; rallying, as by a niaturally malign power, all haters of truth and righteousness in a kind of profane concert; applauding
and setting in honor mlodes of false opinion, that
have no show of interlock save in their common opposition to God; makling standards of fashions that
approve and  sanction corrupt usages and manners
and shows and pleasures, setting them  in such eminence of splendor that society itself is taken,
and the  captives  rush  in  every  where  to  seize




238    THE  REPROVING  OF JUDGMENT
the  prize  that captivates —able  never to  resist
a fashion;  gathering in also the  state-craft powers,  as perhaps  the  Saviour intimates, when  lie
speaks of'"the prince  of this  world," and giving over into their ]land the money-force and  the
military, and  even  the  religious, to build  bulwarls of wicked statesmanship, that may be held
as fortifications against liberty and right for whole
ages of time.  Hence what lhe is here saying of 6' the
worldl" and'the prince of this world"c as the bad
kingdom, he is concerned to judge and cast down.
Ihis mind had, in fact, been running in  this vein
during all the years of his previous ministry.  As we
see at a very early time, when lie sent out the seventy
to preach and do mighty works, and when some of
them reported on return, saying, " Even the devils are
subject unto us through thy name;" and he thereupon broke out in a sharply ecstatic exclamation, as he
was almost never known to do before in his very sober
style of ministration-" I beheld Satan as lightning
fall from  heaven."  IHe does not speak indicatively
thus, as if he saw the actual precipitationl, but prophetically, or proleptically, even as lie does hlere when
le says-" Now is the judgment of this world, now is
the prince of this world cast out."  And lie means by
the casting out also what he says again shortly after —
"The -prince of this world cometh and hath nothing
in me."'  And this again is just what he intends by the
being judgedl, for it is the manner of jucdglllent to
cast out, or separate, as being in no terms of character




IN THE CASTING DOWN OF ACCUSERS. 239
that permit communication.  "Depart " is the sentence, and' hath nothling in me" is the same.  Neot
that Christ proploses here to separate or be separated
fromn the world. It is no mnatter of final judgment that
concerns him. now.  Hle is going rather by the very
death scene now at hand, to draw all men unto him.
I-e only means that there is a kind of judgment-day
before the judgment, now to be passed, in which he
will let his divine attitude and action over opposite
the world be distinctly seen, and the despotic rage
and madness of the world be visibly humbled and
convicted of weakness.  The real judgment after
death  is, of course, a different matter.  In. these
dreadful hours preceding the cross, we are to see the
bad empire totter; in that future judgment we are to
see it prostrate and forever blasted.
One very important conclusion will, I think, be impressed by a revision of the scene; viz., that the
principal actors and spectators have The actors lose
their courage taken  away, and  con-   courage.
sciously feel that they are judged, subsiding into a
level of dejection that has nothing in common with
the very great character on whom  their enmity is
wreaked. It follows too as a matter of course that
the impressions we trace in them, also become ours
by  the  immediate sense of our  fallen  nature
itself. Indeed it might even have been worth the
cost for Christ to go through these horrible scenes
of abuse and bitter passion, if it had only been to
show evil in its place, and bring down the pompous




2-40    THE REPROVING  OF JUDGMIENT
inanities of sin to the underling state of weakness
which is their true significance.
Plainly enouglh Judas and Peter are both put under
judgment, one to  die by his own self-a-venging
Judas and instinct, the other to  be dreadfully
Peter and the pierced and'broken by  his M[aster's
high priests.  judgment glance. Annas and Caiaphas
hate Christ fiercely enough to be strong against him,
had they not cunning and hypocrisy enough in them
to be made ingeniously weak instead.  They are
full of expedients, and especially the latter, who
a few days before, when the council was called on
the raising of Lazarus, had his plan to put every thing
right; and so confident was he in it, that he could
say-" Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is
expedient that one man should die for the people, and
not that the whole nation perish."  The true wisdom
is, do you not see it? to kill the man, and not have the
whole nation itself killed by him, or blotted out on his
account by the Romans. So they voted, and fiom that
day forth had it for their counsel. And now he is in
hand as their prisoner, the prisoner specially of Caiaphas, and we are to see what the man of high expedients will do with him. Which will be just nothing
bat the raising of a very contemptible scene of bluster,
designed to intimidate Christ and provoke a storm of
popular fury against him. In this all the great policies
and expediencies appear to be quite used up. But the
night coming  on will give time to consider what
next, and in particular to consider whether a little




IN  TIE CASTING  DOWN OF ACCUSERS. 241
caution may not also be expedient.  And then
behold, in the morning it is concluded that as the
crime of Jesus has been religious, they had best turn
the question over to the civil power; for if Christ
should break out as Ifessiah in a grand religious
uprising, that kind of reaction might be dangerous fbr
them.  On the whole it is very modestly agreed that
the case must go to Pilate.
Very early, therefore, in the morning, Caiaphas and
his attendants are before the door of Pilate's judgment
hall with the prisoner; where a very    Pilate
pious scruple takes him, and he can not   judged.
go in lest he be defiled, and so disqualified for the
passover! But Pilate very graciously comes out and
makes a beginning in the porch, asking —' What accusation bring ye against this man?"9  And Caiaphas
answers tamely enough, letting cautiously down' the
storm he so tragically raised against yesterday's blasphemy-" If he were not a malefactor we would not
have brought him  unto thee."  And then most deferentially Pilate answers-"' Take ye him and judge him
according to your law."  Whereupon the man of
great expediencies rejoins-"-'It is not lawful for us
to put any man to death."  And this is the last
of what le is able to do, save that afterwards, when
it is  quite  safe, we fincl him  out among  the
multitude crying, " Crucify him.'"  He has been
rushing  forward in  great purpose, and drawin~g
backward  in great caution,  and  doubling  and
dodging till  the state  of nimble  confusion  is
21




242    THE REPROVING  OF JUDGMENT
proved  to  be  the  utmost  result  he can  accomplish.
At this point we leave him  and turn ourselves
to the trial as carried on by the Romlan magistrate
himself. Pilate is a gentleman; a procurator of the
Roman Empire, thoroughly versed in its usages and
laws, and a man of personal culture generally, though
very little of a Puritan, as regards the moral significance of his proceedings.  Representing in his own
person the general empire, he becomes almost officially the Prince of this World. And we shall shortly
see that, as such, he is being judged himself, and
utterly broken down. With all his plausible airs, h1
has yet no sense of justice. I-e will acquit his prisoner again and again, and will forthwith order hlim
scourged to please'his enemies, or deliver him over to
them to be insulted and abused, as they may best like.
He wants to please every body —to justify the accused
because he deserves it-to gratify the priests because
they are a great power in the state-to approve himself to Cesar because he has his office from Caesarto win the applause of the multitude because their
favor is the necessary condition of successful magistracy. So that just as all sin is confounded by trying
to grasp impossible and contrary objects, he falls out
of counsel, and is pitched about hither and thither,
as if the idea of justice were lost and could not be
found.
He carries on the questioning with a certain air of
good nature and respectfulness, for the strange man




IN THE CASTING DOWN OF ACCUSERS. 243
before him  shows a majesty and weight of character not to be disregarded. And Christ is the more
deferential to hiln for that reason, which Rmakes the
answers he gives all the more impressive. "Art thou
the IKing of the Jews?'"  With marvelous dignity
and a nobly balanced moderation he replies-" Sayest
thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?"
Is it proposed to try me thus on the loose talk of the
town, or on what you know concerning me?  However, I am a king, avowing it with no offense; for
my kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom  is
truth, and "every one that is of the truth heareth my
voice." Pilate is dashed and confounded, for lie never
heard of truth before in this all-world's sense of religionj and he rejoins on the instant-What is truth? 
So deeply impressed is he by the mysterious something
of the words and the man, that he waits no answer,
but sallies forth to give his acquittal.
But the multitude, who are holding court outside,
a-re dissatisfied, and vent their impatience in loud
cries. Whereupon Pilate, who is bound to please the
people, gives up Jesus to be scourged, and dressed
in mock symbols of royalty, and finally, since they
will not cease crying, " crucify him! crucify him!" he
gives consent and says, "Take ye him and crucify
him; for I find no fault in him."  What a for is
that on which to hang a sentence of death! Crucify
him, for there is no justice in it! But it comes to
Pilate's ear, by the accusing talk of the Jews, that
the prisoner had made himself the Son of God. Very




244    TI-IE REPROVING OF JUDGMENT
un-PRoran language certainly, and what if his wonderful dignity should be somehow connected with a
truth so.high, in a relationship so divine.  WTlhen
Pilate therefore heard that saying he was the inore
afraid-so much afraid that he begins to think of a
reconsideration, and at once resumes the questioning.
Christ at first refuses to answer; for why should he
consent to answer in a trial that means nothing, and
can not stand by its own verdict?  Pilate does
not put him under guard, and compel him to answer,
but he uses words more urgent-" Knlowest thou not
that I have power to crucify thee, and power to release
thee.?"  The answer is moderately toned, but is all
the more impressive, that there is a sense of silent
thunder in it-" Thou couldest have no power at all
against me, except it were given thee from  above;
therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the
greater sin."  All at once Pilate feels as if the atmosphere of the court were growing sacred, or as
if lie had Apollo or Jupiter before him.  And just
here it- was, if I rightly judge, that his wife's note
caine to hand telling him, "' Have thou nothing to do
with that just man, for the gods have set me dreaming ill because of him."  What then shall he do? for
not even the Roman Emnpire in him  dares proceed.
Hee can go no farther, for he has, in fact, no magistracy left.  HIe can only wash his hands to be
clear of the innocent blood, and throw it over
on the poor weak muLltitude, to take the responsibility he is himself in no resolution to bear, and




IN  THE CASTING  DOWN  OF ACCUSERS. 245
to  say, "his blood be upon  us and  upon our
children."
Now it may be that some of us are grown so
familiar with this story of Pilate, that we shall not
sufficiently  apprehend the  judgment-  Pilate m-akes
day look of it. If it be so, there is yet court to Herod.
one fact that will give us a very truly convincing
test of it. Pilate, and Herod, the provincial magistrate of Galilee, had hitherto been enemies, on terms
of personal non-intercourse.  But Pilate now takes
advantage of the presence of IHerod in tile city, and
sends over Christ to Herod's quarters, to be examined by him. And the result is, we are told, that
from  that day they were made fcliends together.
Hlere then we have a man of dignity, a man who well
understands what belongs to public character and
the highest statesmanship, who is put on being reconciled to his enemy, by what  Why by what he apprehends from a poor tradesman, a simple, inoffensive,
inaggressive person, who is set before him only to be
his victim —a man without power, showing no resentrnents, offering not a sign of resistance. And
to  make  sure  against him, he  undertakes to
strengthen himself by clubbing hands with his great
public enemy!   No, there is more in the case than
what I have given by this mere external description.
In this man Christ there is visibly some untried talent
or resource.  Such have not frequently  appeared
either in Jerusalem or at Rome. There is an appalling moral force in his bearing, should we not rather
21*




246    TIHE REPROVING  OF JUDGMENT
say, a conspicuously  divine force?  Ile somehow
stirs tile superstition of Pilate's nature.  For outwardly composed as he is, and as the pride of character requires, he is yet anxious inwardly, and even
disconcerted.  He can not guess what great upturning, or public revolution, may be coming to pass, by
the agency of this certainly nzost remarkable character.  Some wondrous future must be wrapped up in
Iris person. I-is look contains a mystery, his words
are set like oracles.  Call it talent, command, authority of soul, something there is in him  that makes
every thin~ seem possible.  Probably Pilate does not
run out his thought in just these forms, but lie quails
inwardly in his feeling, in a way that comprehends
the sense of these indications.  Without knowing it, lhe
is at a point of concern that really uinmans him, and
by this kind of instigation, which he is not quite
aware of himself, he is put on conciliating IHerod by
these extraordinary advances.
Omitting farther reference now to the conduct of
the particular and more forwlard parties in the trial,
the aspect of judgment, we shall see, covers the whole
transaction.  Including  every thing done by  the
priests, and the soldiers, and the multitude, it bears a
The judgment character of low brutality and basely
looks general. exasperated passion, that we can nowise
account for, considering the beautiful inoffensiveness
and silent worth of the victim; save in the supposition of some judicial madness that for the time has
demonized so many people.  And we do this with the




IN  THE  CASTING  DOWN OF ACCUSERS. 247
better reason that a correspondently disturbed behavior shakes the frame and darkens the face of
nature itself. The rocks themselves are shuddering
in the agitation, and the blackened sun can not look
on the sight! And what is the feeling coming on us
all, but exactly that which fell on all the actors and
beholders concerned, when the hour of sanity and
righlt understanding  arrived-"  And all the people
that came together to that sight, beholding the things
that were done, smote their breasts and returned!"
They had seen the prince of this world judged, and
had felt the judgment also in themselves.   They
smote their breasts, for the bad kingdom there had received a stunning blow. Calling it the crucifixion-day
for one party, it is yet more conspicuously a
scene by which the other is judged and cast down.
From  that day to this the prince of this world has
had a reduced and broken look. Mlen of Christian
countries are visited in evil with a special kind of
misgiving; for they have seen, in the dreadful story
of Christ's trial scene, how weak is the pride and the
force-principle too of this world, when it is put in
issue with simple character-how it comes out as a
culprit judged, even  after its rage is spent, and
after it has had its own way to the fatal end.
And here at last comes up into view the great fact
which underlies this whole matter of   No judgment
the reproving of judgment; viz., that by force, but only
mere divine force could not compass it, by goodness.
andc that niothing' but the majesty of moral suffering




248        THIS  USES TO BE SERVED
conld.  Since God is omnipotent, many are ready, in
foolish haste, to imagine that he can therefore bring
in upon evil and the prince of this world, what reproving of judgment he will.  DIoubtless he can
make a judgment-day in force that will trample down
all sin, and be aln everlasting extirpation of it. Iut
the probability is that it would trample and extirpate
all being as well. What is wanted is a casting down
of evil in beings still existing, still to exist. And
nothing could do that but some trial scene or crucifixion-day, that allows it to be seen coping with pure
excellence or the suffering capacity of goodness withont force.  Then  it is  so visibly  defeated  by
victory that it bears a weak and fallen look. The
victory is plainly on the other side. HIence the awftul
prostration brought on all the active parties in the
crucifixion-scene when once it was over. And it was
to be a reproving of ju dgment in just this way, and
to continue to be even to the end of the world.
There was, in short, no other way of breaking down
the prince of this world and the pride of evil bodied in
his kingdcom  but to let the eternal patience meet hiln
as it well knows how. For this purpose too, in great
part, Christ was incarnate.  For "' as the children are
partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise
took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the
devil."*  This word death, as I conceive, is to be
taken in its largest sense; viz., that only death could




BY  SUCII A DOCTRINE.               249
slay the killer-that the bad power could be no-wise
broken by force, but that it nmust needs be done by
suffering,  whereby it is proved to be weak, cast down,
reproved of judclgment.  We have still another passage
of Scripture that has had much difficulty in finding its
meaning.  " For what the law could not do, in that
it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the
law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh but after the Spirit."    I Here again we have the
argument turned upon the fact of an incarnation; and
the result, viz., a bringing out into spirit and
righteous liberty, hinges on a condemnation, that is on
a judgment of sin;  for the  word means adcverse
jucdment, and is the same that we have been handling in these illustrations.  Coming for sin, Christ
must needs condemn sin, or bring down a reproving
of judgment on it that will loosen its grasp.  For
the grinding it to powder, even as CMoses ground
the golden calf, would not take it away. No force
could accomplish the dislodgment. It nmust be worsted
and judged by suffering character.  In that lies the
victory and dear great mystery of the cross.
Having made our exposition thus of Christ's threefold doctrine as related to the reprov-   What we
ing of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, it may be required of us to state more explicitly
* Romans viii, 3, 4.




250        THE  USES TO  BE SERVED
how much or how little we mean by it, and what are
to be the uses served by it.
It was evidently not the Saviour's intention to draw
out what was afterwards called by theologians a
syllabus of doctrine.  It does not appear that any
such notion had as yet dawned on the mind of any
disciple, or teacher. Dogmatic statements, or formnulated propositions of doctrine, were to make their appearance farther on, and perhaps to have a certain
legitimate use, but they very plainly had not yet
arrived. The Saviour had none but a practical meaning in his threefold specification; viz., to so inaugurate the Spirit, as to give a properly intelligent conception of his outfit, as the BRINGER-IN for salvation.
He was to be a kind of invisible preacher present
with the preachers, taking the things of Christ, and
weaving them into the new experience of men. And
the result was to be that, from and after his death,
all that he had been doing by his personal ministry was to be a dispensation-force, in this manner, of life and truth for all the coming ages.
According  to  his  own  conception  it will be
sufficient  and  complete, and will so be called,
as afterwards by  Paul, 1"the ministration of the
Spirit."
This threefold specification of the Saviour is a doctrine extra, that it will be most agreeable to recur to
No rival doctrine and hold, because it is given by Christ
meant.    himself. I only conceive that in giving
it I give another,  more intensely practical, doctrine,




BY  SUCH  A DOCTRINE.               251
outlined  for us by Christ, whlich  may be used,
with great advantage, as a complementary mode of
teaclling and statement, and will not work derangelment
or hurtful disorder if it should sometimes be allowed,
where the mind is late in coming into satisfaction
by the other forms, to dominate, or Tetermine the
methods of preaching.  It certainly can not be imagined that preaching what Christ himself gave to be
the outfit of the Holy Spirit, in his saving ministration, is not preaching Christ.  Besides there is such
an agreement, or accord, between tlhe more theologic
forms of doctrine, built up round the terms of law
and sacrifice, and tis which I am  here proposing to
add as another and different, that, partly by reason of
their difference, they will be always asking for each
other. It will be as if the former were coming over
to this to find the regulative rmode of preaching, and
this latter going back to the other to find the basal
ideas at which the grace begins.  And it should not
be an offense to add, that the very thing most wanted
now, in this great subject, is tlhe conceded right and
familiar use of other forms of doctrine differently
conceived, and yet in virtual agreement.  By long
ages of use and speculative reiteration we have been
running clown all the scripture figures of propitiation,
sacrifice, atonement, imputed righteousness, andcl the
like, into stunted literalities, till the words themselves have become, in fact, lost wordcls, and can by no
advertising be recovered. We shall never get them
back, till we relax the rigors of literality by letting in




252        THE  USES TO BE SERVED
other forms, to have an accordant authority and use.
We shall thus and then begin to recover the living
ideas we had  killed, by the dry timber words, in
which we put them, and finally to recover the living
and flexible senses of the words themselves.  The
speculating, over-dogmatizing  habit that has been
pressing us into the literal method, has also, for the
same reason, been making our gospel narrow  and
close, and a more nearly choking bondage than either
it could afford to be, or we to make it.  And thus
again, for a double reason, we are to have our account
in almost any variety of gospel version, that will take
us clear of the nearly fatal syncope of our literal tethers,
and give us a more easy play in the figures and poetic
liberties of the truth.
Thus  Christ, in  his first article  of doctrine,
says, "'Of sin  because they believe not on me,"
expecting evidently that by his cross of sacrifice, a
How the letter new sense of sin will be wakened in the
palls.   newly wakened sensibilities of his rejectors, and in that fact discovers, in great part certainly, the value of his sacrifice.  But we have a
speculated form  of belief which has gotten clear of
the figurative meaning of sacrifice, maintaining that
Christ is a literal sacrifice, which, being offered for
our sin, evens up our account with God, and yields us
a remission that is in fact complete immunity.
So in his reproving of righteousness, Christ conceives
himself to be the righteousness of God charactered in
out-ward figure, in his human life, whereupon the




BY  SUCH  A  DOCTRINE.              253
guilty world coming to him  by faith, are to ]lave it
in them  by assimilation, or a certain divine contagiodn having it not firom themselves, but only as being
acted consentingly into it. Thus much in the free,
figure-painting way; over against which we have hlad
it long made up in quantitative, almost arithmetic
terms, that Christ has suffered pains enough for us, to
pay the whole debt of the law, and so far has beconle
a rig'hteousness for us; not a righteousness that lmakles
us riglhteous at all9 but that only evens the books.
To naime all the misconceptions by which we have
robbed thle free scripture of its meaning in this manner, is impossible.  We shall never get back the ideas
lost, till we allow the possibility of double, and treble,
and qiuadruple forms. And for one of these, I can
think of nothing better and more reverent to suggest, than that which Christ himself has here propounded.
Noow it will be imagined, not unlikely by some,
that there is a want of scope in this threefold version
of the Saviour, which forbids its beillng Full scope in the
used in any sense for a summulation of  three articles.
doctrine.  And to this I answer that it is not wanted
for a summation of doctrine. We have had enoughl
of that. What we want a great deal more is something to give us greater brweadth  of standing and
greater vitality of idea. And yet some will imagine
that when Christ announces, first, the reproving of
sin, and then the reproving of righteousness, he only
gives us to say, as we have so long been sayinlg, till
22




205       THE USES TO BE SERVED
we have worn out the meaning of the routine
words  themselves-first conviction, then  conversion; first the law, and then the Spirit; whereas
there is scarcely a hair's weight in commnon between
this representation and that which Christ is giving.
The proposed conviction of sin is not here by the
law, or by any computation of sins and deserved penalties, but it is to be by the gospel rather, and to
come, not as being bolted in by the legal mnajesty of
Sinai, but as being melted in by the suffering goodness of Christ. It is to be a new and tender sensibility to sin, raised in the soul, by what Christ has done
for it, and above all by what it has hitherto refused
to let him do for it. The chapter he has made for
it is heavy with sorrow. It is itlfinite love tracking
its approach in tears and blood.  And the story
is so deep, and full, and various, and tender, raises
so many questions, opens so many vistas into the
divine nature and life, and so many others down the
guilty slopes of humanity within, that the whole
nature both of God and man are seen to be stirred
in mutuality together.
It is plainly to be seen that Christ, in his reproving
of righteousness, has no reference to the hard favored
scheme of legal justification commonly held. By the
" reproving 9 hie means, I suppose, the new apprehension, or new sensibility to righteousness, that will be
quickened by the revelation of it made in his person,
and that, after he has gone up to the Father to be seen
here no more, it will be upon the world as a power of




BY SUCH  A DOCTRINE.               255
holy remembrance, and a new possibility of chlaracter. lIe has not corne out fiorn God to pay up our
penal debts, but to raisde an impression for challracter.  And tlie righteousness he brings ig all for all,
firee as the day and large as free-a grace that undertakes to fill no petty conmpntations"of bad liability,
but simply floods and overflows the utmost receptivity
it finds.
Let it also be noted that Christ does not mlean
by his "reproving of judclgment" the same thing
over again which he has declared in- his "'reproving
of sin."  It is not his way to squander words on loose
repetitions.  I have ulndertaken also to show that
his reproving of judgment is a wholly different matter, raising initial constructions that may be carlried
farther and probably with great advantage.  Last
named by Christ in his threefold doctrine, we seem to
see that he rates the consequence of this article highest. - And yet it has somehow gotten hold of theologic
ideas but slowly.  By how many is it preached, by
how many is it distinctly conceived.  Have we not
some right to suspect, that the very thing most wanted now is a due impression of the tyranny of the
prince of this world and of tile judgment-force Christ
has set against the bad kingdom to bring it clown.
Is there not possibly a preaching of Christ that should
have the saome effects, in all ages and communities,
thlat were wrought by the scene of the Cross.
On the whole I can not admit that any tleologian,
or clurch, or council, has ever drawn a larger base of




256    THE  USES TO  BE  SERVED, ETC.
doctrine, or more rich, than Christ himself has given
us in his threefold stock of gospel outfit. IHere, in
fact, is the whole Christian System Wcm itlout any pretense of system; and the doctrine of the Spirit given
by Christ himself.




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NO W9 READ-Y.-FOUR VOLUMES.
Section  I.-The  Pentateulch. (I Vol.)
GENESIS.-Right Rev. E. HAROLD BROWNE, D.D. EXODUS, Chap. I. —XIX.
-The EDITOR.  EXODUS, Chap. XX. to the End.-Rev. SAMIUEL CLARK, M.A.
LEVITICUS.-Rev. SAMUEL CLARK(, M.A. NUMBERS and DEUTERONOMY.Rev. T. E. ESPIN, B.D.
Section  11.-The  H.storical Books.
PA.IVT  I. (I Vol.)
JOSHUA.-Rev. T. E. ESPiN, B.D. JUDGES, RUTH, SAMUEL.-Right Rev,
Lord ARTOUR HERVEY, M.A. FIRST KINGS.-Rev. GEORGE RAWILINSON, M.A.
PA.:,T  I  I.  (I Vol.)
SECOND KINGS, CHRONICLES, EZRA, NEHEMIAH, ESTHER,Rev. GEORGE RAWLINSON,
Section  Ill. The Poetical Books. (I Vol.)
JOB. —1The EDITOR. PSALMS.-The EDITOR. Very Rev. G. H. S. JOHNSON, Rev.
C. I. ELLIOTT, M.A.  PROVERBS.-Rev. E. H. PLUMRPTRE, M.A.  ECCLESIASTES.-Rev.W. T. BULLOCK, M.A. SONG OF SOLOMON.-Rev. T. KINGSBURY, M.A.
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