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LECTURE IX.

THE THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT: ILLUSTRATED BY THE RELATION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST TO THE ETERNAL LAW OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.

E are now free to resume the investigation which

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was arrested by the theory discussed in the last Lecture. The Remission of sins is possible. Can we discover why it is that the Remission of sins is granted to men on the ground of the Death of Christ? It may be thought that a simple and direct reply to this question is given by the representations of the Death of Christ contained in the New Testament. Christ 66 His life as a gave ransom" for us; and therefore we are emancipated from all the evils which we had incurred by sin. Christ "bare our sins," "died for our sins," "died for us," as an innocent man, if this were possible, might take upon himself the guilt of a criminal, and die in his place; and, therefore, the penalties of our sin are remitted. Christ is the "Propitiation for our sins;" and, therefore, He has allayed the Divine anger, so that God, for His sake, is willing to forgive us.

But these representations of the Death of Christ as a Ransom, as a Vicarious Death, as a Propitiation, though they illustrate the cause of His sufferings and

their effect, and contain all that is necessary for faith, do not constitute a theory. As they stand, they are not consistent with each other. For a good citizen to bear the punishment of a convicted criminal, is one thing; for a generous philanthropist to pay the ransom of a slave, is a different thing; for a friend or a relative of a man who has done wrong to propitiate the anger of a powerful superior, is a different thing again. In the first case the intervention is intended to meet the claims of criminal law; in the second, to purchase what can be estimated at a definite money value; in the third, to soothe wounded feeling. The fundamental principles on which we should have to construct our whole theory of the value and efficacy of the Death of Christ would vary, as we adopted the first or the second or the third of these illustrations as containing an adequate account of the Atonement.

Nor is it possible by any rough process of combination to work these heterogeneous illustrations of the great fact into a coherent conception of it. A slaveholder who receives a ransom as the condition of liberating his slave is not propitiated; he may have no resentment that needs propitiation; he is paid the commercial value of his property. When there is righteous anger against a base and ungrateful action, it cannot be soothed by anything that has the nature of the money payment which purchases the freedom of a slave; nor could righteous anger be propitiated by the infliction of pain on the innocent instead of the wrong-doer.

There are difficulties of another kind in trying to construct a theory on the lines of any of these illustrations. If the Death of Christ is supposed to receive its full interpretation when described as a Ransom, to whom was the Ransom paid? Was it paid, as some of the Fathers supposed, to the devil? That hypothesis is revolting. Was it paid to God Himself? That hypothesis is incoherent; God Himself provided the Ransom, He could not pay it to Himself; and when we are redeemed, we do not cease to be under the power of God, for we become His in a deeper sense than we were before. Was it paid by Christ to rescue us from the power of the Father? That hypothesis is intolerable; there is no schism in the Godhead; "God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Was the Ransom paid by the Divine mercy to the Divine justice? That hypothesis is mere rhetoric. Was it paid by God to the ideal Law of Righteousness which we had offended? Criminal law knows nothing of ransoms, and a ransom cannot be paid to an idea.

If, again, the nature of the Death of Christ is supposed to be completely expressed when it is represented as a Propitiation, new difficulties emerge, and some of the same difficulties reappear in a new form. How can the incidents of propitiation, as known among ourselves, assist us to understand a propitiation which originates with the injured person? Or are we to conceive of God as working down His resentment by suffering for us, and so propitiating Himself? Or are

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I See Dr. BUSHNELL: Forgiveness and Law, page 41, seq.

we to think of Christ as being filled with compassion, and subduing the wrath of the Father by the perfection of His obedience and the urgency of His intercession?

If we adopt the remaining illustration, and attempt to construct a theory of the Death of Christ on the hypothesis that it corresponded to what would occur in the administration of human justice if some illustrious man, as conspicuous for his virtue and public services as for his rank, died as a substitute for a number of obscure persons who had been guilty of treason, we are confronted at once by an objection which admits of no reply. Such a substitution could not be admitted. It would be contrary to the principle of justice, and in the highest degree injurious to the state.

These illustrations of the nature and effect of the

Death of Christ are illustrations, and nothing more. They are analogous to the transcendent fact only at single points. The fact is absolutely unique. The problem before us is to form some conception of the Death of Christ which shall naturally account for all these various representations of it; and no solution of the problem is to be found by attempting to translate these representations, derived from transient human institutions and from the mutual relations of men, into the Divine and eternal sphere to which this great Mystery belongs. The administration of human justice is at the best imperfect, and can never closely correspond to the Divine government of the moral universe; and the mutual relations of men can never be accepted as ade

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