The men of our time understand too well that the authority with which they are threatened is but the authority of one mode of viewing the problem. They assert for themselves the right to judge and estimate the various references of Scripture to the subject-which is really what all interpretations have always done. They insist that, in the deepest and truest sense, that is biblical which accords with the fundamental Christian concepts of God and man, and they refuse to acknowledge the binding force of far-fetched inferences from illustrative figures of speech or the prescriptive authority of a dogmatic tradition which arose and developed in a world of ideas- such as those of feudalism and Germanic law-which, for the modern man, has been radically modified or has even passed out of existence altogether.

From this seeming digression I return to the thought, that one of the greatest and most obvious saving deeds of Christ for us is that he gives repentance and so remission. He makes us feel and know our sin and shows us the sure way of escape from it. I should like to present this thought in the well-chosen words of another: "Christ's forgiveness begins by revealing our sin. Or, it begins by revealing God's justice, and by uttering in our consciences his condemnation of sin. Christ makes this revelation in many ways. He makes it by his personal character - by his very presence in the world. The sinless One leaves us 'no cloak for our sin.' Christ, and Christ alone, is able to give this revelation of evil. But further, the whole development of Christ's history is a further revelation of evil. Good as such, and sin as such, are there seen in conflict. And the whole evil of our sin is made plain to us when we perceive that we are sinning against love. The cross is the supreme manifestation of sin. There we see sin, not only in outward acts, but in Christ's exceeding sickness and sorrow under the burden of the world's wickedness. At the cross of Christ believers have always learned how evil sin is. Whether or not their doctrinal explanations of their own experience have been correct, the experience itself has been God-given, spiritual, saving.

Christ has convinced them of sin. Christ condemns not his immediate persecutors, but the whole world. He reveals our malady as not weakness or accident but guilt." 1

The question remains: What, precisely, does forgiveness, by itself considered, accomplish? How far does it undo or neutralize our sin and its effects? I do not believe that any general, abstract answer, which will be equally applicable to all cases, can be given to this question. It depends largely upon the nature of a given sin, or course of sinful action, how far forgiveness - the divine forgiveness even can cancel its effects. If, for example, in human relations, one man envies or hates another, a genuine reconciliation between them, including forgiveness, would cancel the ill-will and heal the alienation. If, on the other hand, in a fit of rage one man has permanently injured or killed another, or by a course of physical indulgence has undermined his own health or plunged his family into misery and disgrace, here are consequences which persist though the man in question were to become a saint.

Forgiveness cannot undo the fact that the sin has been committed. It cannot efface the memory of the fact. It does not obliterate regret and remorse on account of the fact. Nor can forgiveness wipe out at once all the moral consequences of sinful action. Sin works a moral deterioration from which men do not recover in a moment, though they may suddenly enter on the way to recovery from it. There are sins which leave scars in the moral life which with greatest difficulty, and often never, are effaced. The natural flow of evils, physical and social, which follow certain forms of sin, is not arrested, completely and all at once, even by God's forgiveness.

But we are speaking here of forgiveness "by itself considered." It should be added, however, that, in fact, forgiveness never stands thus wholly isolated; certainly the divine forgiveness never operates wholly "by itself."

1 Professor Robert Mackintosh, Essays towards a New Theology, pp. 48, 49.

Forgiveness is but one factor in salvation. Along with the act of reconciliation which we call forgiveness, coöperate personal influences and agencies. The pardon of sin is never conceived in Scripture in separation from the cleansing, life-bestowing action of the divine Spirit. Were it otherwise, the doctrine of remission would bear a very formal and negative character. But not even for Paul is justification or forgiveness a mere non-imputation of sin; it is a reckoning of faith for righteousness, and faith means union of life with Christ and carries us into that world of vital and transforming personal influences which the apostle associates with the phrase "in Christ.” Forgiveness, then, as a name for the beginning or restoration of right personal relations, denotes the first step, on the divine side, in the development of the saved life. As such it signifies the cessation of God's disfavor and condemnation on account of past sin and his gracious reception of the sinner into his friendship. It alters man's relation to his sinful past since he now knows that having broken with that past, his future life is not to be determined by it, and he is enabled to believe that God now regards and treats him not according to what he has been, or even according to what he is to-day, but according to what he would like to be. Forgiveness is the revelation and the first realization of grace, and in that gracethat undeserved favor of God - that eagerness of God to recover and bless men- lie all the powers and possibilities of salvation. 66 Forgiveness is not complete salvation, but opens the way to it. It gives a man a clean record with God, so far as condemnation is concerned, and the opportunity of a new start in life under God's own influence. It is the transition from a guilty past to a holy future." 1

1 Clarke, Outline of Christian Theology, pp. 257, 258.

CHAPTER VI

THE RELATION OF CHRIST TO MANKIND

We have next to consider a question which has been more or less agitated throughout the whole history of theology Did the purpose of Christ's mission have sole reference to the salvation of men from sin? Or, to put it in more general terms: Was his work a part of the divine plan of the world? Is there reason for believing that there would have been an incarnation of God such as we behold in the life and work of Christ, even if man had never sinned?

The question may seem, at first sight, an idle one. Why speculate, it may be asked, about what might, or probably would have been, if the moral history of the world had been utterly different from what it has been? It is not strange that to many the question has seemed useless, if not positively presumptuous. Moreover, is it not answered and settled for us by explicit scriptural teaching? Did not Christ define the purpose of his coming as the seeking and saving of the lost? Does not Paul clearly teach that the object of our Lord's appearance was that men might be redeemed from the curse pronounced by the law upon sin, and receive the adoption of sons (Gal. iv. 4), and does not John say explicitly that God sent his Son that men might not perish in sin, but obtain eternal life (Jn. iii. 16)? For the reasons here suggested the common view has been that the incarnation was conditioned solely upon the fact of human sin. "Scripture," says Dr. Denney, "dwells on the fact that Christ came into the world to save sinners, and never gives the faintest hint of any opening" in favor of the view that the incarnation was "included in the original design of

the world" that "creation is built on redemptive lines."1

On the other hand, not a few theologians in the earlier ages of the Church, and a large number of modern scholars, are of opinion that there are both biblical and speculative considerations which strongly favor the view that the work of Christ is a part of the divine plan of the world and has therefore a meaning and purpose which are not exhausted in the rescue of man from evil — that, in short, we may well believe that Christ would have come even if man had never sinned at all. This theory does not call in question the truth, but only maintains the inadequacy, of the common view. It contends, not for a contrary, but for a wider, conception of the incarnation. "It is not possible on reflection," writes Bishop Westcott, "to exclude all other conceptions from the incarnation except those of satisfaction and atonement. We must look to the perfection and not only to the redemption of We cannot conceive that a being capable of knowing God and of being united with him should not have been destined to gain that knowledge, to realize that union. We cannot suppose that the consummation of man and of humanity and the realization of Christ's Kingdom, which have been brought about by the incarnation, are dependent on the fall; we cannot suppose that they could have been brought about in any other way than in that according to which they are now revealed to us in their supreme glory." 3

man.

On the question whether any of the New Testament writers adopted, or even approximated, any such conception as this, we have seen that the most opposite judg

1 Studies in Theology, pp. 100, 101. For the opposite opinion that "certain passages of Scripture do necessarily suggest a wider view," see Orr's The Christian View of God and the World, pp. 319-322.

2 For the history of this view down to the Reformation era see Westcott's essay on The Gospel of Creation in his commentary on the Epistles of St. John. Among modern representatives of the theory in question may be mentioned Bishops Lightfoot, Westcott, and Martensen, and Drs. Dorner, Rothe, Van Oosterzee, and Orr.

8 Op. cit., pp. 324, 325.