ON THE ATONEMENT. ALL men are sinners. The word of God declares this unequivocally and most solemnly. Universal observation confirms it. Human nature shows it in all ages and all circumstances. Every conscience attests it, or if it do not, it is because of its own deadness or perversion. Every man must feel that he has transgressed the laws of God, and if iniquity were strictly marked against him, he must be condemned. He needs forgiveness. The mercy of God is his only reliance. How is that mercy to be obtained? The question has been anxiously asked in all ages; and reason and nature, superstition and philosophy, have been tasked in vain for an answer. It is a question which Revelation alone can definitely answer. answered it. And our present inquiry is, answer? What are the conditions of forgiveness? It has what is its It is impossible to come to this inquiry without seriousness and solicitude. It is old and familiar, but that does not lessen its solemnity. Men have been bold in meet (3) ing and pursuing it, daring in their curiosity, loud in their assertions, at variance in their decisions. They have pronounced the subject all a mystery, and they have talked of it as if it were all known to them. They have lodged it among the hidden counsels of the Almighty, and they have gone behind those counsels and rehearsed the conversations and contracts to which it led, from all eternity. They have forbidden reason to tamper with it, and yet let loose their own wild and hurtful speculations. They have declared that nature gives no intimation of it, and afterward have sought and found it in every human government, and the common relations and offices of life. So of Scripture, while they have admitted that its teachings on this subject were highly figurative language, they have given or allowed to that language, the most literal construction. While they have insisted that nothing but wilfulness and guilt could mistake its meaning, no two churches, no two creeds, scarcely two writers or preachers of the same name, have exactly agreed upon it. They who have been most strenuous in declaring a particular view of it essential, differ more widely from each other, than from those whom they condemn for rejecting all their interpretations. Still, with all this variance and inconsistency in which the inquiry has been involved, we cannot approach it without awe. We would not hastily decide upon our own guilt, or the way of escape. We will not boldly descant on what the government of the Eternal demands, or what the labors and sufferings of a Saviour have effected. We open our Bible, and every part speaks to us of the justice and mercy of God, his abhorrence of sin and love of holiness, his gracious promises, and the solemn sanctions by which all are guarded. We see also a great plan of redemption, in which justice and mercy, promises and sanctions, the condemnation of the guilty and the salvation of the holy, all meet. That plan originates in the love of God, and is consummated in the life and death of Jesus Christ. To Christ it is constantly referred, and emphatically to his death. To this an importance is ascribed which we do not find ascribed to any other death; and its influence on man's salvation is expressed in terms as strong and solemn as language affords. This fact we have not the power of overlooking, and no motive for denying. We receive it in faith. We acknowledge it with gratitude. We bless God, and would honor Christ, for the depths of its wisdom and the riches of its love. It is the mission, the religion of Jesus manifested by his life, sealed by his death and resurrection. "God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." There are several points, then, which we may set aside, as not requiring discussion, because no longer disputed. The field of controversy on the atonement has been greatly narrowed within latter times. The progress of light and liberality has removed many obstacles which once obstructed the very threshold of the inquiry. So far from being obliged to disengage the subject from some of its old absurdities, we are accused of injustice, if we charge them upon any sect or church now in being. We will not charge them. We only insist on its being remembered, that they were once common and held to be essential, and that the views which have taken their place are great advances towards those which we believe to be just. There is, first, the origin of the atonement; it is VOL. XII. NO. CXL. 1 * now admitted (proofs abundant are at hand, to show that it was not always admitted) that in this origin there was nothing of wrath, but of pure love, and love only. Again, it was once said, that this sacrifice procured mercy; it is now said, that mercy procured this sacrifice. "The atonement does not purchase grace, but grace provides the atonement.". "The atonement has no regard to the production of love, but simply to the mode of its expression. It is not the cause, but the effect of love; not its origin, but its manifestation." * Such distinctions and such language we gladly take from those who differ from us, and we rejoice that the difference is so much reduced. The change extends to the whole effect of the atonement on God and his attributes. No one can forget the horrible language that has been used to express God's turning "from wrath to grace." It is now denied, at least in terms, that any one of God's attributes is changed or affected by this or any event. "Every idea of change in God is blasphemous," says Wardlaw. Again, every thought of a limited atonement is now repelled, and it is singular to see precisely the same arguments used against this, that we have always urged against all Calvinistic views of this doctrine. This appears particularly in a work just published in England, and favorably received here, from which we could bring many passages like the following, against a limited atonement. "It exhibits the great and blessed God as mercenary in his gifts, unwilling to yield a single boon but for value received in the sufferings of his Son, sufferings which are represented as inducing (not to say bribing) Him to be propitious and * Wardlaw on Pardon, pp. 154, 161. |