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BR 45 .B35 1853
Bampton lectures
THE
ATONING WORK OF CHRIST,
VIEWED IN RELATION TO SOME
CURRENT THEORIES,
IN EIGHT SERMONS,
PREACHED BEFORE
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN THE YEAR MDCCCLIII.
AT THE LECTURE FOUNDED BY
THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON, M.A.
CANON OF SALISBURY.
/ BY
WILLIAM “THOMSON, M. A.
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE,
OXFORD:
PRINTED BY J. WRIGHT, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY,
FOR
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMANS,
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
M.DCCC.LIII.
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EXTRACT
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
OF THE
REV. JOHN BAMPTON,
CANON OF SALISBURY.
pe
“1 give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to
ἐς the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University
“ of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and sin-
‘¢ cular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the
‘¢ intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned; that is to
‘“¢ say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor cf the
«ς University of Oxford for the time being shall take and
*‘ receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and
“¢ (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions
‘“‘ made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment
* of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for
‘¢ ever in the said University, and to be performed in the
** manner following :
“41 direct and appomt, that, upon the first Tuesday in
“ς Kaster Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads
“οὗ Colleges only, and by no others, in the room ad-
“ὁ joining to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten
‘in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach
“eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at
« St. Mary’s in Oxford, between the commencement of the
a2
iv
ςς
ςς
ςς
ce
ςς
ςς
ςς
ςς
EXTRACT FROM CANON BAMPTON’S WILL.
last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week
in Act Term.
** Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity
Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the
following Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christ-
ian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics
—upon the divine authority of the holy Scriptures—
upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fa-
thers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church
—upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ—upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost—upon the
Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the
Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.
‘* Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity
Lecture Sermons shall be always printed, within two
months after they are preached, and one copy shall be
given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy
to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor
of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the
Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall
be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given
for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons; and the
Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled to the revenue,
before they are printed.
** Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be
qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, un-
less he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least,
in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge ;
and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity
Lecture Sermons twice.”
Ss ΝΡ ἼΣΟΥ.
LECTURE 1.
THE NEED OF MEDIATION.
Romans v. 8.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Statement of the subject. page 1.
Three ideas that belong to the doctrine of Atonement. 4.
I. The idea of God. a. Ontological grounds for this. 4.
8. Cosmological grounds. 8. y. Physico-theological
grounds. 9. ὃ. Practical grounds. 11. Estimate of
these. 12.
II. The idea of sin. a. Sin viewed as a privation. 16.
β. Sin viewed as selfishness. 18. γ. Sin viewed as dis-
obedience. 20.
III. The idea of reconcilement. 22. Practical aspect
of these ideas. 24.
LECTURE II.
HEATHEN VIEWS OF MEDIATION.
1 Kings xvill. 27.
.... Cry aloud: for he isa god; either he is talking, or he ts
pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth,
and must be awaked.
Hope of reconciliation, the key to pagan religions. 29.
Sacrifices. 32. J. of men voluntarily for their fellow-
vi SUMMARY.
men. 38. 11. of human victims. 38. III. of other
victims. 40. IV. Supposed effects of sacrifices. 45.
Origin of sacrifices cannot be traced to Noah. 48. — The-
ories of it. 50—53. Summary 53. Conclusion 54.
LECTURE, UL
JEWISH VIEWS OF REDEMPTION THROUGH MESSIAH.
LUKE xXiv. 21.
But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed
Israel.
God’s purposes are sure. 60, Connexion of Old and New
Testaments. 62.
Double significance of Mosaic sacrifices. 64. The sin-
offering examined. 66. Two theories of its meaning. 69.
These not irreconcilable. 69. The Day of Atone-
ment. 70. The scapegoat (Azazel) 72. | Mosaie saeri-
fices insufficient. 73. Messianic promises shew this. 74.
Their twofold character. 76. These compared with
New Testament. 79. Was Messiah expected when our
Lord came? 80. Conclusion. 83.
LECTURE IV.
THE GOSPEL ACCOUNT OF JESUS CHRIST.
LUKE Xvii. 4.
1 have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work
which thou gavest me to do.
Twofold character of the life of Jesus. 88. Christ the
Son of God and the Son of Man. 93. The Son of
God. 93. The Son of Man. 94. He must suffer. 96.
Objection that the synoptical Evangelists do not so
clearly exhibit the Atonement. 98. Important place
assigned to his sufferings in all the Evangelists. 100.
These to be studied under a conviction of sin. 102.
Danger arising from any other temper. 104. ον of
De Wette of the atoning work of Jesus. 106. Its
errors. 109. View of Strauss. 112. Its errors. 115.
Conclusion. 117.
SUMMARY. vil
LECTURE V.
SCRIPTURAL STATEMENTS AS TO THE ATONEMENT.
1 Cor. 1. 30, 31.
But of him are ye m Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto
us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and re-
demption ; That according as it is written, He that glorieth,
let him glory in the Lord.
God is righteous, proved from natural religion. 120. 1 Cor.
ΧΥ. 19. Explained. 121. God is merciful, proved in
the same way. 123. Scriptural statements that God is
just yet merciful. 124. This is an antinomy, not a con-
tradiction. 125. It is reconciled in the Gospel scheme.
128. Provided this is studied in a religious temper. 132.
Caution required in using new terms and in extending the
use of old ones. 133. Satisfactio. 1385. Acceptilatio. 135.
Active and passive obedience. 186. Peculiar fitness of
Scriptural scheme for man’s natural wants. 139. Con-
clusion. 144.
LECTURE VI.
THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
JoHN XVI. 13.
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide
you into all truth.
Worth of evidence of Christian witnesses. 147. Two lines
of thought. I. A ransom paid to Satan. 154. Views of
Irenzeus. 154. These pushed further by later writers.
156. Unscriptural consequences. 157. II. A satis-
faction made to God’s justice. View of Anselm. His
tone of mind. 161. Analysis of his Cur Deus homo. 163
How developed by Thomas Aquinas. 116. Defects of
the theory. 166. Inferences from these opinions. 168.
Conclusion. 172.
vill SUMMARY.
LECTURE VIL
RECAPITUALTION, AND STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE.
Heprews x. 22.
Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith,
having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and
our bodies washed with pure water.
I. The Atonement should be studied only in its practical
bearings. 176. Neglect of this. 178. Which the Re-
formation strove to redress. 179. II. It is a reconcile-
ment of men to God, and of God to men. 182. 111]. It
was effected by a Mediator, and by means of the In-
carnation. 182. IV. The sinless life of the Redeemer
contributed to it. 185. V. The death of Christ recon-
ciled us to God. 189. VI. The resurrection of Christ is
connected with our Redemption. 193.
Summary of these propositions. 193.
Theoretical views of our Lord’s ministry are partial and
incomplete. 194. Socinian scheme. 196. _ Rationalistie
scheme. 197. Mystical scheme. 197. Schleiermacher’s
theory.199. Pantheistic theory. 200. Conclusion. 202.
Lt Gh ee vi
APPROPRIATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT.
MatTTHEW XXVill. 20.
Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.
The means of knowing Christ are intellectual, moral and
sacramental. 206. I. The doctrine suits the intellect of
a being conscious of sin. 207. but when the intellect in-
trudes too far, defective theories are formed. 209. 1].
Moral conditions for this inquiry. 215, Self-denial. 218.
III. Sacramental aids. 226.
Conclusion. 228.
NOTES. page 233.
LECTURE I.
Romans v. 8.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that,
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
THE reconcilement of God and man through
_the death of Jesus Christ is the subject of the
present Course of Lectures. In order to meet
new forms of doubt and unbelief, it is neces-
sary from time to time to open up again sub-
jects that have already perhaps been treated
with a learning, piety, and ability, that seemed
almost exhaustive; and as half a century of
bold speculation, of great political change,
and astonishing progress in the material arts,
has elapsed since the great doctrine of the
Atonement formed the subject of a course
similar to this (1), it will come within the
scope of the Founder to consider the doctrine
under its present aspects, to glance at diffi-
culties which prevent men of this day from
accepting it heartily, and at the attempts,
B
Q LECTURE I.
successful or not, to harmonize new theories
with this unalterable truth. Now, as many
of the current objections set out with a denial
of the substantial truth of the word of God,
it would not help their solution to offer scrip-
tural proofs and illustrations only. ‘The end
in view is to bring back to a trust in the
revelation of Jesus Christ some of those who
are trying to find rest in other systems ; and
therefore the discussion must begin upon
ground common to us and them. It is pro-
posed, therefore, to show, that there are wants
of our nature, real and pressing, which this
doctrine would satisfy*; that pagan religions
have recognised the same wants, and worked
out methods of meeting them which show no
obscure analogy to the true doctrine of the
cross®; and that the law of Moses, being
truly a revelation sent from God, foresha-
dowed distinctly that which the later reve-
lation of the Gospel set forth in substance’*.
Then it will be necessary to state accurately
the doctrine as put forth by our blessed Lord
in the Gospels, vindicating for them on the
one hand their historical character, and dis-
tinguishing on the other between those divine
statements, and human additions and explana-
tions of later date". Next we must inquire,
4Lecture I. ὃ Lect. II. ¢ Lect. 111. 4 Lect. IV.
1 ΠΟΥ UR Τὺ 1. 9
with the same exactness, what was the tenor
of the apostles’ preaching when they carried
abroad to Jew and Greek the message of sal-
vation, and what place the doctrine of the
cross held now, with those men who had
lately been so blind and slow of heart to
believe in a suffering and atoning Messiahe.
Following this doctrine down into later times,
we must inquire how it was preserved, mo-
dified, obscured or altered, as it came into
contact with new modes of thought, and
as a restless curiosity endeavoured to pene-
trate the depths of the mystery, and to
unfold the how and the why of that which
holy Scripture had put forward as a fact!
Lastly, we shall state anew the scriptural
doctrine of the Atonement’, and inquire into
the chief hinderances to a cordial belief in
it’. In this most difficult undertaking, the
preacher will be entitled to the hearer’s in-
dulgent forbearance, so far at least as he
shall endeavour fairly to declare the mind
of God, and shall himself show the same for-
bearing spirit in dealing with those whose
errors we are bound to reject, whilst we leave
the personal responsibility attached to them,
to be adjusted by that Master to whom both
they and we must stand or fall.
€ Lecture V. f Lect. VI. 85 Lect. VII. " Lect. VIII.
gn 2
4 LECTURE ἃ.
At present, then, let us endeavour to ana-
lyse those principles of natural religion to
which the Christian scheme of mediation
seems to be addressed, principles which every
one, Christian or not, may discover in his
own matured consciousness: in order that
we may be able to show that Christianity is
not, in respect of its doctrine of the one
oblation of Christ, a fictitious and unnatural
system, revolting to justice, but is a plan
designed by him who framed us, and there-
fore harmonious with all of good that still
speaks within us; in a word, that it is, what
Origen says it is, “in agreement with the
common notions of men from the begin-
ning” (2).
Now, on the most hasty view, it is plain
that three ideas are necessary to a right ap-
prehension of the doctrine of the Atonement;
the idea of God, the conviction of sin. and
the belief that, in spite of sin, God and the
sinner can be again reconciled.
I. The volume which professes to be a
revelation of God, presupposes of course that
God exists; and therefore we do not find in
the Bible any arguments for this doctrine,
such as later writers have elaborated. For
in truth the proof of his existence is within
us; it is part of the common consciousness
BPEGTURE 1. 5
of mankind. It is clearest in the highest
races of men; but even in the lowest never
quite extinct. But is the possession of this
idea to be taken as a proof that the Divine
Being exists in fact, without the mind? We
might answer with Anselm (3), that as we
imply all perfection in this notion of ours,
and as existence in fact as well as in thought
is required for perfection, therefore reality
must be assigned to that Being, to whom we
cannot help attributing in our thoughts all
that is perfect. But some would object that
on that principle any ideal of perfection
must be actual also; that the Republic of
Plato for instance, which, just because it is
ideal, its author did not expect to realize,
must have had a place among existing go-
vernments (4). Or we might answer with
another great thinker (5), that independence
is part of our notion of the perfect God, and
that if such a Being does not exist, the
ground of non-existence must be sought
either in the divine nature itself, or ex-
ternal to it. In the divine nature we can-
not look for it, for there is no logical im-
possibility in the conception of the perfect
Being; and without him there can be no
such ground, because he is independent, and
therefore on him outward causes have no
6 LECTURE (1.
power to operate. But here again we are
taking that gigantic stride from thoughts to
facts, from what we conceive might exist to
what we affirm does and must, which in
other matters would be a fatal error; and
the idea of God, which is the light indeed of
our own souls, might seem, so far as this
argument prevented, a dream and a delusion
when we attempted to seek it beyond the
sphere of our thoughts. Or, lastly, we may
answer (6), that the possible must have its
ground in the actual, that this idea, this
strange design of a finite mind, which has no
counterpart in the things I have seen, which
makes even the worshipper of idols view
them as more than idols before they can be
worshipped, which is no arbitrary figment or
poetical chimera, but lies still at the bottom
of the well of our being and shines up
through it in all lights and all moods, as-
serts its own claim to reality. This of all
our mental endowments, this thought of
God, which comes into the mind almost the
first and goes out the very last, which in
moments of disaster and defeat, when all the
acquired and conventional inmates of the
mind recoil aghast, like hirelings, remains
by us a true and consoling friend, this at
least must have been sent as the messenger
LECTURE I. 7
and evidence of a real Being, whom though
we have not seen we know. Because we
have the idea, there is a presumption that it
was intended to bring us into a relation
with a real Being ; for what part of us, fear-
fully and wonderfully as we are made, have
we found to be given in vain? There is
light because there is an eye, and an eye
because there is light; there is an ear, and
there are sounds to fill it; there is an apt
and pliant hand, and there is a material
world for it to mould and fashion; there
are powers of reasoning and calculation, and
in the world laws operate which reason can
follow or foretell, and numerical combina-
tions come out that call on the faculties for
their highest efforts. There is then a pre-
sumption that the thought of God is given
to raise us to some real external object of
contemplation. But when we consider that
this idea claims for itself the highest au-
thority, that working in different nations it
has erected hierarchies, excited wars, led
great emigrations, armed the hand of per-
secution, guided the individual on to great
achievements when all the pleasures and
profits of the world would have been no in-
ducement, then we recognise it not merely
as an idea in every mind, but as the highest
8 LECTURE I.
and most authoritative of all, and therefore
the least likely to be without an object.
It is true that the developments of the
notion of God are various. ‘The idea indeed
is one, but the conceptions grounded upon it
are many; the subject is there, but the pre-
dicates by which it is analysed may not have
been assigned, or not correctly. Let us try to
trace how the idea is unfolded into a concep-
tion. .
The world is full of motion and change;
and the present forms of nature are evidently
the effects of earlier, as they will also be the
causes of later. The plant of wheat which
you pluck up in the fields is the aggregate,
as the chemist tells you, of several elements,
formerly present in the soil and air, which
have been appropriated by the vital power
of the seed-grain ; so that, except the form,
the plant offers us nothing new. But this is
an example of a universal law. The whole
world, as we see it, acquired its aspect from
prior states, and these from earlier conditions
still; the stock of forces, so to speak, is not
increased or diminished, though it continu-
ally wears new shapes. But in this regres-
sion from effect to cause, we refuse to go on
without ceasing to eternity; we crave some
cause to rest in, which was not itself an ef-
LECTURE I. 9
fect, something permanent, from which the
changes and transitory forms of things began,
something absolute, as the ground of all re-
lative and derivative forms of being. Now
the attempts to satisfy this craving, without
resorting to the Deity as the first cause, by
supposing some permanent principle in the
universe itself, might be thought successful,
if it were not that the mind is already in
possession of the idea of God, which is ready,
as by a natural attraction, to seize upon this
new attribute. To conceive a first cause other
than God is not in itself impossible ; but the
mind looks naturally to God’s hand as holding
up the chain of being whose links we have
tried to follow up; it recognises this as his
prerogative; it feels that it would be idle to
assign it to another (7).
Again, the universe is full of order and beauty,
and mutual adaptation of means and ends.
Whether some small part of the kingdom of
nature be selected, as has often been done
by theological writers, the human hand or
eye, the plant, the beehive, or the anthill; or
the general harmony of the universe, where
great suns and worlds wheel easy and unen-
tangled through space, and yet the lily of
the field, and the fowl of the air in its nest,
are not forgotten, the endeavour to show
10 LECTURE [
forth God by means of his works has ever
been the part of theology most popular and
most successful (8). The Gentiles, though
revelation had been denied them, yet with
the great book of the universe open before
them, are pronounced by the Apostle to be
without excuse, “because that which may be
known of God is manifest in them; for
God hath shewed it unto them; for the in-
visible things of him from the creation of the
world are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made, even his eternal
power and godheadi.” Now when it is ob-
jected that the marks of design and order
do not of themselves prove the agency of
a Being that sees and knows his own work
in its wonderful beauty, the answer again
should be, that seeing we undoubtedly have
the idea of God, the real question is, not
whether we can explain the universal order
upon any such supposition as that of a blind
mechanism or self-adapting force inherent
in matter, but whether we can prevent our
thought of God from claiming as its own the
attribute of being the Creator and Governor
of the universe. By a natural attraction, as
we said, the thought of the independent First
Cause, and that of the original Creator, and
‘ Romans i. 19, 20.
LECTURE 1. 11
immanent and permanent Director of the
world, must and will become associated ; and
thus another predicate is added (I do not
say that they succeed in this order) in the
development of the idea of the Divine
Being.
Again, the dictates of conscience frequently
come into conflict with those of immediate
self-interest. Pleasure, wealth, and honour
are reckoned good things, and yet every one
feels bound to forego them from time to
time, at the dictation of conscience, the in-
ward law. But if for the sake of mere barren
self-approval we have relinquished any por-
tion of that earthly happiness we might have
had, if to the witness of conscience within
us no outward approval responds, then con-
science has cheated us out of part of our
birthright, and the more scrupulous we are
the more we are deluded. But if the voice
of conscience reveals within us a law that is
valid without us, if justice and fortitude and
forbearance and meekness are approved by
our hearts, because one greater than our
hearts has stamped them for good and true
and noble, then there is no _ delusion
in relinquishing a present gratification for
another and higher good (9). This leads
us to assign to God another attribute ; he
12 LECTURE I.
approves or disapproves of human acts—he
rewards or punishes according to the praise
or blame of conscience, albeit he is greater
than our hearts and knoweth all things, and
will correct their judgments where they are
wrong. Thus then the idea of God, which
has already been shown to claim the sove-
reignty of the physical world, takes possession
also of the region of conscience; and as it was
natural to assign him over that an absolute
dominion, so in this he manifests an absolute
holiness. He “who hath measured the
waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted
out the heavens with a span, and compre-
hended the dust of the earth in a measure,
and weighed the mountains in scales and the
hills in a balance,’ descends also into the
secret places of the human spirit, so that he
“tries it and knows its thoughts, and sees if
there be any wicked way in it, and leads it
in the way everlasting.”
An endeavour has here been made to give
a valid form to those celebrated proofs of the
existence of God, against which the critical
philosophy has succeeded in establishing
some objections. It has been said that in
every one of those proofs the existence of
the idea in the mind is presupposed; and
k Tsaiah xl. 12.
EEOTUR Ef. 13
that the leap from what is in the mind to
what exists objectively is not safe (10). But
we do not prove any longer from the so-
called ontological argument, that God exists,
because we have an idea of him; we assume
the external existence, otherwise the internal
would be unaccountable. It is, no doubt,
just conceivable that reason may deceive,
and that the idea of the Divine Being might
exist in the mind alone; but you are pre-
cluded from proving that it does, because
you have only reason to proceed on in your
proof, and must suppose the validity of reason
in order to make good your proof that it is
invalid; and thus the argument runs in a
vicious circle (11). As in the question of
the real existence of the surrounding world,
or of the possibility of free-will, so in this
greatest of all questions; we trust our first
intuitions against all later doubts, and can-
not deny that God exists, or that the world
of the senses is real, or that free moral action
is possible, because reason assumes all these
propositions, and nothing absolutely contra-
dicts them. Nor do we prove that God
exists from the cosmological proof, or the
argument that there must be a First Cause,
for such a cause might be something far re-
moved from the Divine Being; but, given an
14 LECTURE I.
idea of God, the mind cannot sunder the
notion of the First Cause from it. Nor would
the so-called physico-theological proof, which
teaches the existence of the Deity from
marks of design and beauty in creation, be
sufficient to prove the existence of an abso-
lute Being, distinct from and above the
universe ; but when such a Being exists in
our thoughts already, we assign to him, by
an instinct scarcely resistible, the functions
of the Creator. The same is true of the
moral proof, that from the voice of con-
science; from that argument alone the ex-
istence of a holy personal God, the judge of
our hearts and actions, could not be esta-
blished, but already an idea has dawned
upon us, of one whom this attribute well be-
comes ; and it is assigned accordingly. We
use these arguments then, not as proofs of
the Divine existence, but as descriptions of
so many steps in the development of the
idea of God. Taking with us the thought
of God into all the great regions of human
inquiry, into history, into the sciences of
nature, into the knowledge of the human
mind, we find so much that can only be
explained upon the supposition of the exist-
ence of the Deity, that we come back from
our labour strengthened and refreshed in
LECTURE I. 15
our faith in him, and unwilling to put it in
peril by critical refinements. To cast our-
selves upon the care of one who provides
for the great universe, to begin to take his
known will in moral subjects home to our
own will, seem natural results of the in-
quiry.
II. But in this contemplation of God an-
other thought presents itself. That God is a
moral Being, taking account of right and
wrong, holiness and unholiness, conscience
itself admonished us. But so long as the
mind is at one with itself, and the inclina-
tions and the convictions are not at war,
there is no place for the monitions of con-
science. Man first becomes conscious that
there is a divine law when he deviates from
it,as he is insensible of the existence of his
own bodily organs till their healthy action is
disturbed. And thus, apart from revelation,
even heathen thinkers were forced to take
account of this duality of human nature, of
the inclination we have to actions that our
mind at the same time disapproves. “It is
clear,” says one of them (12), “that I have
two souls, for surely if it were one it would
not be good and bad at the same time, and
inclined to good deeds and evil too, and
willing at one time to do certain things
16 LECTURE. TF.
and not to do them. But plainly there are
two souls, and when the good one gets the
upper hand, it does right, when the evil, it
enters on wicked courses.”
Now all profound conceptions of sin are
derived directly from the contemplation of
him who has no sin, of God himself; and
as the knowledge of God grows higher,
deeper, and wider, so does the exceeding
sinfulness of sin become more apparent.
For, to begin with that region from which
moral subjects would seem the most remote,
when a man throws himself into the study
of the physical laws, and begins as it were
to measure with line and rule the wonderful
proportions of this beautiful temple of the
universe in whose courts he daily walks, he
must, if he is at all in earnest, form some con-
ception of the proper place which he was to
hold in it. Other agents indeed were blind
instruments in the Creator’s fingers; the
coral reef grows up, that it may perhaps
hereafter be the foundation of a solid land,
and the forest is overthrown, that after
silent ages it may be ready to furnish fuel
to man, but neither knows its destiny. Man
alone knows and sees; and with the know-
ledge comes an obligation to act, to acquiesce
with his will, and aid with his hand and
LECTURE I. 17
strength, in the progress of the divine pur-
pose. And then flashes on the thinker that
mysterious and shocking conviction—* In all
this mighty harmony I am the only jarring
string. With God’s works before me, and
with power to understand them and glorify
him because of them, I have heard them
indeed, but understood not, have seen them
indeed, but perceived not. To that social
progress which was meant to be the law
for my race, I have been a mere impedi-
ment; indolence and greediness, want of
faith, want of fortitude, want of love, have
borne me down into inaction, who should
have been as a winged messenger to his
bidding. If sun and stars, wind and sea,
summer and winter, fulfil his word, and
I, with the same word speaking within me
and written in great characters without me,
which they that run might read, stand
wholly aloof from my God, is not this a
state of death, of nothingness?” And hence
arises that negative conception of sin which
has ever found acceptance with the pro-
foundest minds (19). “ Evil,” says Augus-
tine, “has no nature of its own; but the
loss of good has received the name of evil.”
“The good man truly exists,” says Origen,
“,... evil and wickedness are the same as
σ
18 LECTURE IL.
non-existence ....” And Plotinus was led
to infer that the soul of man possesses some
vestiges at least of good, because evil is a
mere privation, and if there were nothing
else in the soul, it would be as though it
existed not. Sin then on this view is that
part of our nature whieh has not the stamp
of God upon it; and as he is the source of
all existence, it is the part of us which is
excluded from true life and being.
But there is another side to the concep-
tion of sin, deducible, like the former, from
the thought of God. The state of inward
strugele, as if between two souls, which
always marks the existence of sin, implies
at least two warring principles. Evil, it is
true, may be represented for some purposes
as mere privation of good; but if evil can
sustain a conflict and pervert the course of a
life, some real substantive existence must be
assignable to that which has such real effects.
Now one of the two principles we recognise
as good and divine; but what is the other? In
a word, it is selfishness. Sin is that perversion
of the soul which makes it, even whilst con-
scious of God, pursue some lower aim, and
seek with an obtrusive egotism to make its
own law for itself, to be wise in ways that
are not permitted, to gain what has not been
LECTURE I. 19
given it, to enjoy forbidden pleasures, to sit
and sleep in indolence over its appointed
task. The roots of selfishness strike wider
and deeper than some of us are aware;
when the more gross and obvious forms of
it, comprised under the name of sensuality,
are cast out or subdued, the subtler in-
fluences of self-esteem may still be too
active; and love of power, love of wisdom,
love of our family, the pride of consistency,
the fear of censure or misunderstanding,
often call back the soul to its own narrower
circle, when it would fain go forth from
itself and lay hold upon God. And the
consciousness of this has brought many
thinkers to represent sin and selfishness as
identical (14). “The principle of excessive
self-love,” says Plato, “is the cause of all
the errors which every man at different
times falls into.” “The first act of our evil
will,” says Augustine, “was rather a defec-
tion from the work of God to its own work,
than any real work.” Many of the names
given to the sinful principle express in
reality forms of selfishness, and so bear wit-
ness to the truth of this view. When pride
is represented as the essence of sin, the ele-
vation of self to be the law and the ruler of
life is intended by that name; when im-
cr
20 LECTURE 1.
patience is regarded as identical with sin,
this only expresses a spirit of resistance to
every external command, which implies in-
ternal self-reliance ; when unbelief, an un-
willingness to trust to God is the sinful
element, which again must suppose a trust
in ourselves (15). The opinion then that
sin and selfishness are the same, is pro-
foundly true; and the contradiction between
that view and the notion that it is a priva-
tion of good, is only apparent and not real ;
for the selfish life is only the semblance of
life, it neither gains nor effects anything ;
proud as he is of his own wisdom and
activity, the sinful man, even in the eyes of
another like himself, is seen to have brought
forth no real fruit, and his life is merely
the privation or absence of ail that is
good.
That sin is also a violation of God’s law
follows from the other explanations of it.
The disorder, the want of harmony, the
struggle in the soul, take place between a
part of us that is, and one that is not, in
accord with the law of God. So far as the
rebellious part prevails, we have deserted
God, and as every law implies guilt in the
transgressors of it, and most of all the divine
Law, because it is both perfect and para-
LECTURE I. 21
mount, so no man in his natural state can
meditate sincerely upon God and his own
ways without remorse and sorrow (16). Here
then is the threefold aspect of sin; the
thought of God the Ruler of the Universe,
immanent in every part his works, the life
of all that live, the designer of all beauty,
the pillar of all strength, the mover in all
change, brings with it the thought that from
one part only is he excluded, from the
human will, which he has made so high
that it can even look at and deny him. Sin
then, as the only stronghold into which the
source of all being does not penetrate, re-
duces the sinner to a kind of non-existence.
But as there must be some active principle
even in the most disordered and futile ac-
tivity, the motive of the sinner is to be
found in selfishness. But though this im-
pels to actions, it cannot enforce approval of
them; the master we obey leaves us without
praise or wages, the Master we disobey
makes the voice of his anger against us
heard in the night season, and in the hour
when the hands hang down and the knees
are feeble. Sin then is a loss and privation
of all that is good, and a state which sets up
self as a lawgiver, and a revolt from one
whose present reproofs of our disobedience
22 LECTURE 1.
are an earnest of his power to punish re-
bellion. 3
lil. As it has been shown that deep con-
templation of God, even on the ground of
natural religion, brings out the separation
between us and him, and deepens our own
conviction of sin, so do these two concep-
tions awaken in man a third—the desire
and hope of reconcilement. That man has
power to know God at all, is a guarantee
against utter desertion and desperation ; for
it would be hard to persuade us that he
whose love and goodness are so conspicuous
in creation, had allowed gleams of his own
light to penetrate the darkness of our fallen
and imprisoned state, only that we might
feel that darkness was our portion for ever.
Never has the mind of man, driven to con-
struct a worship from its natural resources,
invented a religion of despair. It has sought
in prayer and in sacrifice to return again to
him to whom it feels that it is related, and
whom it would fain call once more “ Abba,
Father.” In sacrifice it has sought atone-
ment, and in prayer reconciliation (17). For
these ideas are distinct; anda state of re-
concilement for the future can only be
secured by a complete atonement for the
past; just as the reformation of a criminal
LECTURE 1. 23
is no security, how long soever it may have
lasted, against the punishment of some old
misdeed. Moral guilt is not effaced by lapse
of time nor change of conduct; unless some
act of purgation, such as the endurance of
punishment, or the payment of some ac-
cepted composition, or the announcement
of a pardon, shall have passed, the guilt, we
know, remains upon the conscience, and
though new actions may be heaped up over
it, it lies still beneath the mass, and we fear
the day may come when it will be sought
for and exposed. Unable to sit still under
it, yet unwilling themselves to suffer the
terrible punishments due to it, men of all
nations have resorted to sacrifices as the
means of expiating their guilt. The various
forms of these atoning rites, and their pre-
cise meaning, must be considered hereafter ;
enough to state at present that the essence
of all religions is to provide some means
of mediation between sinful man and God.
These then are the three principles with
which Christian thought must commence—
the belief in God, the conviction of sin, the
hope of reconciliation. All false religions have
endeavoured to satisfy them ; and if it shall
prove that the Gospel of Jesus Christ meets
every want that they imply, solves difficul-
Q4 LECTURE I.
ties of which less perfect systems have not
been able to free themselves, deepens and
quickens religious knowledge to a degree
that no other scheme has attempted, if, in
short, it commends itself to that religious
appetite that has just been described, as its
proper and satisfying food, then our confi-
dence in the documents of our religion will
be confirmed, and the objections of mere
criticism will be resisted by an inward wit-
ness which they cannot assail. When the
eyes have been opened by the conviction of
sin, so that they have beheld wondrous
things in God's law, when the word of Christ
has been long “a lamp unto the feet, and a
light unto the path,” so that we desire to
take it as our heritage for ever, then all doubts
about that word clear away, or at least there
is an assurance that they will as knowledge
is increased. For it is not in order to con-
struct a religion out of our Christian con-
sciousness that we have laid open its roots,
it is not to make the Bible square with our
supposed religious needs; but to discover
whether the Bible as it stands meets the
highest human wants, and is the only sys-
tem which in these days even pretends to
do so.
And these are not mere speculative ques-
LECTURE 1. 25
tions, although we examine the results of
speculative inquiry, and use its terms. There
is no subject so directly practical. When
a man gathers his feet into his bed, and
turns his face to the wall, and the physician,
with words as sure as those of the prophet,
bids him set his house in order, for he shall
surely die, and that common doom of man-
kind, which he has talked about till he has
almost ceased to believe it, has found him
at last, then, of all the world without, of all
the treasures of his mind within, these three
thoughts remain—the thought of God, good
and righteous, the reminiscence of a sinful
life, the hope of forgiveness. In health and
youth, it may be, these instincts of nature
kept silence on easy terms, and gave little
trouble amidst the throng of outward impres-
sions and of inward schemes and wishes, that
made life pass busily, if not happily, and
hurried on the hours, so that deep thought
was scarcely possible. But the sense of our
true position is not less real, because it can
be banished for a season. And when the
springs of life fail, when Barzillai’s numb
senses no longer apprehend splendour and
harmony and convivial joy”, and the jealous
Saul hears the praises of his prowess trans-
m2 Samuel xix. 35.
26 LECTURE I.
ferred to another’, and David’s lamentation
mingles with the shout of victory, because
the son for whom he would have died has
been stricken’, and Solomon in all his glory
and wisdom confesses that life is a weary
dream’, and Job sits down in the ashes of
his prosperity to listen to the cruel railings
of false comforters‘; in a word, when great
shocks, as it were of an earthquake, force a
man to feel how unstable this world is, then,
whatever else may reel and stagger, the exist-
ence of God is sure, and our helplessness is
sure, and the one must needs seek succour
from the other. You will say, that such sea-
sons of desolation do not always bring back the
lost sense of religion; you may argue against
this evidence of consciousness, because, in
fact, men who lived without God seem able
to die without him, and in a state of stupid,
groundless contentment depart to meet their
Judge. And indeed the bravery of men is
terrible. We march on, shoulder to shoulder,
through the fight of life, encouraging and
gladdening one another, never looking at the
heap of slain, seldom even whispering that
the whole army to a man must fall. In yon
metropolis alone, twelve hundred men have
"1 Sam. xviii. 8. ° 2 Sam. xviii. 33. P Kecles. i. 2.
q Job iv.
LECTURE I. Q7
died between Sunday and Sunday; yet there
is no cry of lamentation in the streets, and the
care that sits upon so many brows belongs to
this world rather than to another. And this
must be. If upon all that stirring crowd
there brooded always a foreboding of the
valley of the shadow of death, without a
sight of the guiding hand, and the support-
ing rod and staff that would take men
through it, the life and energy by which the
growing world has been advanced through
ages, would be paralysed in man, who ex-
hibits its highest form. But there is a prin-
ciple within us that can reconcile activity
and safety, time and eternity. The know-
ledge of God and of sin, and the craving for
reconcilement, have not been given but to be
satisfied. It will be well with you and with
me, if our idea of God is becoming higher
and more abiding, if our feeling of depend-
ance on his mercy is growing more complete,
if we sincerely believe that through the obe-
dience and cross of Jesus Christ, past guilt
is forgiven, the lost relation between his
infinite nature and our finite restored, and
all that was dead in us can be made alive
again. It will be well if conscience ceases
to be a slave in the house, and begins to
govern the senses, the thoughts, and actions,
28 LECTURE I.
for then that lawlessness and disproportion
which, heathens tell us (18), is the curse of
a man or a state, will be removed. It will
be well if, taught by the abounding love of
Christ, by his unwearied diligence in well-
doing, by his sympathy with suffering, by his
one sufficient sacrifice, we press forward, one
and all, whilst we have something to offer of
time, and strength, and gifts of mind and
body, to present ourselves a living sacrifice
to God most high.
LECTURE II.
1 Kings xviii. 27.
... Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking,
or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or perad-
venture he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
THESE were the bitter words in which
Elijah derided the priests of Baal and their
sacrifice. The prophet of God stood alone,
against the four hundred and fifty prophets
of Baal, supported by the favour of Ahab
and his wicked Sidonian queen. The chal-
lenge was given; the trial was come. From
morning till noon the false prophets offered
their misdirected worship, “but there was no
voice, nor any that answered.” And then
these words of scorn were uttered. The
false worship measured itself against the
true; and no wonder it was condemned.
The ministers of idolatry were put forward
to supplant the prophets of Jehovah, and no
wonder they were slain.
But now that the strife and the peril are
over, and those ancient forms of idolatrous
30 LECTURE II.
worship can be calmly studied in the sacred
history, a feeling of pity may be allowed to
replace the prophet’s noble scorn. Every
attempt to satisfy that inmost want of man,
the want of reconcilement with the Divine
Power, appeals directly to human sympathy.
For what is the key to all these corrupt
religions? The spirit of man felt deeply
that it could not return by a mere act of
the will to the God from whom it knew
itself to be cut off. It could not resolve,
“JT will arise and go to my father, and will
say unto him, Father, I have sinned against
heaven and before thee, and am no more
worthy to be called thy son*;” for there was
nothing to bridge over the gulf of that felt
unworthiness. With no outward change in
its relation to its Lord, the mind knows that
it cannot re-unite itself to him by any force
exerted from within. Sin has produced
anger in God, as it has wrought uneasiness
in the conscience; and no lapse of time
brings an amnesty, no desire on the part of
the outlawed offender can efface its conse-
quences. Hence sprang up in all nations
the use of sacrifices, which are, in their most
general acceptation, gifts by means of which
man strives to make good his imperfect con-
@ Luke xy. 18.
LECTURE II. 31
secration of himself to God, who is his lawful
Lord (19). And vain are all the attempts to
account for this universal practice, by de-
ducing it from some one of the ordinary
passions or affections of men. When the
blood of the bull or goat is shed, and he
who has offered it derives from his sacrifice
comfort and courage, it is vain to pretend
that the whole transaction can be explained
on the ground that God has been bribed
with a gift, or that the victim is a mulct or
fine adequate to the past transgressions, or
that the sacrifice was a mere symbol, whether
of acceptance with God, as the victim is ac-
cepted, or of obliteration of sin, as it is con-
sumed, or of vicarious punishment suffered
by it. All these views have found their ad-
vocates (20); but they are all defective and
partial. Attempts at a theory must be
abandoned. ‘The use of sacrifices must be
accepted as a fact; and it proves at least
this much, that men believed they could
find help from external means in drawing
closer their relation to the Divine Power.
And the ethical objection so often urged
against this truth—that one’s own sins are
not transferable either in their guilt or their
punishment, because the simplest natural
justice requires that the sinner alone should
32 LECTURE II.
bear his own burden and the righteous man
wear his own crown—is so obvious, that we
must believe it was known to the Greek or
Roman who brought his costly victim to
Zeus or Diana, as clearly as to the philo-
sopher of modern days (21). The fact that
in the face of that natural law—the soul
that sinneth it shall die—every nation
visited death upon sinless victims, in order
to expiate its own transgressions, will be
taken by any candid person as a sign that
the principle of sacrifice has a stronger hold
on the human mind than that of simple re-
tribution.
Let it be the purpose of the present Lec-
ture to inquire how the different pagan
systems have endeavoured to satisfy the re-
ligious want, which in the former Lecture
we found to be inherent in the human mind.
All worship consists in prayer and sacrifice;
but as the former always accompanied the
latter, and was reckoned incomplete without
it, our purpose will be best served by con-
sidering the subject of sacrifice alone, the
greater as including the less. Various defi-
nitions have been given of sacrifice, so formed
as to include the two great divisions of it,
thank-offerings and expiations for sin, 1. 6.»
gifts of gratitude that the relation between
Eee UD RES Τ|. 33
man and God is not wholly severed, and
offerings to purge away the guilt, which is
the obstacle to a more perfect relation. We
may describe a sacrifice as a visible expres-
sion of our dependance upon the Deity; or
as an attempt to procure by an offering of
a visible and sensual kind, invisible and
supersensual good, to conciliate, by a conse-
cration of the creature, the favour of the
Creator (22); or we may call it, in words I
have used already, the effort to make good
our imperfect devotion of ourselves to God
by means of gifts. Such descriptions show
us different sides of the subject; let us see
how far they are borne out by the practice
of those who had not revelation to guide
them.
Abandoning for hopeless all attempts to
trace the steps in the growth of heathen
sacrifices, we may turn first to those striking
cases in which men are represented as laying
down their own lives, consciously and freely,
for the sake of their fellow-men (23). And
here, as our object is to examine what men
thought, what they could admire and record,
rather than what took place in fact, it is
needless to criticise the narratives closely,
and to sift the historical from the mytho-
logical portions. When we are told that
D
34 LECTURE II.
Codrus, the Athenian king, laid down his
life to the Dorian invaders, because an oracle
had made that the condition of the repulse
of the enemy, the points on which we
seize, whether the story be true or false,
are the belief, even among pagans, that some
“would even dare to die” for their fellow-
men, the opinion that such heroic devotion
might be effectual, and the honour deserv-
edly paid to the memory of one whose sym-
pathies were so deep and large. It is the
same with the fate of Menoeceus of Thebes,
who fell by his own hand, because a divine
sanction connected that sacrifice with the
safety of his city. A temple commemo-
rated the self-devotion of the daughters of
Orion, in offering their lives to arrest a
plague, and the Aonians brought them yearly
thank-offerings. In the Latin war, at the
battle near Vesuvius, Publius Decius, in obe-
dience to a vision, devoted himself to death
in order to secure the destruction of the
Latin army and the victory of his own.
With a solemn imprecation, prescribed by the
priest, he rushed among the enemy, “a ma-
jesty more than human visible in his form,”
says the narrator, “as though he were sent
from heaven to expiate all the anger of the
gods, to turn away destruction from his
LECTURE II. 35
countrymen by casting it upon their ene-
mies.” From such stories, and they might
be multiplied, even the soberest reasoner
must infer that that highest proof of love,
that a man lay down his life for his friends,
was conceivable in the darkest times of hu-
man intelligence, and that it seemed more
than possible such offerings should avail in
averting calamities. Yes; that mysterious sym-
pathy—which in the one Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ did in fact gather-in all the
separate stems of men’s sin and suffering
into one great sheaf, and bear its enormous
weight, and lay it on the altar of God, that
sympathy under which an Apostle “could
wish that himself were accursed from Christ
for his brethren,” if this might turn and
save them, — was foreshadowed ἴῃ these
weaker acts of love; and the honours and
gratitude that they elicited are an earnest
of the higher feeling with which the Christ-
ian regards the sufferings of his Lord. Call
them, if you will, barbarous superstitions, for
indeed the oracles were false, and the piacu-
lar blood was poured out in vain; but do
not mock at the notion of a substitutive suf-
fering, nor propose to carry the crude prin-
ciples of human justice into the divine
b Romans ix. 3.
dD 2
36 LECTURE II.
economy, urging that each individual crimi-
nal must stand alone, without advocate or
comforter, to be judged at God’s bar for all
his works; for the stammering lips of the
human race in its childhood will rebuke you.
And on this common ground, where the
priest and the victim meet in one, we may
ask what was the original consecration of the
pagan priest (24). Was it not perhaps the
same loving sympathy? Men in whom reli-
gious thoughts were stirred up, and who saw
clearly the deity on one side, and sin on the
other, endeavoured to mediate between hea-
ven and the careless multitude, and sought
out many inventions for propitiating the
divine anger, and enlisting the reverence of
the people in their undertaking. In the
settled forms of heathenism, indeed, where
a sacerdotal caste administers ἃ sacrificial
system, from which perhaps the meaning has
long since departed, we seek in vain for
traces of such feelings. But new religious
movements exhibit it distinctly. Thus of the
founder of Buddhism, who, in his struggle
against the Brahminical priesthood, usurped
those sacred functions that belonged to the
Brahmin caste alone, it is said by way of
complaint — “he is praised because he
said, Let all the sins that have been com-
LECTURE II. 97
mitted in this world fall on me, that the
world may be delivered.” And his oppo-
nents could discover in this prayer of a
loving spirit, only a proof of sinfulness ; oc-
cupied as they were continually in making
expiation for sin by burdensome sacrifices,
they had forgotten the love that should have
animated their work. As the priest sought
to stand between God and man, the infinite
and the finite, he occupied of necessity a
double position: to plead for men he must
be one of themselves, yet when he assures
them of pardon or safety, he must stand to
them in the place of God. Accordingly, in
the one capacity he leads their prayers, and
offers their victims; in the other, we find him
receiving honours little short of divine, and
even representing, with mask and dress and
emblem, the deity, whether Bacchus or De-
meter, to whom he was devoted. Greater
than men, because he was able to approach
the gods more nearly, and less than the
gods, because he had to minister among men,
whose frailties he shared, the heathen priest
occupied an intermediate position. And it
is remarkable that the Arians assigned the
Christian Mediator a similar position. They
thought that “created beings could not bear
the presence of one who was not born, and
38 LECTURE WE
therefore God sent his Son as a mediator, to
reveal the truth (25);” they regarded a me-
diator as one who stood midway between two
contending parties, to set them at one. Ina
word, they thought of the Son of God as
higher than men and lower than God, be-
cause they could not realise the scheme of
reconciliation by which Jesus Christ exhibited
two whole and perfect natures already made
one in his own person.
If. The use of human sacrifices opens a
more gloomy chapter in the history of man
(26). Between the willing victim, to whose
exalted self-devotion the pains of death were
almost unfelt, whose physical suffering was
glorified to all beholders by the grandeur of
his moral strength, and the miserable captive
murdered in the name of the gods, with shouts
and loud music to drown his protesting cries,
there is an enormous interval. The practice
of offering human victims, begun in cruel
and barbarous ages, resisted the progress of
civilisation with great tenacity. In Athens, at
the festival of Thargelia, two victims were sup-
posed to carry away with them, as they were
solemnly led out of the city to death, amidst
blows and insults, the sins of the whole peo-
ple. At Rome, less than a hundred years
before Christ, it was necessary to issue a de-
LECTURE II. 39
eree against human sacrifices ; yet the prohi-
bition was disregarded in several times of un-
usual calamity. The horrible worship of Mo-
loch, in which infants were cast alive into the
grasp of a fiery statue of the god, prevailed
in Phoenicia, and among the Ammonites, the
Cretans, and the Carthaginians. The Egypt-
ians, the Persians, all the nations of the
North, offered human life to the gods, and
thought that they did them thereby a service
and a pleasure. If it has been questioned
whether the Hindoos ever actually slew hu-
man victims to the gods, the idea at least
was not unknown to them. When Euro-
pean sails were first furled in the new world
of the West, a system of sacrifices was found
established more sanguinary than even fancy
could have dared to conceive. ‘Thousands of
prisoners of war were annually slain by the
Aztecs in the name of religion. To one of
their deities, whom they worshipped as the
soul and creator of the world, a strange
tribute was paid. A captive, beautiful and
perfect in form, was set aside a year before
the act; and all kingly pomp surrounded
him, and all men paid him homage as the
representative of the deity himself. When
the short year was over, he was conducted to
an altar near the city; he was stripped of
40 LECTURE IL.
his glory, and cast his crown to the ground,
and broke in pieces his instruments of music.
Then he was put to death by the priests, and
offered with solemn rites to the god, in whose
stead he had received honour but a few days
before. If we distrust these accounts, given
by invaders willing to justify their own vio-
lence and rapine, we may find in India at
this day a tribe that has preserved a system
of human sacrifice in all important respects
identical with this. Let these facts, out of
many, suffice for the present. And let us
only ask ourselves what deep-seated yearning
of the mind these horrible rites, so widely
practised, so repugnant to that natural pity
which can never be extinguished in the mind
of any father, brother, or son, were meant to
satisfy.
III. A less cruel and revolting class of
sacrifices remains to be considered, those,
namely, which men have offered to the
Divine Power, of their fruits, their flocks,
and their herds, to show their thankfulness
and need of heavenly favour (27). Now the
key-note of all the sacrificial systems is the
same; self-abdication and a sense of de-
pendance on God, are the feelings which
gifts and victims strive to express. Where-
ever there are men, there is worship; and
LECTURE ΤῈ 41
where there is worship, there is the need of
divesting ourselves of something, to lay it at
the foot of the throne of him we adore.
The firstfruits, and the choice of the flock
and herd, are thought but poor and un-
worthy signs of devotion; and the feeling
which David expressed to Araunah_ has
guided the piety of the wide world ;—“I
will surely buy it of thee at a price, neither
will I offer burnt-offerings unto the Lord
my God of that which doth cost me no-
thing’.” But so far the distinctive meaning
of sacrifices hardly appears; the costly gift,
and the self-denying act, are as natural ex-
pressions of an earthly love or friendship, as
they are of the seeking after God. They
would suit as well the subjects of a human
king exacting tribute, as the people of a
divine ruler who was angry at their dis-
obedience. But the principal sacrifices were
always accompanied by shedding of blood.
And the reason of this is, that the victim is
not offered merely as a precious possession,
as a fine or heriot to an exacting lord, but
as a life; and in the blood, as the seat of
life, did the essence of the sacrifice con-
sist. “Without shedding of blood is no re-
mission’,” is a maxim that might be ex-
ς 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. a Heb! 1x: 22:
42 LECTURE II.
tended to other systems besides the law of
God given by Moses. Nor is it by a poetical
figure only that the blood is called the life ;
physiologists of the greatest name have used
the same language to describe it. It is “the
fountain of life,” says Harvey, “the first to
live and the last to die, and the primary seat
of ‘the: animal soul; Ὁ 0. Ὁ it lives and is
nourished of itself, and by no other part of
the body.” And a greater authority still
[John Hunter] infers that it is the seat of
life, because all the parts of the frame are
formed and nourished from it. “And if,”
says he, “it has not life previous to this
operation, it must then acquire it in the
act of forming; for we all give our assent
to the existence of life in the parts when
once formed” (28). But long before science
recognised this truth, even false religions
had acted upon it; and the words of God
to Moses made it known. “The life of the
flesh is in the blood ; and I have given it to
you upon the altar to make an atonement
for your souls, for it is the blood that
maketh an atonement for the soul*.”
Now 1 will not here attempt to enume-
rate the modes in which the heathen systems
have applied this principle. But it may be
e Levit. xvii. 11.
LECTURE II. 43
said advisedly that the doctrine of a life for
a life, of a propitiation for sin through the
outpouring of blood, “has prevailed almost
over the whole world, and yet it does not
seem to proceed on any antecedent reason,
nor on any assignable error” (29). All the
greater epochs of life—a birth, a marriage,
or the death of a friend; all solemn political
acts, a war, a truce, or a treaty; all fears and
joys; all outgoings and returnings; all those
important steps and changes indeed in which
man feels that without help he may slip and
stumble ; were sanctified by the shedding of
blood. To assert that all worshippers at
pagan altars consciously offered a life to
atone for their own, would be untrue; as it
would be to say that in all these religions
the notion of expiation was equally promi-
nent. In no two Christian churches, in no
two ages, in no two individuals, perhaps, are
religious truths realised in exactly the same
proportion and degree. Still the practice of
sacrifice was almest universal in the ancient
pagan world; and there are many indica-
tions that the shedding of blood was under-
stood to imply the offering of a life instead
of another life that was forfeit or in peril.
In one religion the natural element prevails
over the ethical; gods are worshipped who
44 LECTURE IZ.
manifest themselves in the powers of nature,
and the sense of sin is faint and obscure, and
there this kind of sacrifice is made less im-
portant. In another, the metaphysical ele-
ment predominates; the religion offers a
system of the universe and a theory of
being, instead of a divine law to govern and
discern the hearts of men; and there study
and meditation are more appropriate than
sacrificial acts. But with all these deduc-
tions, it is still true that sacrifice for sin, to
redeem a forfeited life, was almost universal
in the ancient world.
There is indeed one great exception; and
none can wonder that when God allowed
men to walk in their own ways true ideas
should sometimes be lost. The system of
Buddhism began in a protest against the
burdensome formalities of the Brahminical
ritual. It was a scheme of metaphysics
rather than a moral law; and, like the sys-
tem from the bosom of which it sprang, it
taught that God was all and in all, and that
the human spirit must strive to become ab-
sorbed in him, without attending to the
barrier which sin had thrown across the
path. Hence the need of a propitiation was
not felt. At the same time, the habit of
seeing all things in God gave a sacredness
LECTURE II. 45
to life, even that of the meanest creatures,
so that it became unlawful to shed blood:
and no crying desire to appease the wrath
of God existed in the minds of its votaries,
sufficient to break through for that one
sacred purpose their repugnance to the de-
struction of animal life. Thus Buddhism
stands out as a religion without sacrifice.
But owing to its neglect of the sinfulness of
man, this system, which began in the highest
aspirations after divine knowledge and com-
munion, has ended in the outward form of a
hierarchy, with a standard of life and thought
beyond all others earthly and unspiritual (30).
IV. There remains one obvious question
that must not be passed over —In these
pagan rites how was the gift supposed to
benefit the giver? How could the consci-
ence satisfy itself of the connexion between
the victim pouring out a life it had done
nothing to forfeit, and the worshipper full
of fear for his sins? Many attempts to
answer come out in pagan systems. The
feast that followed a sacrifice, in which the
flesh of the victim was eaten by the priest
and people, was regarded as a participation
in the effects of the religious work ; as ap-
pears from the fact, that where the sins of the
people had been solemnly imprecated on the
46 LECTURE IL.
head of the victim, no one might eat of that
accursed flesh, lest the malediction should
come with it (31). The strange ceremony
of the taurobolion, described by Pruden-
tius (32), is another such answer; the blood
of the victim was made to flow over the
body of him who would be consecrated to
the mother of the gods; and one inscrip-
tion, amongst many which speak of this rite,
records the belief of one who had received it,
that he was thereby “regenerate for ever”
(in eternum renatus). Far deeper than such
mechanical views was the belief that the
effects of a sacrifice depended mainly upon
the state of the will and mind of the wor-
shipper. “To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to hearken than the fat of rams‘;” of
this divine truth even the heathen were not
wholly ignorant. “It would be a strange
thing” (these are words put into the mouth
of Socrates) “if the gods looked to gifts and
sacrifices, and not to the soul, whether a per-
son happen to be holy and just. Nay, they
look much more, probably, to this than to
costly pomps and sacrifices, which those that
have erred much towards the gods and much
towards their fellows, be it in the case ofa
private man or a city, may pay for without
f y Sam. xv. 22.
LECTURE II. 47
hinderance every year” (33). And when one
reads that after such arguments the humbled
worshipper he addressed, uncertain whether
his mind was fit to pray, took back his
victim till he should receive more light, one
may see how the great harvest of the human
mind was ripening on to the fulness of time
in which Christ himself should put in the
sickle. Christ himself saw good to warn
against the rash offering—“If thou bring
thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest
that thy brother hath ought against thee,
leave there thy gift before the altar, and go
thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother,
and then come and offer thy gift®.” But
somehow or other, whether by the solemn
feast, or the hideous washing in blood, or,
better far, in the praying, humbled, self-
abdicating attitude of the spirit, the wor-
shipper went along with his gift, to claim a
share in the blessing it was to bring.
Many of my hearers know how completely
the researches of learned men into the origin
and meaning of piacular sacrifices have been
baffled. So various are the results at which
they have arrived, and so clearly does each
perceive the objections to the views of others,
that each in turn may be answered from the
& Matt. v. 23, 24.
48 LECTURE II.
works of the rest; whilst the subject itself
gains little beyond inspiring us with a sense
of its difficulty and of the caution required
in treating it. Still it will be necessary to
draw attention to some of these results.
Now as to the origin of expiatory sacri-
fices, it has been argued, that as they are
practised universally, and as it is against the
common sense of men to seek to atone for
inward faults by foreign pain and blood, they
must have proceeded from some common
origin, and have been handed by tradition
from race to race, and age to age, until they
overspread the world. A usage unreasonable
in itself, could not have been invented by
many different nations without concert. But
if we assume that Noah inculcated on all his
descendants a practice which he knew from
God himself to be good and acceptable, the
unanimity of the nations may be _ ex-
plained (34). But however attractive the
facility of this explanation may be, it can
hardly bear a severe scrutiny. ‘The diversity
of the modes of sacrifice among various na-
tions is no less striking than the universality
of the practice. Noah did indeed _ offer
“burnt offerings on the altar’”’ to the Lord,
and, as the sacrifice was approved, we may
h Gen. vill. 20.
LECTURE IL. 40.
well suppose that his descendants would
continue the same sacred rites. But that
this tradition should reappear in the la-
borious formality of Brahminical worship,
and the sanguinary cruelties of the Aztec
system, and the strange atonement which
the Athenian provided in the Thargelia, does
seem to prove that if the human mind had
no power to invent the principle of recon-
ciliation by sacrifice, it exercised an almost
boundless privilege of altering and develop-
ing the tradition it received. But further, it
is not merely a system of sacrifice, of which
we are seeking the germ, but one into which
human sacrifices were largely admitted. Nor
can it be maintained that this revolting cus-
tom was a late abuse, which grew up as the
tradition died out among Noah’s descend-
ants; for I believe all writers are agreed
that human sacrifice is of high antiquity, and
was slowly replaced by more merciful rites.
But what were the very terms of the cove-
nant with Noah, of that covenant which
would be handed down with the supposed
tradition of sacrifice, even if it did not out-
last it? “At the hand of every man’s bro-
ther will I require the life of man. Whoso
sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood
be shed ; for in the image of God made he
E
50 LECTURE Il.
1 59
man’.” ‘To account then for the wide and
ancient practice of slaying human victims,
we are asked to suppose that the nations
~remembered from Noah the precept to offer
sacrifice, whilst in the very liturgical acts by
which they hoped to please and satisfy the
divine Power, they totally forgot his own
most solemn denunciation of the shedding
of human blood.
It is not possible to form a consistent
theory of heathen sacrifices, based on the
ordinary passions and feelings, so as to ex-
plain away what has seemed “unnatural”
and “unreasonable” in the practice, al-
though many attempts have been made. We
are told, for example, that in times of bar-
barism, when the conceptions of the Deity
were low and sensuous, the worshipper saw
in him a king, whose throne should be ap-
proached with gifts to propitiate his favour,
whom it was disrespectful and dangerous to
address with empty hands. Investing this
king with all the human wants, they brought
the choicest food and drink, to satisfy the
hunger and slake the thirst of the unseen,
and the death and burning of the victim were
but stages in the preparation of his banquet.
They offered their choice and beautiful pos-
' Gen. 1x. 5,6.
BE TU BR πὲ 51
sessions of different kinds, to attest their
devotion and self-denial, and to gratify the
divine being through “the lust of the eye”
(35). That this theory has found supporters
may be owing to its simplicity; for it cannot
be reconciled with the facts. The worship-
per who brought a thank-offering to a god
—for example the Persian as described by
Herodotus—knew well that he was preparing
a feast for himself, and not for the deity
to whom he consecrated it; and it is hard
to see how the most pious imagination could
have put such a construction upon its own joy
and revelry. But the expiatory sacrifice, in
which the blood and the life were the essence
of the gift, is left wholly unexplained; and
nothing can be more clearly proved from
historical evidence than the wide and all but
universal employment of this class of rites.
Moreover the early religions were symbolical ;
the sun and moon, and the host of heaven,
and the natural forces at work in the earth,
were personified and worshipped; and it is
incredible that the imagination that could
exalt these into gods should be content with
a view of the sacrifices made to them, so
crude, so low.
Or shall we say that sacrifices were mere
symbols at first, and that they were exalted
E2
52 LECTURE IL.
by superstition by slow degrees into real and
effectual means of reconciliation (36)? We
admit that their symbolical import comes out
in many parts of them. The sin-offering, of
which the worshipper might not partake,
excited the thought of separation from God,
as the thank-offering, which he shared him-
self, showed that the separation was not
complete. The demand of a perfect and
sound victim reminded the worshipper of
that which lacked in himself, soundness and
purity. The death-stroke of the victrm was
a sign of the heavy punishment due to the
sin of him who brought it. But that sacri-
fices were mere symbols, at any period when
history furnishes the means of examining
them, this theory can hardly pretend to af-
firm. <A reckless expenditure of human and
animal life, and a waste of what might have
been food for men, laws solemn and strict
against eating of the victim on whom the
sins had once been laid, are signs that the
work was earnest and real. And instead of
the symbol rising in course of time to a
reality, we have clear traces of the reverse
process ; the prodigality of sacrifices was re-
trenched, and the cheaper symbol substi-
tuted (37); the waxen image took the place of
the man; the figure of rushes was thrown into
LECTURE IIL. 53
the Tiber instead of the breathing victim ;
and the image of a bull made of meal or
wood relieved the worshippers of the more
expensive offering it represented. Nor are
the inspired words in the Epistle to the
Hebrews decisive for the theory of sym-
bolism. “The law having a shadow of good
things to come, and not the very image of
the things, can never with those sacrifices
which they offered year by year continually
make the comers thereunto perfect... .. It
is not possible that the blood of bulls and of
goats should take away sins*.” For if we
reason from this to the heathen rites we are
now considering, it must be remembered
that the words speak of results and not in-
tentions. The priests of Baal knocked at
the door of heaven in vain; there was no
voice nor any that answered: but they in-
tended the act of devotion to be effectual.
They were not holding up a symbol to the
people, nor acting a religious play ; they
were wrestling with their god in earnest for
a blessing, but their god was a dumb idol,
that would neither resist, nor yield, nor
answer them.
Avoiding then all theories, let us glance
hastily back at the facts we have obtained.
k Heb. x. 1. 4.
54 LECTURE ὙΠ
In the nobler minds of paganism the warm
sympathy was often kindled, that made them
anxious to free their brothers from sin and
sorrow, peril and death. Many endeavoured
to realise this great aspiration even by laying
down life itself. In almost all countries,
mediation by prayer and sacrifice has been
the heart of religion. The revolting prac-
tice of human sacrifice appears to be very
ancient and very widely spread. In most
religious systems, the essential part of the
sacrifice was the life, and the blood as the
seat of life. And lastly, the act of sacrifice
was intended verily to put the victim in the
place of the worshipper, and verily to re-
move his sins and reconcile the god he wor-
shipped to his erring servant. The deduc-
tions from these facts may be postponed ;
and a few words may conclude the present
Lecture.
He that walks through the vast Pantheon
of heathen worship, with its strange altars
and fantastic rites, will behold on every side
the smoke of sacrifices and the steam of
blood rising up, and the horrors of volun-
tary self-torture often added by the worship-
per to attest the truth of his prayer to God
for pardon. And did we say that a feeling
of pity should arise at this spectacle ? Pity
LECTURE II. 5a
may become the man who has found real
peace in God, when he looks around on
those who seek and find it not. Pity may
suit him who has offered his whole being a
sacrifice to the common Father of himself
and his suffering Redeemer, and is crucify-
ing and slaying all low wicked habits, all lust
and indolence, all pride and vanity, scorn
and ill-temper, because they suit not the
companions of Jesus. He can truly feel
for the needs of the people that walk in
darkness and see not the great light: what
was wanting to Eastern asceticism, and Gre-
cian culture, and Alexandrian theosophy, and
the sacred cruelties of barbarous tribes, he
knows by comparing them with truth al-
ready realised in his own regenerate nature.
But us? does pity suit some of us, who are
lapped in indolence, who pamper sense, who
know no self-sacrifice, who put a meagre and
aimless culture of the mind in place of the
earnest worship of the changed heart, who
talk daily of a Redeemer that out of his ex-
ceeding love overcame the sharpness of death,
yet do no acts of love, nor cheer any human
soul with the light of our sympathy ? Before
a right-judging Being, perhaps those priests
of Baal, gashing themselves after their man-
ner with knives and lancets, and dancing
56 LECTURE II.
round their desolate altar in mad fervour,
may rise up in judgment with us and our self-
indulgence, and condemn us. Because the
idolaters have forsaken God, and have burned
incense to other gods, therefore his wrath
shall be kindled against them; but what shall
be done to the thoroughly godless, who offer —
neither the incense of prayer nor the sacri-
fice of duty to the Most High ? Life to them
must be the beginning of destruction, since
nothing but God and that which pleases him
can permanently exist.
And yet of those who thus devote them-
selves to death, and sit crouching in the chains
of sensuality or idleness, there are many whom
God calls on still to stand erect and free, the
soldiers and servants of his Son, the conquer-
ors in temptation, the light and salt of the
world. Why yield we so easily to our special
temptations? Why recognise sin as a law of
nature? Why stand we idle till this tedious
stream of folly shall run itself dry, and let
us pass and go our way? Is it that the
Christian scheme, alone of all religions, pro-
poses no efficient means of reconcilement with
the Most High ? If so, a great price was paid
in vain, precious blood was spilt in vain.
Cast we off this paralysing doubt. The Re-
deemer has not overcome temptation, hunger,
LECTURE II. 57
scorn, conspiracy, ingratitude, inward anguish,
death and the grave, in order to leave us
under their bondage. The power of sin is
terrible; the sclaces of sense are sweet ; the
pride of a mind conscious of its strength is
hard to subdue. But the Lord that dwelleth
on high is mightier; he “hath made the
depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to
pass over.” A life-long ministry of sacrifice,
finished by the crucifixion, has bought for
man freedom of conscience for the past, free-
dom of will for the future. Let no one say,
“QO wretched man that I am, who shall de-
liver me from the body of this death™?”
without thanking God that he is delivered
through Jesus Christ. If sin and selfishness
are being cast out, and Christ being formed in
us, and so the life we once led of ourselves
is becoming hid with Christ in God, then
Christ’s sacrifice is ours, though it cost us
nothing; with his stripes we are healed,
though he alone suffered them. And _ so
when the Church, in the course of her ser-
vices, calls us by-and-by to stand round
the altar-steps of Calvary, and, after reciting
all that was done to the Son of God, bids us
“behold and see if there be any sorrow like
unto his sorrow",” it will be well for each of
1 Tsa. li. το. m Rom. vil. 24. n Lament. 1. 12.
58 LECTURE II.
us to question himself, to see whether he has
the right to be a spectator of that immola-
tion. What have we done to realise it? If
we have no love to the poor, to our fel-
low-man whom we have seen, how can we
understand the boundless love of him we
have not seen? The Roman, dashing his
breast against the spears, to save his country,
were fitter to comprehend that sacrifice than
we. The Indian, that wished he could bear
the sins of the whole world, could teach us
the meaning of the word sympathy. If we
are well content to grow hard in sin, and care
not that it has ever been washed away by
expiatory blood, the death of Jesus can be
little more to us than a common murder.
The pagan, drawing near to his sacrifice, to be
sprinkled with drops of blood from it, sought
what we disdain. If we would appropriate to
ourselves that love and that suffering, we
must begin to crucify our own lower nature,
to sacrifice selfish wishes, to long for union
with God and for the guidance of his will;
we must seek for methods of showing love
towards others, by helping to heal the sick,
by feeding the poor, by guiding weak com-
panions right, by taking care that children
are taught; in a word, by any means that can
further social progress, and raise and com-
LECTURE IL. 59
fort our fellow-men. For though we use
the name of Christ, and assume that that
name has raised us far above all that worship
in any other, if we will not strive to know
inwardly the work of Christ, if his sacrifice is
not really working in us, that merciful and
faithful High Priest, who has entered into
heaven, to appear in the presence of God for
men, will bringj back no news of reconcilia-
tion for those who have not desired to hear
them.
LECTURE III.
S. LuKE xxiv. 21.
But we trusted that it had been he which should have
redeemed Israel.
WE cannot wonder that these two disciples,
walking “toward evening” to Emmaus, were
“sad*,” as they spoke together of the frus-
tration of all their hopes of redemption for
Israel. No man is master at all times of the
consoling truth, that God lets nothing fall to
the ground, that all his purposes must be ful-
filled though sometimes by apparent failures.
And this was only the third day since they
had heard the blasphemy of the multitude
against their Master, and seen Jew and
Roman, forgetful of their natural hostility,
conspiring together to take away his life.
The cruel sufferings that followed, and the
words he had uttered under them, and the
death that ended them, had formed the sub-
ject of their thoughts and conversation. If
the fury of the rulers had prevailed against
@ Luke xxiv. 17.
LECTURE III. 61
him, what could protect them from death ? If
he could say to his Father “why hast thou
forsaken me,” how should not a sense of de-
sertion and desolation sit heavily on their
hearts ?
Let us suppose that some stranger had
drawn near at that moment, and told them
that he whom they had seen dying on the
cross was alive; that those eleven men whom
the priests meant to crush were destined by
God to speak words to which, not Israel only,
but the ends of the earth, would listen till the
end of time; that a busy world would give up
a seventh part of its days to listen to those
words, and to worship in the name they
preached; that ages after the temple was de-
stroyed, and the empire of Rome dismem-
bered, the best, noblest, and wisest of the
nations of the earth would make their boast
of Christ, and be found to plant his oppro-
brious cross aS an ornament upon the crown
of their kings. Such words would have pro-
bably seemed but idle tales, to men so de-
jected; and yet they are true. For God lets
none of his purposes fall to the ground. And
we, who have seen their fulfilment, cannot
believe it was by chance that this least of
seeds has grown up and sent out branches
over the broad world; that chance alone made
62 LECTURE IIL
this man and this word mighty, and con-
signed many another teacher to destruction
and silence. If then we think we trace
forward from the resurrection of Christ the
working of God’s providence and counsels,
let us not be afraid to trace it backward also,
and to seek in the Jewish dispensation the
preparation for our Lord’s coming.
For a stranger did join these two disciples,
and he took this latter mode of comfort.
They were talking of the past; “we trusted
that it had been he which should have re-
deemed Israel ;” we knew that the prophets
had promised redemption, and thought that
he had brought it. And to the past did their
Master appeal; “O fools, and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have spoken:
ought not Christ to have suffered these things,
and to enter into his glory ?, And beginning
at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded
unto them in all the scriptures the things
concerning himself.”
To give an account, brief and slight, of the
doctrine of the atonement, as it is foresha-
dowed in the Old Testament, will be the ob-
ject of this Lecture, as the last was occupied
with the signs and hints of the doctrine in
the heathen systems.
The writers of the New Testament appeal
LECTURE III. 63
continually to the Old for confirmation of the
truth they teach. If then it should appear
that the tones of these two covenants are dis-
sonant, and that the Mosaic system contains
no hint or warning of the principal truths of
the gospel—such as the coming of the Son of
God in the fashion of a man, the reconcile-
ment between God and man effected by the
Son, the sufferings by which it was brought
about, and his triumph over them—then the
evidences of Christianity are fatally defective.
For besides that the Christian apostles rely
on this proof, and find in Moses and the
Prophets and the Psalms things concerning
the Messiah, it would be hard to persuade us
that two systems, both claiming a divine ori-
gin, could differ so far, that one was utterly
silent about those things which were the very
heart and life of the other. But if we find
that the Jewish dispensation is, beyond all
pagan creeds, an ethical system, grounded
upon the holiness of God and the dangers of
sin and uncleanness; if it proposes to recon-
cile the pure God and sinful man, not by the
maxims of an improved philosophy or the
precepts of a holy law, but by outward acts
of sacrifice; if, with increasing clearness, it af-
firms, almost from the beginning, that a single
human agent must be concerned in the work
θά ᾿ς ΠΟ ΒΗ ΤΙ.
of redemption; if it assigns him titles and
acts that would not suit a mere king or priest
or prophet ; if it attributes to him a height of
triumph and a depth of suffering which could
not meet in the person of any human leader,
yet are found to belong to Jesus Christ—then
the Old Testament would seem to embody
the same ideas as the New, and so to confirm
its truth.
The ritual system of the Mosaic law is
intended to represent, in visible acts and
things, man’s entire dependance upon God,
and God’s hatred of sin. This is effected by
punishments and by sacrifices; an offence
wittingly committed is punished by death
or by cutting off from the congregation ;
when the same offence is committed through
ignorance, ἃ sacrifice is accepted instead.
The principle of the law was, that no sin
was passed over, and even outward personal
defilements were to be purged away by rites
and offerings; in order that this people, lift-
ing up its head from slavery, and going forth
with Jehovah leading it into lands where
strange idolatry, and horrible sins, and loath-
some diseases prevailed, might be hedged
in and kept unspotted, if that were possible,
until the day of better things. Now every
Jewish sacrifice had a real effect, and also
LECTURE III. 65
a symbolical meaning (38). It restored the
worshipper to his position as a member of
the divine polity, and so far was effectual ;
and it set forth the universal truth that God
must be reconciled to the sinner who has
offended him, if he would save his soul alive;
but as it was impossible that the blood of
bulls and goats should take away sins, and
as no sacrifice was prescribed or allowed for
heinous, wilful transgressions, this part of the
sacrifice was symbolical only. The distinc-
tion between the real use of sacrifice, as pre-
serving an erring member in the 'Theocracy,
and its wider symbolical application, that for
sin there must be atonement, is essential to a
right understanding of the language of the
Scriptures. For, on the one hand, we find
Moses, armed with divine authority, com-
manding sacrifices to be made, without a
hint that they are unreal or ineffectual; on
the other we read, “it is not possible that
the blood of bulls and of goats should take
away Sins..... In burnt-offerings and sa-
crifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure ».”
The blood of the victim was able to sanc-
tify to the purifying of the flesh, but it could
not purge the conscience from dead works to
serve the living God. It really secured the
b Heb. x. 4, 6.
F
66 LECTURE II.
rights and privileges of a Jewish citizen under
Jehovah the king; it symbolically represented
the offering of the Lamb without spot to God,
to take away the sins, past and present, of
malice or ignorance, of the whole human
race. Now of the various Mosaic sacrifices,
the thank-offering, the burnt-offering, the
sin-offering, and the trespass-offering, we
may select the sin-offering as that in which
the meaning of sacrifices may be best stu-
died. The burnt-offering was not made for
a special sin, but as a general atonement for
the worshipper*. And it was accompanied
by meat and drink-offerings, which had a
meaning of their own, and expressed de-
pendence on Jehovah for the daily comforts
of life. The thank-offering was to express
praise and dependence on God, rather than
atonement. The trespass-offering so far re-
sembled the sin-offering that it has been
found difficult to agree upon the reason for
the distinction which the law of God pre-
serves between them (39). To the sin-offer-
ing then we may confine our attention at
present. It is the offering made for a par-
ticular act of sin; and from it the meat and
drink-offering are excluded, so that the prin-
ciple of atonement can be studied apart from
¢ Lev. 1. 4, 9.
LECTURE III. 67
that of religious dependence. The prescrip-
tion of the law concerning it is, that “if a
soul shall sin through ignorance against any
of the commandments of the Lord concern-
ing things which ought not to be done, and
shall do against any of them,” a bullock or
a kid, according to the condition of the of-
fender, is to be offered, and the transgressor
is to lay his hand upon its head and slay it ;
and the priest is to sprinkle some of its blood
upon prescribed places, and to burn on the
altar certain parts of the carcase, whilst all
the rest is to be consumed by fire without
the camp. Other cautions are added in these
words: “In the place where the burnt-offer-
ing is killed shall the sin-offering be killed
before the Lord: it is most holy. The priest
that offereth it for sin shall eat it: in the
holy place shall it be eaten, in the court of
the tabernacle of the congregation. What-
soever shall touch the flesh thereof shall be
holy: and when there is sprinkled of the
blood thereof upon any garment, thou shalt
wash that whereon it was sprinkled in the
holy place. But the earthen vessel wherein
it is sodden shall be broken: and if it be
sodden in a brazen pot, it shall be both
scoured, and rinsed in water. All the males
among the priests shall eat thereof: it is most
F 2
08 LECTURE IIt.
holy 4.” It is necessary to attend to these par-
ticulars, to understand the meaning of this act
of sacrifice. The death and the sprinkling
with blood convince us that this is not merely
a present or tribute to Jehovah, as God and
King; they recall the words, “ The life of the
flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to
you upon the altar to make an atonement for
your souls; for it is the blood that maketh
atonement for the soul’.” As the victim is
most holy, and every thing sprinkled with its
blood, and every vessel it has touched, acquires
a sacredness thereby, it is equally impossible
to regard it as a mere political fine, paid in
this case to Jehovah as the head of the
Theocracy, as the citizens of less favoured
states might have paid to their human rulers.
Hardly a doubt can be entertained that the
sin is here represented as passing from him
that offers, to the victim; that the victim
acquires a sacred character, and that its
death and blood are the atonement or cover-
ing for the sin. Questions, however, yet re-
main. Some believe that the sin, by passing
over to the victim, renders it unclean and
accursed, and explain in the light of this
supposition the washing of the garment
touched by the blood, and the breaking or
d Ley. vi. 25—29. € Ley. xvii. 11.
LECTURE Ii. 69
scouring of the vessels, and the burning of
the rest of the carcase without the camp.
Others refuse to admit this impurity; be-
cause the victim is described as “most holy,”
and because the priest is suffered to eat of
the flesh, when a private person makes the
sin-offering. Hence arise two theories. Ac-
cording to one, the victim is a substitute for
the transgressor, carries his sin, and suffers
death in his stead. According to the other,
the sacrifice of the life of an animal is a
mere symbol of the willing sacrifice of the
carnal life of the worshipper, of all that is
the seat of desire and selfishness, and oppo-
sition to God; and as this death is under-
gone in obedience to the law of God, it
becomes the door of a real life, of a state
of reconcilement with the Most High (40).
It would hardly become one who had not
made this difficult subject his peculiar study,
to arbitrate between two views with which
great names are associated. But acknow-
ledging that the blood of the victim is not
unclean or accursed, we need not allow that
the theory of substitution is thus abandoned.
Look at the great atonement these Mosaic
rites prefigured, and you find, that though
the sins of the world concentrated their con-
sequences on the head of the divine victim,
70 LECTURE III.
though the weight of innumerable deaths lay
upon the stone that covered his sepulchre,
it was not possible that he could be holden
of death. He died an accursed death, for
“cursed is every one that hangeth on a
tree';” but he rose again because he was still
“most holy.” Then why should you expect
that the victim in the sin-offering should be
accursed and unclean, when the blood 15
shed, and the reconcilement over? And may
not the spirit of the two theories be com-
bined into one? The transgressor laid his
sin upon the victim’s head, and the blood
that was shed washed it out; and as this life
stood in the place of his life, it was a token
that he wished to be dead indeed unto sin,
and alive unto God. But if this interpreta-
tion seem at all questionable, let it be at
least acknowledged, that the idea of sin
taken away by an outward ritual act, and
not by a mere reform of the will, shows it-
self in the sin-offering, as it does in other
ceremonies of Jewish worship.
The great Day of Atonement deserves
especial consideration, in connexion with our
present subject. It was a high and solemn
day, set apart to the reconcilement of Je-
hovah and the people of his covenant. On
f Galatians 111. 13.
ΤΕ ΟΝ Ε ELT. Se
that day only, of all the year, did the whole
people fast from evening to evening. On that
day only did the high-priest enter into the
Holy of Holies. Instead of the customary
offering of a single animal for the sins
of the people, two goats were provided,
“alike,” if we may follow a Jewish book,
“in appearance, stature, and value, and even
caught at the same time ” (41), and between
these two the burden of the sacrifice was
divided. One was slain for the sins of the
people, after the priest had made a separate
sacrifice for his own; and then upon the
head of the other, called the scapegoat, the
sins of the people were solemnly laid, and
the beast was sent forth into the wilderness
carrying them away. On this solemn occa-
sion, that which every sacrifice implied,
namely, that the sins were atoned for, and
so became, as it were, invisible to the eye of
God, was here openly shown. The scape-
goat went forth, and was lost and forgotten, in
token that the sins were removed from sight
and remembrance. When an act of worship
so plain in its purpose was made the business
of the most solemn season in the Jewish year,
we are justified in holding that reconcile-
ment by sacrifice was the key-note of the
Mosaic worship.
72 LECT RE 11].
The view that has been taken of the Day
of Atonement would be disturbed if we were
to understand the name translated in our
English Bible by the word scapegoat to
be in reality a name for Satan, or an evil
spirit (42). We should then read that Aaron
was to cast lots upon the two goats, “one lot
for the Lord and one for Azazel” or the evil
spirit ; and this goat we must suppose was
to be “presented alive before the Lord, to
make an atonement with him, and to let him
zo” (not “for a scapegoat,” but) “for Azazel
into the wilderness*.” This rendering has
been adopted by late Jewish and other wri-
ters, with various explanations; such as, that
a gift was made to Satan, in order to blind
his eyes, and prevent him from accusing the
givers; or that it was not offered to Satan
as a propitiation, but given over to him with
the consent of God to be tormented; or that
by the act of sending back the victim laden |
with sins to Satan, the Jews renounced the
kingdom of darkness and its prince, and gave
a symbolical expression to the truth, that he
to whom God had vouchsafed reconciliation
is free from the dominion of evil (43). But
the two animals, so exactly similar, are surely
parts of the same sacrifice; and if the one is
8. Lev. xvi. 8. 10. 26.
LECTURE III. 73
solemnly offered to Jehovah, we must suppose,
with this reading, that the other was just as
truly offered to Satan—a notion revolting to
every pious Israelite, who believed that the
greatest sin he could commit was to take
glory and worship from Jehovah, and give it
to another ; nor can any parallel practice be
found in the Old Testament. The use of
the word Azazel in other writings, as a
name for an evil spirit, is derived probably
from these very passages, and so cannot prove
any thing in a question affecting them ; and
many learned writers agree at length that
the word should be rendered, not “for Aza-
zel” but “for complete sending-away” or
“removal.” The removal of the sin, then,
from the eyes of him who saw the hearts of
men, was represented by this, the chief
atoning act of the Jewish law.
But signs are not wanting in the Old
Testament, that though the bull and goat
were slain, and the steam of blood and the
smoke of incense were ever ascending to the
throne of Jehovah, such means of reconcile-
ment were felt to be insufficient and tempo-
rary. Insufficient ; for what real power could
there be in the blood of inferior creatures, to
atone for the high and subtle sins of the
human spirit 9 How could the smell of such
74 LECTURE IIL.
sacrifices delight the nostrils of the Most
High, in whom both beast and man live and
move and have their being? “I will take
no bullock out of thy house, nor he-goats
out of thy folds. For every beast of the
forest is mine, and the cattle upon a
thousand hills. I know all the fowls of
the mountains: and the wild beasts of
the field are mine. If I were hungry, I
would not tell thee: for the world is
mine, and the fulness thereof ?.” And
they were temporary, because they were
offered for sins of ignorance committed by
Jewish subjects of the Theocracy ; whereas
all men, Jews and Gentiles, needed recon-
cilement; all had fallen in Adam, and the
promise to Abraham set forth a blessing to
all the nations of the earth through his seed.
And so, whilst the Jews were delivered over
to the schooling and training of the Law of
God, promises were uttered from time to
time, which showed that some better thing
was preparing for the world. In Abraham
all the families of the earth were to be
blessed, though the manner of the blessing
was not explicitly set forth’. Jacob’s parting
promise for Judah was, “The sceptre shall
not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from
h Psalm |. g—12. i Gen. xil. 3.
LECTURE Ii. 75
between his feet, until Shiloh come; and
unto him shall the gathering of the people
be).”. Whether the name Shiloh be taken
to signify “he to whom it (that is, the
sceptre) belongs,” or “the child,’ or “the
author of peace,” (and all these have found
supporters,) it certainly refers to a person
whose coming was to be expected long be-
fore, and therefore was a great and im-
portant event. A merciless criticism, de-
termined to blot out the name of the Mes-
siah, and every trace of him, from the Old
Testament, has endeavoured to assail this
passage; but one fact at least is indisput-
able, that the Jews accepted it as entirely
genuine, and applied it to the Messiah (44).
Again, Moses the great lawgiver prepared
the people for another guide—*“The Lord
thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet
from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like
unto me; unto him ye shall hearken‘.” If
some would refer this to one or other of the
Old Testament prophets, or to the whole of
them collectively, the concluding words of
the book of Deuteronomy will answer them
—'There arose not a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face
to face';” for the words “like unto me”
1 Genjixhxiio.), Deut. xyitinrs:t «| Tb: xxxiv. ΤΟ:
76 LECTURE III.
seem to refer to the degree of his inspiration
and his preeminence among prophets. When
we enter on the reign of David, the repre-
sentations of the man that should come as-
sume a twofold character; they speak now
of glory and now of humiliation. On the
one hand there is the king set upon the
holy hill of Zion, to whom the Lord hath
said, “Thou art my son, this day have I
begotten thee™;” whose soul would not be
left in hell, who, as God’s Holy One, would
not be suffered to see corruption"; to whom
the Lord said, “Sit thou on my right hand,
till I make thy foes thy footstool? ;” and,
“Thou art a priest for ever after the order
of Melchizedek?.” In strong contrast to this
is the language of the twenty-second Psalm,
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?.... All they that see me laugh me to
scorn; they shoot out the lip; they shake the
head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that
he would deliver him: let him deliver him,
seeing he delighted in him... . They pierced
my hands and my feet. ... They part my
garments among them, and cast lots upon
my vesture.” If these expressions of misery
and dejection come from David’s lips, and
apply in the first instance to him, some of
mPa. 7S «8 [boxyil τό. ΤΟ Ib. ex. rm ῬΑ yee. 2:
LECTURE III. 17
them are stronger than his sufferings re-
quired, and we seem to be justified in giving
them a second reference to the Messiah.
For, just as in our blessed Lord’s prophecy
of the destruction of Jerusalem, we find
many predictions that can only be under-
stood of the end of the world, and so we
infer that two events, differing in date and
magnitude, yet wrought by the same God,
and similar in character, have been brought
together, because the pictures of prophecy
admit no perspective of time and place, so
have many pious minds, in all ages of the
Church, believed that the fortunes of David,
the great God-fearing king, sorely tried and
persecuted without any offence or cause of
his, have been united in prophetic represent-
ations with the things that happened to a
greater far, to the Messiah, born of David’s
seed, delighting, like him, to do the will of
God, like him innocently persecuted. In
later prophecy we find passages, too nume-
rous to recite, in which Messiah is a king
and deliverer, great in glory, yet at the same
time great in suffering, and bringing bless-
ings, not only upon the Jews, but upon Gen-
tiles also. The pictures of his humiliation
in particular are strongly drawn. In Isaiah
we read, that “he shall not cry, nor lift up,
78 LECTURE II.
nor cause his voice to be heard in the street°®,”
although he is “for a light of the Gentiles ; to
open the blind eyes, to bring out the prison-
ers from the prison, and them that sit in
darkness out of the prison-house.” He is
despised of men, abhorred of the nation, and
a servant of rulers’. He is to give his back
to the smiters’; his visage is to be marred
more than any man, and his form more than
the sons of men’. He is “a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief; .... he hath
borne our griefs and carried our sorrows:
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of
God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for
our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are
healed; .... the Lord hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all; .... he was cut off out of
the land of the living; ....and he made
his grave with the wicked, and with the rich
in his death; ....he shall see of the travail
of his soul, and shall be satisfied’.” Zecha-
riah speaks the same mixed language: for
Messiah is “ just, and having salvation*,” yet
“lowly and riding upon an ass, and upon a
colt the foal of an ass; .... he shall speak
Papa Aa 2, 0,7. PLD. ΣΧ. ΠΡ ab. ne aay
5. Ib. liti..11. t Zech. ix. 9, 10.
LECTURE IIL. 79
peace unto the heathen, and his dominion
shall be from sea to sea.” And yet the pro-
phet bids the sword, “ Awake against my
shepherd, and against the man that is my
fellow, saith the Lord of hosts".” And so
Daniel mentions the cutting off of Messiah
for the sins of the people’.
Now is there any just and fair inquirer
who can say that these representations do
not coincide with those which the New Tes-
tament makes of our Redeemer? It is very
true,that every one of the places I have quoted
has been impugned on critical grounds; but
it is also quite evident, that the objections
made to them are for the most part suggested
by a predetermination not to find any in-
spired promise in the Old Testament at all.
On the lowest view, then, we have arrived at
a coincidence between the Old ‘Testament
and the New, inasmuch as in both, a human
being, eminent above all others, and dignified
with titles that cannot apply to a mere man,
is described as suffering much, and making
himself a sacrifice. But, to take higher ground,
if our belief is already sure that the mission
of Christ and his apostles was divine, and
their words truth, then we must believe that
the Old Testament also contains the words
u Zech. xii. 7. v Dan. ix. 26.
80 LECTURE IIL.
of God, for Christ himself says that Moses
wrote of him, and that because of what was
written in the iaw of Moses and in the Pro-
phets and in the Psalms, it behoved him to
suffer and to rise from the dead on the third
day. Or, conversely, if the words of the pro-
phets show forth a truth which only God
could have taught them, we must believe that
Jesus, to whom they bore witness, was Lord
and Christ. Difficulties indeed there are;
but he will best encounter them, who, having
found the teaching of our Lord about himself
to be truth and strength and consolation,
takes up the law and the prophets, expecting
to find in that system out of which the Re-
deemer came forth, the voice and hand of
God.
But those who would weaken the force of
the passages that speak of a suffering Mes-
siah rely most upon the fact, that at the time
of our Lord’s coming there was no clear ex-
pectation of the advent of such a Messiah.
Now, since the acts and sufferings of our Lord
do explain the prophecies in a clear and con-
sistent manner, reconciling great glory and
mightiness with great sufferings, this will be
all the more striking, if such a fulfilment of
them should prove to be unexpected even by
those who were chosen as witnesses for Christ.
LECTURE ΗΠ. | 81
The contrast between a conquering prince and
a man who must die for the sins of all, the
Jews tried to explain by such devices as that
theory of two Messiahs, one the son of David,
to whom the glories of the kingdom belonged,
and the other the son of Joseph, whose death
was to be the cause of the mourning spoken
of by Zechariah’, “'The land shall mourn,
every family apart’ (45). But if a more con-
sistent explanation worked itself out una-
wares, in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and
those that aided in it, whether as his disci-
ples or his persecutors, were either wholly
unconscious or dimly conscious of what they
did, surely the very oblivion into which the
prophecies of suffering had fallen renders the
fact more striking and decisive. If the marks
of the true Messiah had been in every Jew’s
mind and upon every tongue, doubts would
have been raised, whether prophecies so well
known did not minister to their own fulfil-
ment, whether the best-intentioned men would
not naturally shape events according to their
preconception of the course they ought to
take. But there was no such preconception;
and the gospel history, so far forth as the
Apostles are concerned in it, cannot have been
influenced by any such bias. Simeon indeed
w Zech. xii. 12.
G
82 LECTURE III.
was waiting for the consolation of Israel ; and
the Baptist saw in Christ “the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world*.”
But even the Baptist could ask afterwards,
“ Art thou he that should come, or do we
look for another’ ?” And Peter could rebuke
our Lord for foretelling that he must suffer
and die*. And the other disciples forsook
him and fled, as if the first stroke of perse-
cution was the deathblow to their hopes of
redemption. We must acknowledge then
that no sure and clear hope of a Messiah,
such as Jesus proved himself to be, pervaded
the Jewish mind at this time. But is that
an argument that the prophets never gave
grounds for such a hope? Let us think what
strange elements were fermenting in that
heap of Jewish society, so soon to be burnt
up, and its ashes scattered to the four corners
of the earth. There was the Pharisee, who
believed that every precept of the law had
its appropriate reward, and that when his
good and evil works were weighed against
each other in the balance, the observance of
one precept thrown into the scale would make
all well with him and prolong his days: he
will not dwell upon the atonement of the
Messiah ; secure in his privileges as a child
x John 1. 29. y Matt. xi. 3. 2 Matt. xvi. 22.
LECTURE III. 83
of Abraham, skilled in the saving law, he
needs it not(46). There is the Sadducee,
who, if we may trust Josephus, abolished
destiny from his system, and thought that a
man’s course is wholly in his own power, and
that he is the author or destroyer of his own
good; this pride of free-will is not likely to
look for a Redeemer to set the will free (47).
There was the pious Jew, whose hopes were
cast down and confounded by the comparison
of Israel’s past splendour with her present
shame, and who might think that the sceptre
and the lawgiver were departed from Judah,
when the stern eyes of an alien soldiery
looked down from the tower of Antonia upon
the very temple-worship, lest a despised su-
perstition should venture to vindicate to it-
self a political existence in unpermitted ways.
As nations since that time have forgotten
their religion, and allowed sceptical inquiry,
or violent social changes, or mere worldliness
and money-getting, to obscure its truths, so
did such influences as I have mentioned cheat
the children of Israel of their hopes; and yet
the written charter of those hopes remained
and still remains.
But a few words shall conclude this bare
and inadequate sketch of the design of the
Old Testament. God lets none of his pur-
G2
84 LECTURE’ IIL
poses fall to the ground ; in his dealings with
the Christian Church this truth is most con-
spicuously shown. For none of those who
hear me can believe that the Church of
Christ has built itself up without the deter-
minate purpose and foreknowledge of God. |
The world cannot be like a garden in which
the plants have been left to grow, and out-
grow each other, from their own intrinsic
force and life, without care or design. That
we are not now worshipping in the name of
Theudas, or Judas of Galilee, who rose up in
the days of the taxing, or Simon Magus, or
Mohammed, must be owing to something
more than to their weakness; none of us can
admit that pantheistic view, and exclude
the provident word and ordering hand of
a wise God from the system of things. From
the time of Abraham, the destiny of his de-
scendants was foreknown, at least to God ; that
from them should come a Saviour, a Teacher,
a religion, to influence for good the whole
world. The lamp of that promise has been
floating down the stream of more than three
thousand years; and how many times has it
escaped almost certain extinction! In Egypt
the hope of the human race seemed to be at
the mercy of Pharaoh and his taskmasters.
During the troubled period of the Judges,
LECTURE IIT. 85
Moabite, and Canaanite, and Midianite, and
Ammonite were allowed to ride over the
heads of Israel; and when the Philistines
bore off the ark from Shiloh, the news went
with the power of death to the heart of the
aged priest and the woman in travail, that
the glory was departed from Israel, for the
ark of God was taken. When the Jews sat
by the waters of Babylon, and refused to sing
the Lord’s song in a strange land, they wept
because they doubted whether their feet
should ever stand again in the gates of their
beloved Jerusalem, and because the favour
of God seemed withdrawn for ever. Later,
when the iron heel of the Romans was on
their neck, they little dreamt that the free
feet of the messengers of the Son of David
should yet be beautiful upon every moun-
tain of the earth, bringing good tidings and
publishing peace, and saying, Thy God
reilgneth. Neither the chosen people them-
selves, nor those that observed them, knew
what the mighty God was working with
them. And in spite of the rash verdict of
Tacitus, that the Christians were hated for
their flagitious acts, and the estimate of their
doctrine which even the younger Pliny could
form, that it was a perverse and immoderate
superstition, God’s promise was with it, and
86 LECTURE III.
it was doing its work of leavening the whole
lump of human society (48).
But God’s purpose runs through and dig-
nifies every human life. As the Apostle
could exhort his brethren to avoid the pol-
lutions of sin, because their bodies were tem-
ples of the Holy Ghost*, so may every one
of us lift up his head at the thought that
his life is part of the clay which the hand
of the Creator is fashioning. Not that he
will shape every one of us to great ends, but
that there is no act of ours from this mo-
ment till our limbs relax in death, which
shall not have its influence, small or great,
and that directed by the Almighty, upon the
future of the world and our race. And what
carefulness this thought might work in us!
We that made it almost a duty to be thought-
less, that determined, if it were possible, only
to brush with our lips the froth of life, and
by no means to drain the wine or taste the
dregs, we are God’s instruments. Are we
sound instruments and true, or weak and
frail, so as to break in the using? He that
has asked himself this question, and realized
this thought, will spend his life with reverent
earnestness, because it is consecrated. Into
that mind which God needs, he will not
4 1 Corinthians vi. 10.
LECTURE III. 87
admit foolish opinions that he dare not ex-
amine, and low principles that he cannot
avow! He will be sober and watch, that he
may discern the first call of duty, for duty is
the name he gives to his alloted share of
God’s purpose. He will not plunge into
riot and waste, lest this excellent gift of
life should be spent in nursing a shattered
frame, or quieting a peevish temper, or dodg-
ing the claims of impatient creditors, or shut-
ting out the image of friends whose hopes he
is frustrating. Oh, if we could bring God
thus into the midst of us, by the ennobling
consciousness that we lived our whole life for
him; if we could say heartily, “Lo, I come:
in the volume of the book it is written of
me, I delight to do thy will, Omy God: yea,
thy law is within my heart’;” then we should
know true peace and true strength, and be
conformed to him whom we call on as our
Lord and Saviour, whose meat it was to do
the will of him that sent him, and to finish
his work.
b Psalm xl. 7.
LECTURE IV.
5. LUKE xvit. 4.
L have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the
work which thou gavest me to do.
WHEN the sceptre had almost departed
from the Jewish people, and a foreign power,
that knew not God, deposed his high-priests,
exacted tribute from his people, and watched
with an austere vigilance their worship and
their dealings, men’s eyes began to fail for
looking so long and so vainly for the Prince
and Deliverer promised by their prophets.
At such a time Jesus of Nazareth was born
into the world; and the wonders that ac-
companied his birth attested, to those who
knew them, that he was sent from God, and
that his coming concerned the interest of
the Jews and of all mankind. A_ twofold
character was impressed upon his life from
the beginning; the weakness of man and the
glory of God were dealt out to him without
LECTURE IV. 89
measure. On the one hand, the mother, a
weary wayfarer in a strange town, lays her
newborn infant in a manger, because there
is no room in the inn, and presently flees
with it into Egypt for fear of the cruelty of
iierod the king, who sought its life. With
these signs of human weakness began the
life of him, who afterwards was “led up of
the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted
of the devil*,” as any man is tempted, who
fled from the plots of his enemies, as men
flee, who felt and showed a man’s compas-
sion on the hungry, and a man’s love for his
friend, and a human indignation and grief at
the hardness of men’s hearts, who let fall
warm tears of human sympathy at the grave-
side, who in his agony seemed to shrink from
that cup which yet he knew it was his
Father’s will that he should drink. So far
the Gospels unfold to us the life of a man;
no one wondered to see him at the mar-
riage in Cana of Galilee ; Nicodemus came
to him by night without any preternatural
awe or terror, to open out his doubts and
difficulties; Lazarus and his sisters num-
bered him as one upon the list of their
friends; it seemed to John the Evangelist
no profane or perilous familiarity to lean
a Matt. iv. 1.
90 LECTURE IV.
upon his breast at supper. But, on the
other hand, his birth, which was not after
the manner of men, caused the king to
tremble on his throne; wise men from the
East, the firstfruits of the Gentiles, were
directed to the manger where he was, and
laid their tribute before it, as if it were a
royal seat; an angel brought to the shep-
herds the glad tidings of great joy that a
Saviour was born unto them. The spirits
of the principal actors in this history were
stirred by the Holy Spirit; and Mary and
Zacharias, Simeon and Anna, declared, in
words of prophetic insight, the counsels of
God. A life so marvellously begun was
marked by mighty signs and wonders to
the end. The weak limbs received strength,
eyes and ears were opened, the tongues of
the dumb were loosened, food was increased
in the wilderness for the hungry multitudes,
the dead maiden rose from her bed and the
widow’s son from his bier, and Lazarus from
his sepulchre, in order that all might see
that here was one whose power was bound-
less as his love was wide and deep; that one
who could command the wind and sea, and
even arrest the subtle agent that waits to
decompose every living body into its primi-
tive dust, was, akin to the Almighty Father,
LECTURE IV. 91
who made wind and sea and life and death.
Hard as it is to admit that one who walked
in streets and markets with finite creatures
like ourselves was the only-begotten Son of
the Infinite God, our blessed Lord asserts
his claim to this dignity in words that admit
of no escape. He declares that he and the
Father are one”; that he is in the Father as
the Father in him‘; that he came down
from heaven to do the Father’s will’; that
“God so loved the world, that he gave his
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have ever-
lasting life*;” that all judgment is committed
unto him, the Son, even all things are de-
livered unto him. When the Jews perse-
cuted him for working a miracle on the
Sabbath-day, he “answered them, My Father
worketh hitherto, and I νου κ΄." What claim
could be bolder, what upon the low views
then prevalent could be more blasphemous,
than that a man should claim the right to
work upon the Sabbath-day, because God
the Father sends forth the sun, and lights
up the stars, and bids the birds sing, and the
lions roar after their prey, upon that day as
upon others? To defend himself by pleading
nivounse 30: Ib. xiv. 11.« Clb. v1.98. “© Ib. i. 16.
f Ib. v.17.
92 LE CW RE) TV.
the example of God the Father is surely, as
the Jews understood it, to make himself equal
with God. And those words, at which some
have been offended,—* My Father is greater
than Is,”—are a strong evidence, when rightly
weighed, for the divine nature of our Re-
deemer. There can be no comparison with-
out a likeness; and the difference between
the highest and purest finite nature and the
nature of God himself, between a creature
and the Creator, is so vast, that no common
term can comprehend them. No man says,
gold is more precious than stubble, or
the rocks are firmer than the sea, or the
man is wiser than the gibbering ape; yet
these apparent contrasts almost appear iden-
tities by the side of the monstrous compa-
rison—the Almighty, Eternal, Omniscient
Spirit is greater than the creature he has
made with the breath of his mouth! But in
fact the words in question have no such
meaning. “If ye loved me, ye would re-
joice, because I said, I go unto the Father:
for my Father is greater than I.” They
would rejoice, because at present the Father
is exalted high in heaven, and the Son is
bowed in humiliation upon the earth; they
would rejoice, if they loved him, that he was
£ John xiv. 28.
LECTURE IV. 93
to resume the glory and majesty he had laid
aside in taking the form of a servant. ‘The
Father is greater, but, after the resurrection
and ascension, the Son shall sit upon the
Father’s right hand, for they are one (49).
It is this divine Person that the Evan-
gelists put before us. It is one who is called
with equal truth by two names—the Son of
God and the Son of man. Jesus is the Son
of God naturally, because in him the fulness
of the Godhead dwells, and therefore his
name is Lmnmanuel, God with us. He is the
Son of God ethically, because he came down
from heaven, not to do his own will, but the
will of him that sent him; and amidst a peo-
ple that showed they were not Abraham’s
children by their lack of Abraham’s faith,
he showed himself the Son of God by his
zeal for God and his spotless purity, and
therefore in him was the Father well pleased.
Lastly, he is the Son of God by his office, for
this was the title accorded by the Jews to the
expected Messiah", and it applied to him
more truly than they knew. If they ex-
pected a Prince, upon whose conquering
sword and potent sceptre the favour of God
should sit, and who should be, like David,
a man after God’s own heart, our Redeemer
h Matt. iv. 3; vili.29; John x. 36, &e.
94 LECTURE IV.
was God himself manifest in the flesh, with
God’s power, knowledge, and wisdom hid
within him, prepared to conquer on men’s
behalf the powers of hell and death (50).
The name—the Son of man—belongs not
less rightly to Jesus. It is the name by
which he sums up all the work of the Mes-
518, and reminds those who see his wonders
that the doer of them has become a man.
That it is never used by others as a name
for Jesus, except, I believe, in three places’,
where his glory is spoken of in the same
breath, is but natural. For it is a term of
humiliation; it puts forward the sorrows he
must undergo, the contradiction of sinners
he exposes himself to, the death he must
endure, before he can sit again upon the
right hand of the Father. “The Son of
man hath not where to lay his head*.” ....
“The Son of man is betrayed into the hands
of sinners'.” “Whosoever therefore shall
be ashamed of me and of my words... . of
him also shalJ the Son of man be ashamed,
when he cometh in the glory of his Father
with the holy angels™”. Yet in the mouth
of our Lord himself it is no mere expression
of humility, used to give confidence to the
i Acts vil. 56; Rev. i. 13. xiv. 14. k Matt. vill. 20.
! Matt. xxvi. 45. m Mark viii. 38.
LECTURE IV. 95
disciples, but it is an official name, by which
the disciples, if not before his removal, at
least after it, might be reminded of his true
humanity, of his sympathy with their sor-
rows and shortcomings, of the reality of his
crucifixion, and of his exaltation to the glory
he had with the Father before the world
was (51). Nowifthe four Gospels, or any one
of them, have any historical authority, we can-
not refuse to assign to Jesus Christ this two-
fold character. He is the God-man (52). He
is one who does and feels as a man, whilst
yet his own mouth, and voices from heaven,
and miracles on earth, and the wonder of
adoring followers, bear witness that he is
more than man, and partaker of the divine
nature. His divine character does not rest
only on those sublime discourses with which
John, the last of the Evangelists, completed
the historical detail, more largely supplied
by the three other inspired writers. If that
Gospel be put aside, and the issue determined
upon the remaining three, the use of those
two names, the Son of God and the Son of
man, by these writers would be evidence
sufficient. It 1s too true that the historical
character of all the Gospels is denied: but
our present argument requires an accurate
estimate of what is found there, as one means
96 LECTURE IV.
of deciding upon their historical weight. And
why has this stranger visited his people that
know him not? Not to give them a law
more elaborate than the Mosaic; not to en-
large the borders of Jewish philosophy, that
it may rival the culture of Greece; not to
make Jerusalem the centre of a_world-
wide empire, like Rome; not even to re-
fine and elevate them by the precepts of
a pure morality, though here, as in all things,
he showed himself to be divine. It was to
do in his own person a great work. The first
days of his ministry were devoted to proving
that he was the Messiah, and when he had
gathered to himself the regards of men, and
his question, “ Whom do men say that I the
Son of man am ?” was answered by a confes-
sion that he was indeed the expected Christ,
he then began to unfold to them the purport
of the second part of his ministry, “that he
must suffer many things of the elders, and
chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be
raised again the third day.” We cannot deny
that his ministry, as described by the three
synoptical evangelists, divides itself into two
parts; that the baptism is the inauguration
of the one, and the transfiguration of the
other; that the actions and teaching of the
former part are a commentary upon the text
LECTURE IV. 97
that Jesus is the Christ of God, as those of
the latter are upon the truth that Christ
must suffer many things; and that he him-
self connects the two together; for it is not
till he has inquired how men have under-
stood the former, that he unfolds the latter
to his disciples(53). But is there in this any
thing unnatural? We have seen already that
the belief in a suffering Messiah was not likely
to be palatable to the Jews in general at that
time. To a people steeped in suffering al-
ready, over whom it seemed that all God’s
waves and storms had gone, to a proud and
aristocratic people, reduced to skulk under
the shadow of Roman toleration, and afraid
to stir lest their oppressors should come and
take away their place and nation; it had been
a bitter mockery to have said without prepa-
ration, “ Here is one that will suffer for you.”
Visions of glory and conquest, if we may
argue from those two well-known passages of
Suetonius and Tacitus(54), enlightened their
dejection even yet; it was a delicate task,
requiring the tender love and patience of
Jesus Christ, to bring down that proud hope,
and substitute a better and more spiritual
longing. And so the former part of his min-
istry exhibited a warfare, not against flesh
and blood, but against sin and evil; he did
i
98 LECTURE IV.
not, like the Maccabzean chief, strike a blow
for God against the oppressor, and flee to set
up his standard in the mountains, but he
strove to breathe into them another spirit,
and to arm them with weapons of another
temper, that they might fight with the sword
of faith and pity against sin and evil in the
world, and might learn by degrees that it
mattered not who should redeem their earthly
state, and repair the broken walls of Jeru-
salem, if their souls were redeemed from the
power of sin and Satan, and their seats made
sure in a better city with eternal foundations.
It was most natural to revive in the hearts
of the disciples right notions of the Messiah,
who was to “preach good tidings unto the
meek .... to bind up the broken-hearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives, and the open-
ing of the prison to them that are bound”,”
before he dwelt on the mystery, also fore-
shewn by prophets and forgotten by the peo-
ple, that he should be wounded for our trans-
gressions, and bruised for our iniquities, that
with his stripes we should be healed.
Now it is urged by objectors, that although
the three Evangelists describe Jesus as pre-
dicting his death, they do not represent
him as putting forward with equal clearness
" Tsa. Ixi. 1.
HEH OTURE, iv. 99
its atoning virtue; that only in St. John do we
find this doctrine brought prominently for-
ward. (55) Let it be conceded at once that
the harmony of the New Testament is made
up of different tones; that whilst all the
inspired writers unfold the same great trans-
action of our Redemption, the three synop-
tical Evangelists dwell most upon Jesus as
the Christ or Messiah of the Old Testament,
St. John upon the objective fact, that the
divine word became flesh, and St. Paul,
viewing the same work under a subjective
light, holds up the Gospel as a deliverance
for the human spirit, under bondage to sin,
which the Law could not deliver. But here
the concession ends. In all the Gospels is
Christ proclaimed as the sacrifice for the sins
of the people. In St. Matthew and St. Mark
he points to his own example, to teach his
disciples humility and self-devotion, with the
words, “ Even the Son of man came not to
be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give his life a ransom (λύτρον) for many?.”
But besides this express assertion, the impli-
cations of the same truth are neither few nor
obscure. It was just after the disciples had
confessed by the mouth of Peter that he was
the Christ, the Son of the living God, that he
° Mark x. 45; Matt. xx. 28.
H 2
100 LECTURE’ fv.
told them (to use the words of Matthew)
that he “must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer
many things of the elders and chief’ priests
and scribes, and be killed, and be raised
again the third day’;” and if Mark and
Luke were silent, this must mean that the
sufferings must be endured as part of the
Messianic course and office ; and as the Mes-
siah was understood by all to be the anointed
Redeemer, his sufferings were part of the
plan of redemption. But in the parallel
places, in the Gospels of Mark and Luke’, it is
said, that “the Son of man must suffer many
things,” and this use of one of the names of
Messiah brings out the same meaning more
distinctly still. In another prediction all
three Evangelists agree in using this title,
“the Son of man shall be betrayed into the
hands of men".”” And this is repeated more
than once at intervals until the time of his
offering up. In all the Gospels, then, it
may be fairly said, we find it asserted by our
Lord himself, that he, as the anointed Re-
deemer of his people, must suffer death, and
must rise again, for them.
And if it were not so, surely we should not
be invited to study so minutely all the bitter
wrongs and pains that he underwent. His-
P Matt. xvi. 21. 4 Mark vii. 31; Luke ix. 22.
* Matt. xvii. 22; Mark ix..31; Luke ix. 44.
LECTURE IV. 101
tory does not delight in the anatomy of
suffering ; except for special uses, she does
not call us to note the ravages of sickness, its
peevishness, its wanderings, its loathsomeness ;
nor carry us over a field of battle, to show us
the writhings and ravings of the wounded.
The Gospels themselves pass over, for the
most part, such painful details; whilst it
would have been easy to harass the mind
with an account of the foulness and the
desolate way of life of the ten lepers, or the
desperate affliction of the widow following
her only son and support to the grave, the
briefest and simplest language is found suffi-
cient. Where details are added, it is to en-
hance the wonder of a miracle, or to give a
more distinct representation of a scene we
are to be present at ; and never to excite
pain or horror. Why? Because the mere
passive contemplation of suffering which we
cannot stir to relieve, which is not to call
upon us for any active exertion or resolve, har-
dens the mind rather than softens it ; because
the feeling of pity should not be rashly ex-
cited by scenes beyond the sphere of moral
action (56). And yet in describing the suf-
ferings of the Son of God, the minutest
circumstance is recorded, the share of every
agent in that crime is duly apportioned, no
109 LECTURE IV.
curtain is let fall over the darker acts of the
drama out of regard to the spectator’s feel-
ings. It is because the Evangelists mean to
say, “Come and see what was done for you
and because of you. Look upon this sorrow,
and see if there has been any like it. Is it
nothing to you, ye that pass by? He is
bearing your griefs, he is carrying your
sorrows. Beware, lest by new sins you seem
to crucify him afresh.”
With this abiding consciousness of sin let
us approach the study of our Lord’s sacrifice.
It is the Son of God, as he tells us himself,
that has been betrayed into the hands of
sinners. They smite him on the face, they
mock him, they bid him prophesy to make
them sport, they clothe him with the purple
trappings of a stage-king, they weigh him
against a robber and a rebel, Barabbas, and
find him more worthy of death. For the
sins of mankind was that august face as-
sailed, which even the angels look on with
reverence; for us was he mocked, who shall
soon be a King indeed, throned at the right
hand of the Father; for us was he con-
demned to crucifixion by the acclamations
of the people, and the robber released.
Again, it is the Son of man whom they
have taken, the one chosen man that was
LECTURE IV. 103
to fill the office of Prophet, Priest, and King,
for whom Moses’ seat, and Melchizedek’s
priesthood, and David’s throne were pre-
pared. Yet the man seems chosen only to
be a man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief. The thorns pierce his brow, and the
stripes lacerate his flesh, and the heavy cross
bears him down, as he carries it, and the
protracted agonies of a most painful death
complete the sacrifice. All this was done
for us, that we might be healed, free, im-
mortal. ‘There is yet one kind of sufferings
on which holy Scripture scarcely allows us to
look. What was it that sent the Redeemer
so often apart to pray? what was that great
agony that wrung from him sweat like drops
of blood? What was it that made him cry,
“ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?” Not physical terror, nor physical suf-
fering, but a clear consciousness of the sins
he was to bear. A son’s ruin brings a
father’s grey hairs in sorrow to the grave;
a daughter’s downfall covers a mother with
shame and grief; yet these tender human
sympathies are weak and contracted beside
that sympathy which one with the feelings
of a man, untainted by sin and selfishness,
and with the knowledge and insight of God
himself, felt for the fallen state of mankind.
104 LECTURE IV.
The sins and consequent sufferings of the
human race poured their black and _ bitter
waters in a flood over his soul in the garden
of Gethsemane and on the tree of Calvary;
and in those sins ours too were reckoned.
Now it will be said that the possibility
and actuality of a vicarious atonement have
been assumed. The discussion of these
points must be deferred. In the present
Lecture all that has been gained 1s the fact
that an atoning efficacy is assigned to the
death of Christ; the nature and grounds of
the fact, so far at least as the understanding
is fit to deal with them, will occupy the suc-
ceeding Lecture. But it seems important
to show, that either the death of Christ has
actually, as the Gospels affirm, an effect in
which all mankind are concerned, and if so,
it should be studied in a spirit of reverence
and humility, or that it has no such effect,
and if so, the Gospels are to that extent
false, and their account is unworthy to be
studied at all. The divine origin and mis-
sion of Jesus, his power to work miracles,
the influence of his life and death over the
position of the whole human race before
God, are doctrines which so colour the warp
and woof of the Gospels, that they cannot be
washed out without destroying the whole
LECTURE IV. 105
texture. And the choice which faith has to
make hes in this alternative:—if Jesus be the
Lord he claims to be, we should follow him ;
if not, if his own words are a delusion, or if
the Evangelists have put into his mouth
what he never uttered, we cannot follow
him, because we can no longer learn from’
him the message of peace. This plain lan-
guage is not superfluous. <A criticism has
long been at work upon the Gospels which
will neither follow Christ nor forsake him,
which professes to found religion on the
Bible, yet transforms every historical fact
written there, which deals with such topics
as the salvation of men through the blood of
Jesus with a colder spirit and temper than a
Kepler carried even into the calm regions of
astronomy. When we hear that Christ’s
teaching about his death was but an after-
thought, or that his miracles, discourses,
agony, and resurrection never in fact took
place at all, are we not justified in warning
all to choose between a humble acceptance
of our Lord’s teaching as to himself, and a
total avoidance of the subject ? For when
we have walked with irreverent feet in that
holy Temple, which to many millions of
hearts Christianity has been and yet shall
be; when we have thrown down its altar, and
106 LECTURE Iv:
set there the abomination of desolation; when
we have taken away Christ from it, and left
in his stead a mistaken man, compared with
whom Mohammed was truthful and accurate,
or an idea which might as well have taken
Apollonius or Socrates for its historical
ground as our blessed Lord, perchance a
deeper and more reverent view of it may
dawn on us afterwards, when the needs of
our heart are greater and the pride of our
ingenuity less; and we shall bitterly regret
that we did not pass by in silence that which
we could not credit, that we hardened our
own hearts, and confounded the faith of
others, in trying to find under the words of
God things not written there.
But to give a more precise form to this
warning, it may be necessary, however pain-
ful, to exhibit specimens of the criticisms to
which I have alluded. According to one
view (57), Jesus began to teach, believing
that he was the Messiah, and yet desiring
to wean the Jews from those political views
which almost all of them had associated with
that name. He announced, in the sermon on
the mount, that it was for the sake of the
meek and the merciful, for all who hungered
and thirsted after righteousness, that he was
come, and not for those who sought a civil
LECTURE IV. 107
revolution. Conscious of the purity of his
intentions, and, like all men of high and in-
nocent mind, taking a favourable view of the
character of others, he believed that by de-
grees all men, except a few hardened Pharisees,
would come over to the deeper and truer views
of the Messiah’s kingdom which he put for-
ward. In this expectation he told the apo-
stles when he sent them forth, that before
they had gone over the cities of Israel his
kingdom would be acknowledged and _ esta-
blished. But neither the disciples nor the
people understood him; the former won-
dered at his miracles and his eloquence, with-
out apprehending their purpose; and the
latter could not relinquish the popular views
as to the Messiah’s kingdom. Hence either
the attempt must be abandoned entirely, or
some concession made to their weakness. If
he had continued to assert that he came to
found a religious society having men’s salva-
tion for its sole object, and that every hope of
a Messianic kingdom must be abandoned, no
one would have believed him. He therefore
placed the reign of Messiah in the future ;
he promised them the sight of a kingdom,
with glory and happiness for the lot of its
subjects, and condemnation and confusion
for its enemies; in the hope that this pro-
108 LECTURE IV.
spect would induce them to follow his pre-
cepts for the present. But even here he
failed; and there was reason to fear that
when the promises for the future remained
unfulfilled, the disciples might complain of
fraud and deceit. Then did Jesus see the
necessity for his own death; if he were re-
moved from them, all hope of a temporal
kingdom must end, and the thoughts of his
followers would be fixed upon his spiritual
precepts more firmly. The disappointment
of his hopes for his people brought such
bitter affliction with it, that death seemed
even desirable, as a departure from a land
where all was strange, where men were per-
verse, blind, and malicious, to a home in
heaven. Nor was it necessary to seek death;
the alarm of the priests and Pharisees at the
influence of a teacher who seemed to threaten
the destruction of their law, was already pre-
paring it, so that it might have been impos-
sible to escape. Our Lord’s own words are
explained into accordance with this theory.
We are told that he nowhere asserts dis-
tinctly that his death has a piacular virtue,
a power of atonement. The apostles, in-
deed, ascribe such a power, but then here, as
in other matters, they misunderstood their
Master’s meaning. But it is still desirable
LECTURE IV. 109
to hold up to the eyes of mankind the death
of Jesus as a symbol and example of exalted
self-sacrifice, and his life as a pattern of de-
votion, as a life of which every moment was
dedicated to God.
Is it possible that the noblest men, and
the wisest nations of the earth, consent to
bear, in the word Christian, the name of
such a teacher as this theory describes? We
are told that he commenced his ministry
with high hopes, only formed to be frus-
trated ; that he promised the establishment
of a kingdom when he could not expect it,
only to gain the ear of the people; that his
death was not resolved on or announced
until a high-souled disgust at their unbe-
lief took possession of him, as if he had en-
tered on a warfare of which he had not
counted the cost; that such a resolution was
less difficult, because, in fact, death was in-
evitable. If it were possible to believe this;
if the Master at our head was but a well-
meaning person, not superior to circum-
stances, not quite innocent of deceit, helped
in his resolute self-sacrifice by the suspicion
that there was no escape from it; if his
claims to power over the salvation of other
men, to existence from eternity with the
Father, to supernatural knowledge and in-
110 LECTURE) Fv.
spiration, were all grounded in delusion, you
would reject the name of Christian, and re-
fuse to bear the name of one devoted man
to the exclusion of all other philosophers,
saints, and martyrs, whose self-sacrifice may
differ in degree, but differs not in kind from
his. In Socrates there was the same self-
devotion, aye, and for the same motive, a
wish to serve the eternal laws of God (58),
joined to a far juster view of his own preten-
sions. Christian martyrs have willingly faced
death before it was inevitable, when a word
of abjuration and a knee bent before an
idol’s shrine would have saved them. But
when we inquire what this enormous perver-
sion of the facts of the New Testament rests
on, there is but one fact, and that is, that
Jesus did not announce his passion until he
had taught and wrought miracles for some
time ; which has already been accounted for,
on the ground of the preparation required
for the doctrine of a suffering Messiahs. And
on this quaking foundation the whole super-
structure has been reared. Jesus professed
himself to be the Messiah before the people
in the sermon on the mount, to his disciples,
to the Samaritan woman, to the high-priest,
to Pilate, to God himself in solemn prayer ;
s See page οὔ.
LECTURE IV. 111
he spoke of his death as a necessary part of
his work, as a ransom for many, as tending
to the remission of sins. If these assertions
have no more historical value than this
theory awards them; if they are delusions,
accommodations, and after-thoughts, then
that hope which lifted up the eyes and
hearts of the sinful, that here was one with
power to tear off the clinging sin and work
forgiveness for them before God the holy
and just, is utterly quenched. If he foresaw
not, save by degrees, the course of his own
short ministry, how should his merciful eye
fall upon you and me through the gloom
and confusion of the ages? When the com-
forts and promises to be found in the Gospel
dwindle down to this, it will be time to turn
away from its pages; for if such views are
true, and we are forced to adopt a religion
reconstructed from the Bible by ourselves,
the blessing of a revelation, that it is some-
thing fixed, without us, upon which our
minds may lean, is taken away; but if the
views are false, and it is, after all, the very
handwriting of God that we are defacing, we
incur all the perils of them that fight against
God. But where the study of the word of
God has been carried on in the hope of find-
ing there a true scheme of mediation be-
112 πὸ ΤΠ Ty.
tween God’s holiness and man’s deep-felt
unworthiness, there will be little fear of de-
sisting from an inquiry, thus earnestly begun,
for want of an adequate answer: “ Lord, to
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life. And we believe and are sure
that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living
God '.”
Another scheme, hostile to the doctrine of
redemption, not likely to be adopted in this
country as a whole, yet still exercising a
partial influence, sometimes where least sus-
pected, should not be passed over here in
silence, though it is impossible to do it jus-
tice in a few words(59). Professing to enter
upon the criticism of the Gospels without any
religious prejudice, the author we are now
considering avowedly assumes that miracles
are impossible. To what then are we to
ascribe the accounts of miracles in the Gos-
pels? Not to wilful perversion of truth on
the part of the narrators, nor to mere exagge-
ration of facts, such as ignorant and admiring
spectators are often guilty of. We are to re-
gard the gospel history as containing facts
narrated so as to suit certain ideas. It is
partly mythical and partly legendary (60).
Where something narrated as a fact has sprung
t John vi. 68, 69.
LECTURE IV. 113
out of an idea, the account is mythical; as
when, to take an example from profane
writings, the old poet makes Ether and Day-
light the children of Erebus and Night, the
fact is a mere expression of the idea, that
light sprang out of darkness. Where, on the
other hand, real persons or acts are described,
but in connexion with some ideas, which
have influenced the narrative, its character
is legendary; of this the life of Pythagoras
might serve as an example. In the Gospels,
this author ventures to say, we shall find
both characters; narratives in which it is
vain to look for any historical ground at all,
but which are valuable, as showing the idea
which the Church of the first century formed
about Christ; and narratives which have a
historical element, coloured however, and
perverted more or less, by the same idea.
Rules may be given by which to distinguish
a mythical from a historical narrative: where
it is incompatible with fixed natural laws,
where the succession of events in it is abrupt
and startling, where it is at variance with
other narratives, where its form is poetic,
where it accords strikingly with ideas preva-
lent at the time it was written, where it
stands in connexion with other accounts more
palpably mythical, we ought to pronounce it,
I
114 LECTURE IV.
especially if it unites several of these marks,
to be unhistorical. But as the really histo-
rical portion is difficult of separation from
the rest, and as it is so slight as to have little
connexion with the high teaching of the
apostles, and the faith of the early Church,
we do not wonder to find that other sup-
porters of the mythical theory have discarded
it altogether(61). And so the Gospels con-
tain, on this view, not the facts connected
with man’s redemption, but man’s religious
ideas and tendencies projected into facts.
The predicates assigned to Jesus of Nazareth
in the Gospels can only be assigned truly to
the whole human species, of which he is the
ideal. The human race, the union of eternal
spirit with perishable flesh and matter, pre-
sents the true incarnation; the conquest of
mind over matter is the true working of mira-
cles; if the individual man exhibits sin and
error, the progress of the whole species does
not, so that it may truly be termed sinless ;
and in its perpetual and gradual elevation,
out of material into spiritual life, we see the
death, resurrection, and ascension, which the
Gospels mythically represent. Such is the
theory; which must appear, when exhibited
in a bare analysis, and apart from the views
of the school of philosophy in which it grew
LECTURE IV. 11ὅ
up, an insane invention, but which has been
enforced, I am bound to say, with great learn-
ing and power of argument. But professing
to be a deathblow to prejudice and credulity,
it is full of a credulity and a prejudice of its
own. Others have shown already, that the
result of this argument is to exhibit Christ-
ianity as the only effect without a cause (62).
The character of the Lord Jesus, on which the
good of all ages have gazed with admiration,
in which the bad and hostile have found
nothing to blame, was formed, on this theory,
from the ideas of a few illiterate persons ;
his life from a concurrence, almost for-
tuitous, of Biblical, Rabbinical, Greek and
Alexandrine stories; and his divine teaching,
with its elements, entirely new, of love, hu-
mility, submission, a regard for the whole
human race, took its form out of the same
inadequate materials. A man can be found
to believe this, who cannot on any evidence
be brought to believe a miracle! Others
have shown that there is no history so re-
cent and well-attested, that similar reasoning
cannot impugn it; so that, if such principles
prevail, historical study is at an end. ‘They
have shown that the question is not a purely
theological one, but in fact a contention on
the part of a so-called philosophy for the
12
116 LECTURE IV.
mastery over history. They have pointed
out the gross dishonesty of teaching the
people at large to believe that the Gospels
are a history, as this author proposes, whilst
the philosopher believes them not; so that
in one Church there would be two re-
ligions (63). Let me only ask that those
three principles of our consciousness, ex-
amined in my first Lecture, may be applied
to this mythical view—the belief in God,
the consciousness of sin, and the hope of
reconcilement. Instead of a righteous and
loving Father, who hates sin, yet loves us
sinners, we have here a picture of the hu-
man species perfecting itself, and no mention
of a personal God; instead of a word of
comfort to the conscience-stricken sinner in
the news of a reconcilement wrought for
him, the work and the person of the Saviour
are resolved into a machinery of ideas, and
individual redemption vanishes in general
perfectibility. When scepticism disturbs, if
only for a moment, our confidence in any
part of the sacred records, it is time to recur
to the evidence of our own consciousness in
their favour. Do we need a Redeemer ?
This question we have tried to answer in
the affirmative. Is the Redeemer described
in the Bible suited to our need? The
LECTURE IV. 117
answer to this question remains to be
given.
Meantime it has been shown that Jesus
claims for himself a power and an office
more than belongs even to the highest of
men; and that if we would examine whether
the claim is just, we ought at least to ap-
proach the subject with reverence. The
Bible nowhere says that an irreverent spirit
can recognise the divinity of Christ; it tells
you that he was despised, humiliated, in the
form of a servant. In so great an issue let
us comply with all the conditions of success :
let it be our will to find God, but not to
prescribe or alter the method of finding him.
Is this a needless caution? In an age when
new systems of Christology are thrown off
like new vases from a potter’s wheel (64) ;
when poets hesitate not to achieve a cheap
sublimity by weaving freely into their rhymes
and conceits the great ineffable name and
the great secrets of the Holy of Holies (65) ;
when God is rather sought without us, in
the beautiful universe, than within us, in the
admonitions of conscience (66); when the
positive results of science, so brilliant, so
indisputable, tend to cast all probable and
historical evidence somewhat into shade (67);
it would be false to pretend that right re-
ligious views are easy to find and keep.
118 LECTURE IV.
The doctrine of Christ crucified has always
appeared foolishness to the hasty and_ ir-
reverent ear; we only hope to prove that
it is reasonable to those who will listen to
that within them, which, if not loudest, is
best; to that voice which declares that God
is, and is a rewarder of all men according to
their works, and which accuses all of sin
before him. Let us say to ourselves, “'The
Lord Christ is a teacher who claims to speak
the very mind of God. Before we reject his
mission, or pretend to alter and explain his
message, it is but reverent to hear and pon-
der it. If our hearts feel, as the hearts of
many faithful ones from the Apostles’ time
have, that what the law could not do, what
philosophic systems cannot do, it really
effects, in giving us an assured hope of re-
concilement with the Father, why should we
let this anchor of the soul go, to drift over
we know not what seas of uncertainty ?”
God’s word for man’s salvation does not, it
is true, flash upon us in the lightning, nor
shake terribly the earth beneath our feet ;
many have heard it without recognising God
in it, many more have recognised and yet
forgotten him, “that the thoughts of many
hearts might be revealed".” And νοῦ the
open ear can always hear; he that desires to
ἃ Luke i. 35.
LECTURE IV. 119
know God shall not be prevented by the
confusion of jarring systems or the self-con-
fidence that knowledge and unchecked pro-
sperity diffuse through a nation. Consider-
ing then what is at stake—the hopes of the
soul hereafter—let us approach this subject
meekly and with reverence. “Take my
yoke upon you,” says our Lord himself,
“and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly
in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your
souls*.” “Seek the Lord,” says the Prophet,
“all ye meek of the earth, which have
wrought his judgments; seek righteousness,
seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid
in the day of the Lord’s anger’.”
x Matt. xi. 29. y Zeph. ii. 3.
LECTURE V.
1 Cor. 1. 30, 31.
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is
made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and
sanctification, and redemption ; That, according as
it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the
Lord.
THAT God is holy and just, yet at the same
time full of love and compassion, might be
proved on grounds of natural religion, if holy
scripture were silent on the subject. His
justice finds a feeble echo in our conscience,
which when it relinquishes some pleasure or
advantage, solely because it is sinful, feels
that its self-approval corresponds to the
approval of the great omniscient Spirit who
created our finite spirit in his own image.
The judge that sits upon the tribunal of
the heart is indeed a deceiver, when he
incites us to prefer duty to ease, or truth to
gain, unless there is a greater judge, even the
King of Saints, whose ways are just and true,
to confirm his decrees; and it would be
ΟΠ Rn EV. 121
better to “enjoy the good things that are
present,” and make “ our strength the law of
justice “Ὁ if duty and obedience were but
names and wind, and there were in the void
universe no king to care for, guard, and vin-
dicate them (9). It is in this sense that St.
Paul argues with the Corinthians, “ If Christ
be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet
in your sins. Then they also which are
fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in
this life only we have hope in Christ, we are
of all men most miserable’:” words which
arecent writer has perverted into an admission
that the course of duty has no pleasure in
itself, but only in the prospect of reward (68).
The great Apostle, we may be well assured,
would have laboured to make men know the
truth, even if eternal peace had been no part
of the message, even if his preaching had
been to receive no crown or reward, beyond
the sweet consciousness that he was labouring
for God and the truth. But he is striving
to exclude the dreadful thought that their
conscience, enlightened as they believed by
the Holy Spirit, and thereby strengthened to
sustain a great fight of afflictions, was after
all grossly deceived, and nourished hopes
that originated only in fancy or imposture.
τῇ Wisd. ii. 6. 11. b 1 Cor. xv. 17— 19.
122 LEOTURE VY.
To have surrendered the amenities of life,
social honour and advancement, the pleasures
of study, the peace of home, the smiles of
children, the tranquil retrospect of declining
age, to have taken instead, labour and watch-
ing, and fasting and calumny, and stripes and
imprisonment and death, in pursuit of an
empty vision of truth, were to be indeed a
spectacle to angels and to men, and a laugh-
ingstock to the whole world. Not in the loss
of a future reward were they most miserable ;
but in the notion that conscience, which they
obeyed as true, had cheated them, and that
all their life had been adjusted to a false
standard. Conscience then, as it appears,
cannot become our law, unless we feel sure
that its authority is grounded on the existence
of a Being who loves righteousness and hates
iniquity. And this argument will be found
more convincing, on reflection, than that
which rests on the examples of justice in the
government of the world around us. It is
true that punishment dogs the heels of sin ;
ruined fortunes follow imprudence; ruined
health waits on sensual transgression; the
father’s crime stamps infamy and_ poverty
on the children; misgovernment of a nation
in one century or generation is rewarded by
bloodshed, or famine, or pestilence in the
LECTURE V. 123
next. But still God’s justice often moves in
a circle too wide for our eyes to comprehend
the whole; what we regard as suffering may
be punishment for some hidden or forgotten
transgression, or, on the other hand, the seem-
ing punishment may have no connexion with
the sin of the individual. History is full of
marks of the presence of a just God, though
our powers of interpretation are limited.
But to admit that men act upon the behests
of conscience is to admit that they believe in
a just Being, that loves holiness and hates
iniquity ; and this mode of proof seems to
me immediate, convincing, and open to every
man who will reflect.
Natural religion can prove with no less
clearness, that the same just God is also full
of love and compassion. God leaves not
himself without witness even among the
Gentiles, when he does them good, and gives
them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons,
filling their hearts with food and gladness.
The world indeed is full of his goodness ;
air, earth, and sea teem with life, and life
to most creatures is but joy. The life-giving
sun is made to rise on the evil and on the
good, and the rain is sent on the just and
on the unjust. And with this evidence of a
¢ Acts xiv. 17.
124 LECTURE V.
bountiful and merciful Lord over them, even
the most sinful men are apt to soothe their
conscience with flattering anodynes, and to
apply God’s love to heal the wound which
a conviction of his justice made. If we were
to ask those who have had most opportuni-
ties of watching the souls of others in the
hour of death, when the balance has to be
struck, in anticipation of the coming scru-
tiny before the Judge of all the earth, they
would tell us, that in most cases self-love has
been so loud and active in crying, “ Peace,
peace” to the conscience, that it is difficult
to revive a real belief in that truth, which
yet is not denied in terms, that “there is no
peace for the wicked.”
If from reason we were to recur to Scrip-
ture,a hundred passages would prove to us that
the two divine attributes of Justice and Love,
however hard it may seem to conciliate them,
are both to be assigned in the fullest measure
to the Almighty. In these passages there
can of course be no contradiction when they
are duly weighed; but the contrasts are so
startling as to awaken even the most thought-
less to the problem they involve. God keeps
mercy for thousands, and forgives iniquity,
transgression, and sin“; he is gracious and
d Exodus xxxiv. 7.
LECTURE V. 125
full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great
mercy®; and these are not the free expres-
sions of poetry or rhetoric, but the words of
the Spirit of truth, in which, too, our con-
science will learn fully to acquiesce. Yet
after such words it is hard to understand the
description of the divine justice. “God's
power and his wrath is against all who for-
sake himf.” “The eyes of the wicked shall
see his destruction, and he shall drink of the
wrath of the Almightys.” “In the hand of
the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red:
it is full of mixture, and he poureth out the
same; but the dregs thereof all the wicked
of the earth shall wring them out and drink
them.” “Fear him, who, after he hath killed,
hath power to cast into hell.”
Now there is this difference between a
contradiction and what has been called in
philosophy an antinomy of reason, or, in re-
ligion, with somewhat less precision, a mys-
tery, that in the former we have two propo-
sitions, which we know cannot be reconciled,
and one of which must therefore be false,
whilst in the latter there are two proposi-
tions that appear contradictory when they
are brought together, although each can be
€ Psalm exlv. 8. f Ezra viii. 22. & Job xxi. 20.
h Psalm Ixxyv. 8. i Luke xii. 5.
126 LECTURE V.
separately shown to be true. A contradic-
tion requires a confession of positive error ;
whereas an antinomy only suggests a sense
of the imperfection of our understanding,
which can comprehend two opposite results,
and not the mode of reconciling them. This
distinction is important as well in the study
of revelation as in the region of natural re-
ligion and philosophy. The disputes about
necessity and liberty, or, under another form,
about the power of grace and individual re-
sponsibility; the attempts to reconcile the
omnipotence of God with the existence of
evil; or justification by faith with a future
judgment according to our works; the power
of prayer with the unalterable decrees of
God ; all these are questions in which we see
cause to lament the shortness of our own
vision, which is unable to reconcile clearly
in theory propositions that appear capable
of proof when kept asunder, and that are
harmonized in the daily practice of good
men (69),
To this class must belong the two propo-
sitions, that God is full of compassion, and
that he is righteous and just. And the posi-
tion to which the preceding lectures have
led us is—that the Christian doctrine of
redemption ought to be believed, because it
LECTURE V. 127
is the only one which reconciles the justice
and the love of Almighty God. The pre-
tensions of heathen systems of mediation
need not be discussed at length, because no
one believes that they have been true or
effectual. Enough, if we examine here the
Mosaic law, as the only system besides the
Christian which can truly claim a divine
origin. The Bible shows that the Law had a
shadow of good things to come, and not the
very image of the things; and that it left
the solution of this problem undiscovered.
All the provisions of the polity of the Jews
were designed to put a hedge about them
against the inroads of sin, that they might
be a pure and holy people, because a pure
and holy God vouchsafed to be their king.
This was the end of the severe punishments
prescribed, of the rigid ceremonial regula-
tions, of the strict separation from the lawless
Gentile, and of the terrible judgments by
which Jehovah from time to time vindicated
his power against the profane or wilful.
Moreover, this law was perfect in its kind.
“What could have been done more,” says
Jehovah by the prophet, “to my vineyard,
that I have not done in it? wherefore when
I looked that it should bring forth grapes,
brought it forth wild grapes*?” Yet cer-
K Isa, v. 4.
128 LECTURE V.
tainly this dispensation left the reconcilement
of the justice and the compassion of the
Most High, uneffected. “What could have
been done more for the vineyard?” And yet its
sacrifices were types and shadows; its prophets
pointed into the future ; and the more pious
of the people wearied themselves with look-
ing towards that quarter from whence their
help was to come, whilst the more careless
ceased to expect the fulfilment of the pro-
mises. “ What could have been done more
for the vineyard ?” And yet the law brought
no adequate assurance that unrighteousness
could be covered and forgiven; it opened no
fountain for the supply of inward strength,
when the will was weak and the eye of
faith obscure.
The Gospel of Christ, on the other hand,
meets the wants which the Law only the
more clearly indicates. Sin cannot go with-
out punishment; God cannot admit into his
presence with an indiscriminating mercy the
disobedient and obedient, those that seek
him and those that hate him. If it were
otherwise, righteousness would be no longer
among his attributes. And yet if he should
punish, the wages of sin is death; and the
whole human race is concluded under sin, so
that all would perish, and there would be no
scope for God’s love towards us. Philosophy
LECTURE V. 129
did not supply the solution of this dilem-
ma; it is to be found in the Gospel of
Christ, and in no other scheme or sys-
tem. He who came down from heaven to
redeem us, “whom God hath set forth to be
a propitiation through faith in his blood',” is
God and man. He alone of men has obey-
ed the law perfectly, so that in him is no
sin; and therefore he owes no punishment.
He can offer his own life freely; no man
takes it from him, but he can lay it down of
himself. That the innocent should suffer
for the guilty is less discrepant from our sense
of justice, when the sufferer, though most
truly a man, is likewise God; because in his
mediatorial character he is carrying out that
very plan which, as God, his own love and
compassion designed for man’s salvation. The
sacrifice of a mere man, even supposing him
to be pure from guilt, as none ever was, could
have no influence over the condition of the
whole human race; but the Son of God was
able to gather in to himself by a deep hu-
man sympathy, enforced by infinite power
and knowledge, all the sins of the whole
world, and bear them in his own body on
the cross. For, again, he is God, and so in
him, as well as in the Father, we live and
1 Rom. iii. 25.
K
130 LCT RE: ¥.
move and have our being, so that he
can comprehend our sins and griefs, and
by his act bring back peace instead of
them. Justice is appeased, and God’s
abhorrence of sin shown forth, if the
punishment due to it has been inflicted
on so excellent a victim. And the love of
God manifests itself without drawback, be-
cause the divine will itself in our Redeemer
is consenting to his sacrifice; that reluctance
which the human will of Christ must have
tended to manifest, just because it is human,
at the approach of the utmost suffering and
disgrace, was corrected by and brought into
harmony with the divine will, that fully con-
sented to the counsel of God. Of himself, as
a man, he could do nothing; if as man he
prayed that, if it were possible, the cup of
death might pass from him, he could not but
add the words of full consent, “ Neverthe-
less, not my will but thine be done™.” Because
of his obedience unto the death of the cross,
God raised him from the dead and highly
exalted him; and he has sent from the Father
the Holy Spirit, which binds together all his
elect people, and binds them also to him.
A firm and abiding belief in him, and _ his
power to redeem, connects every Christian
m Matt. xxvi. 39.
LECTURE. 'V. 1951
with that sacrifice to the end of time, so that,
though offered but once, the blood is suffi-
cient to sprinkle every man, as though he
were present at it.
Such, if I mistake not, is the meaning of
the representations of holy Scripture. But,
to follow its words more exactly, we are told,
that “when we were yet without strength, in
due time Christ died for the ungodly” ;” that
in this, “ God,” that is, the Father, “com-
mendeth his love toward us°;” that “as by
the offence of one, judgment came upon all
men to condemnation, even so by the righte-
ousness of one the free gift came upon all
men unto justification of life’;” that this
was effected by his becoming “a curse for
us',” in suffering a punishment due only to
outcast felons, that he thus paid a price for
our redemption, and the price was “the pre-
cious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot' ; that by paying it
“he is the propitiation for our sins: and
not for ours only, but also for the sins of the
whole world*;” that God raised him up,
“ having loosed the pains of death, because it
was not possible that he should be holden of
it';” that he “ gave him glory, that our faith
n Rom. v. 7. ° Rom. v. 8. P Rom. y. 18.
9 Galo. 13. ry Pet.i. 19. > 1 John ii. 2.
t Acts 11. 24.
kK 2
132 LECTURE V.
and hope might be in God".” “ Wherefore
he is able also to save them to the uttermost
that come unto God by him, seeing he ever
liveth to make intercession for them*.”
A transaction described in such terms as
these cannot be tried by the rules and forms
of the mere understanding. It meets the
inmost wants of the mind; it brings comfort
to many a penitent soul, when grief or trial,
or the approach of death, has turned all
beauty to ashes, all lower solaces into disgust
and weariness. It interprets with marvellous
exactness all the yearnings of paganism after
reconciliation with God; it shows the cer-
tainty of the heathen’s guesses; it dissolves
the doubts about the efficacy of sacrifices,
which, with the more thoughtful heathen,
damped the fire upon the altar and cooled
the fervour of the heart. To such evidence
as this we may safely appeal for the confir-
mation of the scriptural doctrine. But be-
fore the trial can be made, the doctrine itself
must be accepted as a religious mystery, as
a transaction that stands alone, one which
human speech cannot describe adequately,
because the resources of language have never
before been taxed to depict a similar event ;
and which our understanding cannot grasp,
uz Pet. 1. 21. x Heb. vii. 25.
LECTURE V. 133
because we can only conceive aright that
which we can compare with other things of
the same nature. All the books of holy Scrip-
ture agree in teaching that Jesus Christ has
conquered sin and death for our sake; but
when the intellect tries, with a natural cu-
riosity, to comprehend all the bearings of
this great act, and to raise and answer ques-
tions concerning it, and to consider its parts
separately, there is great danger that God’s
treasure will be falsely weighed in man’s
coarse balance, and meted in his scanty
measures, to the damage and confusion of
truth. It is true that the language of Scrip-
ture delineates in grand outlines the doc-
trine of the Cross of Christ, so that the
simplest reader obtains a faithful, though
not an adequate, representation of it. Not
adequate ; because human language was
given for human needs, and the minds that
employ it see divine things at best through a
glass darkly. Christ is represented to us
as the paschal Lamb, his blood as a price or
ransom, the seal of a new covenant; and
such representations taken together make
clear the relation in which mankind stands
to the Lord Jesus. But the utmost caution
is required in enlarging upon any one of
these forms of speech, or in introducing new
134 LECCE U ἘΝ.
terms or illustrations. For example, the
word satisfaction (satisfactio) seemed, to the
mind of Tertullian, familiar with legal phrases,
a fitting name for that which Christ did for
us. It represents us as debtors to the justice
of God, and Jesus as satisfying the debt for
us; and since the words ransom (λύτρον) and
redemption (ἀπολύτρωσις) are employed in
holy Scripture, in a sense not very dissimilar,
for the same transaction; and since sins are
often represented as debts; it is not to be
wondered at that the word came gradually
into use, and from the time of Anselm has
become almost universal among theological
writers. It denotes, properly, the most exact
fulfilment of all those things which God
in his justice required of sinful men, accord-
ing to the strictest view of his law, and
which Christ has paid (70). But the thought-
less employment even of this useful term
might lead to views of Christ’s work essen-
tially erroneous. For here we seem to make
God the Father and God the Son two op-
posite parties in the transaction ; the Father,
as the creditor, insists upon the demands of
justice, and the Son, standing in place of
the debtor, out of mere love, pays a debt
which he never incurred. But the Bible
says expressly that the love of the Father, as
LECTURE V. 135
well as his justice, was shown in man’s re-
demption; and that the Son is just, and
shall judge the whole world in righteousness.
When we take the phrases of a court of law,
and hallow them to describe what has passed
before the divine tribunal, we must carry
along with us a sense of their inadequate-
ness for that higher use. ‘This is more ap-
parent from another case. The Roman law
recognised a process called acceptilatio, a
legal fiction, by which a creditor who had
not really received payment in full of his
claim, admitted, when he was asked, that
payment had been made. Now this word
was applied to the doctrine we are consider-
ing by the Scotists, when they maintained,
against Thomas Aquinas, that the satisfaction
made by Christ upon the Cross was not
really sufficient for the sins of the world,
but was accepted out of God’s indulgence, as
if it were so(71). Here the interests of
truth have really suffered from the rash
adoption of new language in speaking of
this great mystery; the Bible gives no war-
rant either for the word or the thing.—
There may be danger of error, even whilst
we adhere to scriptural statements, if we
isolate one part of them from the rest, or
dwell upon distinctions on which the in-
136 LECTURE V.
spired writers do not insist. Among Pro-
testant theologians the distinction has been
generally maintained between the two parts
of the satisfaction made by Christ—his active
obedience and his passive, or, in other words,
between what he did and what he suffered.
“ By his active obedience,” says one of them,
“Christ has fulfilled the divine law most
exactly, in our stead, in order that repentant
sinners may apply this vicarious fulfilment
by true faith to themselves, and be counted
righteous before God. By his passive obedi-
ence he has transferred to himself the sins of
the whole world, and suffered the punish-
ment due to them by his precious blood-
shedding, that the sins of those who believe
on him as the Redeemer may not be imput-
ed unto them for eternal punishment” (72).
But this distinction can hardly be main-
tained; “for passive obedience,” as another
author remarks, “does not exclude active,
but rather includes it; for even in the hour
of death the active obedience of Christ
strongly manifested itself.” Every step of
his ministry was taken willingly and freely,
therefore he was active throughout; and, on
the other hand, every act done in a state of
humiliation may be regarded as part of his
suffering. It was as truly suffering, to an-
LECTURE V. 137
nounce great truths to those whose dull ears
would not receive them, or to perform mi-
racles before those who saw not God’s hand
in them, as it was to be buffeted by the
soldiers, though in a less degree: in both
cases mankind dishonoured their divine
guest; in that, by withholding honour and
deference that was due; in this, by wanton
violence. Theology might dispense with a
distinction so doubtful, of which Scripture
takes no notice. But whatever may be the
duty of controversialists, the Christian, who
is seeking for himself a solution for his
doubts and a firm foundation for his hopes,
should rely less upon logical explanations of
the plan of redemption, than upon a loving
and reverent study of the whole person and
work of Christ. In the sacred pages we
have the means of knowing Jesus, his ac-
tions, discourses, and conversations; indeed
that character, standing out so pure, so far
above all human ideals, so completely drawn,
has often struck with admiration and con-
viction those who have resisted the other
evidences of Christianity (73). Thanks to
God for his word, the simplest English
Christian may join the crowd that listen
to him upon the mountain as he expands
and fills out the morality of the Law into a
138 LECTURE V.
spiritual code of his future Church. With
him we may arrest the funeral procession at
the gate of Nain; we may share the evidence
of the miracles performed to convince the
Baptist’s messengers. We may look with
him over the city of Jerusalem when he
weeps over it, and know, that though it
stands so proud and looks so glad in its
preparation for the paschal feast, it is al-
ready, because it has rejected him, given
over to enemies who shall lay it even with
the ground. Every such scene, regarded
reverently, shall bring us somewhat nearer
to the knowledge of him. It was because
Peter had long followed his journeys, and
heard his gracious words, and seen his power,
that that belief which he professed, that he
was the Christ the Son of the living God,
had grown up by degrees in his mind. But
we, with the whole history before us, from
the first word of prophecy to the last glimpse
of his ascension, possess better means of
knowledge than Peter when he made his
confession. And stronger than all the argu-
ments that can be supplied against false and
derogatory views of the redemption would
be such intimate converse with the Saviour.
What! can one contemplate that life, holy
and spotless under all fortunes, forbearing
LECTURE V. 139
under coldness, misapprehension, and _per-
secution, ready with help for every kind of
sorrow, and with wisdom for every form of
inquiry, without believing that such a cha-
racter passes the invention of man? And if
it isa history, and no invention, one cannot
refuse to accept with grateful reverence the
Redeemer’s account of his own work.
And this leads us to the last proposition
we have to consider at present—that the doc-
trine of the Atonement satisfies the natural
wants of men, as shown forth in heathen
forms of religion. In a former Lecture’,
some of those stories were recited in which a
king or a warrior devoted himself to death
for his country, in obedience to some oracle
or soothsayer, who pretended to give a reli-
gious worth and meaning to the suicidal act.
Such accounts we took to prove, that the
idea of a vicarious suffering and death was
far from being repugnant to the human
mind. Now why is it that these legends are
received by us with a feeling of pity rather
than of honour? Because the need of self-
sacrifice was not real, and because there was
nothing so precious in the blood of a Decius,
beyond that which leaped in the veins of the
meanest soldier in his legions, that it should
y Lecture II.
140 LECTURE V.
verily do what the historian’s imagination
conceived — “expiate all the anger of the
gods, and turn away destruction from his
countrymen by casting it upon their ene-
mies.” But go to the pagan who could
accept such an account, and convince his
conscience of its own sinfulness, and prove
to him that all the human race was in
the same condition; bid him compare his
life, not with the debased standard of those
Olympian deities of whom his own philoso-
phers had learnt to be ashamed, but with
the will of a pure God, glorious in holiness ;
and then tell him, that a great prophet,
whose most pure life proved that he was
akin to the God of purity, whose marvellous
works proved that health and sickness, and
the powers of nature, and life and death, and
the bodies and souls of men, were subject to
him, came into the world expressly to ex-
piate the divine anger, and atone God and
the whole race of men. Will he not see that
the difference between that narrative and this
is, that the need of reconcilement is deep,
pressing, and universal, in this case, and most
worthy of the divine interference, and that
the blood of one who showed himself so ex-
cellent, so divine, would have an atoning
« Page 34. and Note 23.
LECTURE V. 141
value far beyond that which the devoted
hero of his own annals mingled with other
like blood in the thick of the battle? When
St. Paul stood upon the Areopagus, and told
those Athenians, whese light wits a long suc-
cession of Sophists had sharpened, and who
had crowded their city with idols, because,
as Strabo says (74), they were very hospita-
ble alike to men and gods, that there was a
great lesson of wisdom to learn, and the
name of one mightier than all their gods to
accept and believe, even Jesus, whom God
had raised from the dead, their derision was
not unnatural ; since, at the first impression,
how could the death of a man who died like
a slave at Jerusalem concern the refined and
cultivated Greek ? But some clave to St. Paul,
we read; and doubtless the reason that they
believed was, that he opened to them their
own wants, and convinced them that Jesus,
though he had stooped to the conditions of
time and space, had shown that these could
not contain him, and that he was Lord and
God of Greek as well as of Jew. That one
could devote himself for another effectu-
ally, would be a truth admitted both by the
preacher and his hearers. Again, the posi-
tion assumed by the heathen priest{ exhibits
some remarkable analogies with the true
142 LECTURE V.
view of the priesthood of our blessed Lord.
Those words of Buddha which were quoted,
“Let all the sins that have been committed
in this world fall upon me, that the world
may be delivered *,” cannot but arouse Christ-
ian ears. The sympathy with human souls
weltering in the tumult of their own passions,
fast bound in misery and iron, was not con-
fined to the divine teacher, who would have
gathered the children of Jerusalem together
under the wings of his love, to save them
from the evil to come, nor to that apostle
who could wish himself accursed from Christ
for his brethren; it sprang up naturally in
the religious consciousness even of the higher
pagan minds. Then, the heathen priest pre-
sented himself to the people as a mediator,
as one who went between man and the gods
to keep them reconciled. He made sacrifice
as one of the people, sensible of the same
needs as they; but he scrupled not to re-
ceive divine honours from them, because he
believed that he was the representative of
God to them. Who does not admit that
these ideas would prepare men in some de-
gree to accept the Christian doctrine of
mediation ? “Christ,” says one of the Fa-
thers (75), “is evidently the bond of our
ἃ Page 36. and Note 24.
LECTURE V. 143
union with God and the Father, for as man
he has us dependent on him, and as God
he is in God naturally, as his true Father.”
Again, the almost universal prevalence of the
shedding of blood in sacrifices, founded on the
opinion that the blood is the life, precludes
the supposition that sacrifices only expressed
a willingness to surrender our precious things
to the divine power as signs of our homage ἢ.
They were confessions that life itself was
forfeit to God, and efforts to redeem it. Now
when we seem to trace a gradual substitu-
tion of inferior animals for the human vic-
tim, and, further, of images and symbols for
the living things, that actual bloodshed might
be spared, we see the human mind beginning
to distrust its own intuitions. It seemed, as
civilization grew on, a dreadful thing to break
into the house of life, and pour out the blood
even of a conquered enemy, without the
strongest assurance that such cruelty had a
real efficacy. Hence, too, the devices to se-
cure from the victim at least the semblance
of assent; hence the high honour paid to
those who of free will immolated themselves.
The Christian doctrine of redemption ex-
plains this difficulty. A mere man, however
full of love for his brethren, however eager
b Page 41. and Note 27.
144 LECTURE V.
to die on their behalf, could never have been
sure that self-destruction would avail them.
But if Jesus was one with God, and there-
fore knew God’s counsel, and measured
against the forfeit life of human nature the
excellent price of his own sufferings, and
knew that it was sufficient, in him self-sacri-
fice was an act of the highest love and the
most perfect holiness.
Thus then an attempt has been made to
exhibit the work of Christ as reconciling the
two attributes of the Deity, at first sight in-
compatible—his righteousness and his mercy.
It has been shown that the mode of our
redemption is still a great mystery, and that
the common forms of speech and thought
will therefore inadequately represent it. It
has been remarked, that in its adaptation to
our needs, as sinful creatures seeking recon-
cilement, one great evidence for the reality
of Christ’s work lies; and that on a com-
parison of Christianity with the various hea-
then schemes, such resemblances come out
as confirm the evidences of the one, and
explain the lisping utterances of the other.
But one thing remains.
Every Christian doctrine must not only be
believed, but, as it were, turned into life
within us. The word was made flesh in
LECTURE V. 145
order that we might enjoy a living union
with the Father, knowing him and doing his
will as brethren of Christ the first-born. His
passion must likewise be transacted again in
our hearts (76). If he condemned sin in the
flesh by dying for it, so must we realise that
death by crucifying the flesh with the affec-
tions and lusts. How was it that the Apostles
reaped so rich a harvest when they went
out as Christ’s labourers after his ascension ?
They passed with swift feet through bar-
barous countries that knew nothing of other
nations or their hopes or their doings, and
said, “Jesus Christ suffered and has risen,”
and many believed. ‘They said the same
thing, foolish though it seemed, to the proud
inheritors of Greek philosophy ; and if many
derided, some believed. Wherever the seed
fell, it grew. Whence came this astonishing
success from the use of means so simple? It
was God that gave the increase; he prepared
those minds that were to receive the truth, so
that it awoke them to a new life. They did
not discuss Christian truth, but made trial
of it in their life. Thus they felt and saw
it, tasted and handled it. The distant scene
of the crucifixion was brought home to them ;
the unknown Galilean became ἃ present
friend. Unless we use the same means, if our
3
146 LECTURE V.
interest in the matter is only outward, im-
personal, historical, doubts will arise that no
logic can meet, the best arguments will fail,
for they are only fitted for convincing the
intellect through the heart. Let us love
him who first loved us, even whilst we were
enemies, who for us took the form of a ser-
vant and was obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross. Let us hate all that is
vile and sinful within us, because he hates it;
let us fear, lest by our sins we renew his
pains. Thus will our own consciousness bear
its witness to the truth of the history; Christ
will be formed in us, and every thing that
would estrange us from him will sound like
calumnies against a sure friend. “ Lord, to
whom shall we go? thou hast the words of
eternal life. And we believe and are sure that
thou art that Christ, the Son of the living
God*.”
¢ John vi. 68, 69.
LECTURE VI.
S. JoHN xvi. 13.
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will
guide you into all truth.
THE evidence of the human consciousness
for the necessity and the method of a recon-
ciliation of man with God, as it appears in
heathen systems, has been already partly ex-
amined. But there is another kind of evi-
dence, which must at least be indicated. Our
blessed Lord joined his Church in one by the
holy Spirit, which was to be a Spirit of truth,
to guide the disciples into all truth, to teach
them all things, and to bring all things to
their remembrance; and, according to St.
John, the perpetual test that Christ abode in
them, was to be the presence of that Spirit
that he had given them. Now we are accus-
tomed to attach importance, in a greater or
less degree, to the decisions of councils of the
Church, because of such promises of Christ.
But this implies a belief that individuals too
L2
148 LECTURE VI.
were under the guidance of the Spirit of
truth, so far at least as their wilful sins or
obstinate faults of education or position did
not frustrate his agency; for no one would
expect that true decisions could be obtained
from the aggregation of individual errors.
Councils and synods might be expected, apart
from special interpositions of God on their
behalf, which our Church nowhere imagines,
to produce right and true results, in propor-
tion as they consisted of men of spiritual
mind, endued with the knowledge and love
of God. Hence the witness of individuals,
where it can be obtained, will have a value of
its own, not different in kind, but in degree,
from that of synodical decisions; in both
cases the present guidance of God’s holy Spirit
being the essence and the measure of their
value. If indeed Christian agreement only
amounted to this—that each Church, and
each individual, was the repository of certain
doctrinal statements, which were merely to be
reproduced and reasserted in the same terms
upon all occasions, so that the functions of
each were those of a faithful reporter only,
the study of Christian writers would have
little interest, because the views of one would
stand for all. But each possessed, not merely
the words of a creed, but the principle of an
LECTURE VI. 149
internal life; to have apprehended sin and
God’s holiness and Christ’s reconciliation,
would place the mind in a new position for
viewing the field of human thought and ac-
tion, so that it would be able to pronounce
upon new combinations as they arose, and
decide how far they harmonized with, or were
dissonant from, the body of Christian truth.
The Gnostic or the Arian was met by the
answer most proper to his error, not be-
cause a provident tradition had prepared and
handed down the arguments before they were
wanted, but because a mind in which Christ
was formed, upon which the image of his life
and doings was deeply impressed, was able to
generate them, as new errors were succes-
sively put forth to contradict. And the words
of the apocryphal writer, in which the power
of divine wisdom is described, may be ap-
plied, though with heavy deductions for hu-
man frailty and inertness and prejudice, to
the knowledge of God through Christ : “ Wis-
dom. . . passeth and goeth through all things
by reason of her pureness. For she is the
breath of the power of God, and a pure in-
fluence flowing from the glory of the Al-
mighty: therefore can no defiled thing fall
into her. For she is the brightness of the
everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the
150 LECTURE VI.
power of God, and the image of his goodness.
And being but one, she can do all things: and
remaining in herself she maketh all things
new: and in all ages entering into holy
souls, she maketh them friends of God, and
prophets*.”
Hence the interest with which Christian
writings of different ages are studied. The
writers held fast to one belief in Jesus Christ,
very God and very man; but their modes of
stating and unfolding it were various, accord-
ing to the errors to be opposed, or the needs
of those they taught, or the modes of thought
and education prevalent at the time. Be-
tween [renzus and Anselm, for example,
there is that amount of difference.that might
be expected in two earnest and independent
minds, alike convinced that Jesus Christ, the
God made man, had died to save the world,
yet separated by an interval of nine centu-
ries, and exposed to very different infiuences.
The points of difference give the value to
their evidence upon points of agreement, be-
cause they assure us that we are examining
two free and independent witnesses, who are
not merely repeating with the lips a common
lesson, but are giving utterance to a truth
that dwells in them as a vital principle, ani-
a Wisdom vil. 24—27.
LECTURE VI. 151
mating, fashioning, and sustaining all parts
of their mind and soul.
It is not to be inferred that I am attempt-
ing a comparative estimate of the worth of
synodical decrees and of the writings of in-
dividual fathers. As in the two preceding
Lectures the questions proposed have been,
What did Jesus himself declare as to his
atonement ? and what did his Apostles
preach ? so the question that naturally suc-
ceeds is, What did the Church believe upon
the same doctrine? If it is to be answered
simply out of formal decrees, the task 15
short and easy. Our Nicene creed, com-
pleted at the two Councils of Nicza and
Constantinople, and at Ephesus stamped and
ratified as the Church’s final decision on
Christian doctrine (77), sets forth that Christ,
“for us men and for our salvation, came down
from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy
Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made
man, and was crucified also for us under
Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried,
and the third day he rose again according to
the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven.”
To these propositions all my hearers give
their unqualified assent. But they are well
aware that single writers upon this subject
have felt compelled by their position to
152 LECTURE VI.
speak more fully of the necessity of the
reconciliation of man with God, of the mode
of effecting it, and of its results. ΤῸ inquire
how the doctrine of the Atonement assimi-
lated itself to all other parts of their systems
and modes of thinking, how far it modified
or was modified by them, will be to open out
a new line of evidence, analogous to that
which we drew from pagan religions; and at
the same time it will enable us to reaffirm
the substantial agreement of Christian writers
upon this vital truth against the tendency
that exists at present to magnify points of
difference into positive contradictions.
The extent of the subject requires that we
put aside those controversies in which the
Atonement is only implicitly involved, and
confine ourselves to explicit statements. The
Gnostic sects, who denied the reality of the
human nature and acts of Jesus, and the
Judaizers, who discerned his human nature
only, assailed by implication the doctrine of
Redemption ; since if he were not truly man
he did not truly suffer, and so our hopes
from his sufferings are vain; and again, if
he were not more than man his acts and
death could not avail others. In like man-
ner the tenets of Arius and Apollinaris in-
volve the Atonement, whilst they primarily
LECTURE VI. 153
affect the person, of our blessed Lord (78).
But in the more express statements upon
this doctrine, more than enough of materials
for our present purpose can be found.
The earliest Christian writers were almost
compelled by their position to enter on the
philosophic discussion of their belief. Gno-
sticism was an attempt to represent the his-
tory of the world as a succession of outward
manifestations of the infinite Spirit; and
Greek and Jewish and Oriental philosophy
furnished the materials out of which its
several systems were constructed (79). A
purely speculative method like this chal-
lenged a speculative treatment of Christian
truth on the part of its defenders. The
sobriety and circumspection by which the
Christian writers met these wild theories 15
due to the aid of the Spirit that was guiding
them into all truth; but partly, as a natural
cause, to the fact, that they had to hold their
difficult way in the midst of such opposite
errors as have been already alluded to.
Their zeal might have tempted them to
counteract speculations which represented
Jesus as a mere human teacher, by with-
drawing from sight his true human nature,
if another system had not lain behind them
which destroyed all Christian belief by ex-
154 LECTURE VI.
plaining away all the historical facts of the
Gospel. Now when the mystery of the re-
demption began to be tried by reason, to
which, in the highest and proper sense of
the word reason, it commends itself as true,
it was not long before two distinct lines of
thought were opened out as to the object of
Christ’s sufferings. By Ireneus the scrip-
tural accounts of the redemption are fully
and prominently put forward; as a man
caused the fall, a man must cause the re-
storation; he must be a man able to sum
up in himself (zecapitulare) all the human
species, so as to bear the punishment of all,
and to render an obedience that will com-
pensate for their innumerable acts of dis-
obedience. It suits not with the divine
nature to effect his will by force, but rather
by love and influence; hence came the vo-
luntary self-sacrifice, out of exceeding love,
of the divine Son of man, who is truly God
and man; and hence, too, men are not
dragged, but drawn, back to God from sin,
embracing by an act of their will the offers
of merey made them through Christ. But
combined with these statements there are
indications at least of the idea that Christ
died to redeem men from a real objective
power which Satan had acquired over them,
LECTURE VI. 155
so that the redeeming price was paid, not so
much as a debt due to the righteousness and
justice of God, as a ransom to release them
from a conqueror, and to restore them to
God, to whom they originally belonged.
“ Since,” says this writer, in words often
quoted, and not unfrequently misunderstood,
“the apostasy [that is, the devil] unjustly
got the dominion over us, and, though we
belonged by nature to the omnipotent God,
alienated us, against nature, and made us his
own disciples, [Christ] the Word of God,
powerful in all things, and perfect in justice,
acted justly in regard to the apostasy [that
is, Satan |, redeeming from it that which was
his own; not by force, in the way that it got
dominion over us in the beginning, when it
carried off insatiably that which belonged
not to it; but by persuasion [ secundum sua-
delam |, as it became God to receive what he
would by the use of persuasion, not of force,
that justice should not be infringed, nor
that which God had created of old should
perish” (80). Some have supposed that the
words “by persuasion” mean by a way which
the devil himself must be convinced was
right and reasonable; but if this were the
only, or the prominent sense of the words, it
would be strangely inconsistent with the
156 LECTURE VI.
general views of the writer. The apostate
spirit, as he says in another place, persuaded
men to transgress ; but because he used fraud
and wrong to compass his purpose, the author
here contrasts with this false persuasion,
which he calls force and injustice, the fair
and just persuasion, by which the Son of man,
who has been lifted up, draws all men back
to him (81). It is to lost men, we may be
sure, and not to Satan, that the persuasion
in question speaks. With Irenzus the re-
demption was not a friendly treaty between
two powers for the release of prisoners: he
says that Christ contended with, repulsed,
conquered, despoiled, and bound the enemy
of God and man. Still it cannot be denied
that the notion that Christ’s sufferings were
to free man from Satan’s dominion as a real
objective power, obtained a place, though a
subordinate one, in the wise and moderate
system of Irenzus. Now this idea, of the
need of a redemption from the power of Satan,
appears again in the writings of Origen, not
however to the exclusion of true scriptural
views as to the effects of our Redeemer’s
work. “He bore in himself our infirmities,
and carried our sorrows; the infirmities of
the soul, and the sorrows of the inner man ;
and on account of these sorrows and infirmi-
LECTURE VI. 157
ties which he bore away from us, he says,
that his soul is troubled and full of anguish ;”
“He could take on himself, and so destroy,
the sins of the whole world.” These are the
words of one who has realised the truth; but
he also says—“'To whom did he give his
soul a ransom for many ? Surely not to God.
Was it then to the evil one? For he had
the dominion over us, until the ransom
should be paid him for us, even the life of
Jesus, though he was deceived, as thinking
he was able to have dominion over it” (82).
Indeed, this additional notion, of a deceit
practised on Satan, would follow as a ne-
cessary consequence from the idea that the
ransom was paid to Satan at all; because
he could not hope to retain the Redeemer
in his power, and he would not knowingly
surrender the permanent possession of the
human race in return for a ransom that was
to be wrested from him for ever as soon as
it was paid. And whilst great writers have
given their sanction to the opinion, such as
Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa,
Augustine, Ambrose, Leo, and Gregory the
Great, whose representations are so bold,
vivid, and figurative, that it might be
perilous to quote them here (83), a doc-
trine so unscriptural, so self-contradictory,
158 LECTURE VI.
could not, we may hope, be deeply rooted
in the consciousness side by side with the
main belief that Jesus had reconciled God
and man by his incarnation and death. It
is quite unscriptural, because it takes from
God his glory, and gives part of it to another,
because he is represented as unable to call
back his own erring creatures, still beloved,
without paying first the price of the precious
blood of his only begotten Son, to one who
in the very heart of his kingdom had set up
an alien throne. “ Art thou not God in
heaven ? and rulest not thou over all the
kingdoms of the heathen ? and in thine hand
is there not power and might, so that none
is able to withstand thee®?’ If so, then the
mysterious reason for the existence of evil
must be consistent with the omnipotence of
God. Satan rules over men, because they
have accepted him; evil exists in the phy-
sical world, but be we sure that that string
of discord shall be tuned, in some way yet
unknown, into a part of the universal harmony
which tells of the glory of God and sings his
praise. And accordingly it is one of the au-
thors in whom these rhetorical figures, of the
human nature of the Lord being as it were a
bait to catch the evil one, and entice him to
b 2 Chron. xx. 6.
LECTURE VI. 159
attack the concealed divine nature which it
would be his ruin to touch, attain their
boldest and most dramatic form, who pointed
out most clearly the difficulty they involved.
“If the ransom is paid to the evil one,” says
Gregory Nazianzen, “it is a strange insolence,
that a robber not only receives a ransom
from God, but receives God himself as a
ransom, and has so transcendent a reward
for his tyranny. And if it is paid to the
Father, how can that be, for by the Father
we were not kept in bondage?” (84) For
this doctrine is also self-contradictory. At
first the need of a ransom paid to Satan
was grounded on the justice and equity of
the Almighty, who would not break down by
violence even a dominion that had been
established in the first instance by injustice.
But here God appears to treat an inveterate
wrong as though it had passed into a right.
And how can justice be satisfied by the deceit
of offering a price which, nominally great, was
truly worthless, because it could not be re-
tained ? If, then, 1 am right in drawing a
distinction between the expressions about a
ransom paid to Satan, which in some form or
other almost all the Fathers, from Irenzus
downwards, employ, and that deeply-rooted
belief, of which the idea in question is an off-
160 LECTURE VI.
shoot, that Jesus Christ came down from
heaven to save the human race, by joining
in one the divine and human nature, and by
bearing in himself the punishment of sin, we
may still turn to the Christian writers with
profit, to learn how this belief gave a new
direction to their views of human life, how
it supplied answers to successive errors, how
it subdued and moulded to itself all their
other knowledge. If I am justified in think-
ing that an erroneous view, of which the
logical contradiction lay so close at hand,
could not have taken so deep a hold as it
may appear at first to have done, on the
minds of men like Irenzus and Augustine,
in whom the consciousness of Christian truth
was so deep and pervading, then we may
still rely upon that general agreement which,
apart from this, their writings manifest, upon
the doctrine of the Atonement, and may ap-
peal to it as the complement of our proof,
that this divine scheme of reconciliation is
found suitable to the inmost wants of man.
But another idea, less plainly repugnant
to scriptural truth, that Christ gave his life
as a satisfaction to God’s justice in payment
of a debt which all mankind had incurred,
and could not discharge, will also require
especial mention. And here it will not be
BRECTU RE’ Vi 161]
necessary to attempt to trace the history of
the theory of satisfaction, or the juridical
theory, as it has also been called, because the
name of Anselm of Canterbury is appropri-
ately connected with it, by common consent.
Perhaps no writer in the whole history of
the Church has brought to the study of the
philosophy of religion a keener intellect chas-
tened by a faith more humble. “Ido not
seek, QO Lord,” says he, “to penetrate thy
depths; I by no means think my intellect
equal to them; but I long to understand in
some degree thy truth, which my heart be-
lieves and loves. For I do not seek to un-
derstand, that I may believe; but I believe,
that I may understand” (85). And this no-
ble aspiration was no mere phrase of rhetoric.
In the two ideas which he has contributed to
the stock of Christian truth, namely, a proof
more elaborate than had heen attempted
before, for the existence of God from the
thought of God in the soul (3), and the proof
from reason of the necessity and worth of
Christ’s redemption, we may witness that
rare union of faith and philosophic acumen
in which neither of them dwarfs nor destroys
the other. That we are unable to accept his
results in either case, without reserve, is no
more than might be expected ; for both are
M
162 LECTURE VI.
attempts to deal with the highest problems
on which reason can be employed—to find
God, and to understand salvation. Still the
study of them could scarcely fail to benefit
any one who wished to explore the philoso-
phic ground of Christian faith ; however un-
inviting in form, the principal works of this
writer would help to clear and brighten the
finest intelligence, and to give a hint to the
proudest, that before God the knee should be
bent and the voice lifted in prayer.
The treatise on Redemption is an attempt
to answer the question, Why was it requisite
for man’s salvation that God should become
man? Considering the divine omnipotence,
we might expect that the mere fiat of his
will, or the acceptance of some lower sacri-
fice than that of his only-begotten Son,
might have sufficed to effect the recon-
ciliation. The incidents of the Incarna-
tion and the Crucifixion seem derogatory
to God; the Infinite Spirit clothing himself
with a finite nature, and allowing finite men
and the power of evil to assail and triumph
over him, these are representations that may
shock our reverence. If redemption was re-
quired at all, why was it not effected by
means of a sinless man who was no more
than man; a mere man caused the fall, a
LECTURE VI. 163
mere man might have sufficed for the re-
storation. This, Anselm replies, would not
have procured man’s perfect restoration, for
it would have left men dependent on one of
themselves ; he to whom they owed redemp-
tion would have been in some sense their
master instead of God. But why, it may
be urged, was there any need of redemp-
tion at all? When we speak of God’s anger
we mean neither more nor less than his will
to punish. The moment that will is with-
drawn there is neither anger nor punishment
to fear ; it appears, then, that a mere revoca-
tion of the will to punish would of itself con-
stitute salvation. The argument that God
gave his Son as a ransom for man from the
power of Satan, because it was right and just
to recover, by fair means, a race who had
freely and voluntarily given themselves over
to his power, is at once dismissed, for the
true reasons, namely, that the devil cannot
properly have either merit or power or right
over man; that the power which in one
sense he exerts against mankind was only
permissive, and that it expired when the per-
mission was withdrawn. He then proceeds
to establish the need of redemption on surer
grounds. Every creature that can will and
act owes to God an entire obedience, as the
M 2
164 LECTURE VI.
honour due to him. All sin, then, is a wrong
done to his honour, of what kind soever the
offence is. Punishment must attach to sin
invariably, in order to mark the difference
between sin and holiness; it would not only
encourage sin, if man thought that the Al-
mighty was blind to it, but would obscure
and distort our views of the divine nature
itself, if we conceived of him as one to whom
sin and its opposite are both alike. We
should thus regard God as admitting sin
into the order of the universe without dis-
sent or protest, whereas we know that the
very nature of sin is disorder. God, how-
ever, cannot suffer disorder; for though sin
could not really detract from his power and
dignity, its aim and intent are to dishonour
and deface, as far as may be, the beauty of
the divine government. If it may do this,
and yet draw at pleasure upon the divine
pity for forgiveness, unrighteousness is more
free and unshackled than obedience. Now
no man can render for his brethren the full
obedience required ; “a sinner cannot justify
a sinner.” Even if a man, with his heart
full of love and contrition, were to renounce
all earthly solaces, and in labour and absti-
nence strive to obey God in all things, and
to do good to all, and forgive all, he would
LECTURE VI. 165
only be doing his duty ; but he is unable to
do even this; and it is his misery that he
cannot plead his inability as an excuse, be-
cause that proceeds from sin. Now if some
being can be found to make satisfaction for
man, he must unite in himself two con-
ditions. He must be of the same nature as
those on whose behalf he renders the obedi-
ence, in order that it may be accepted as
theirs ; and yet, if the satisfaction is to be
complete, he must be able to render to God
something greater than every created thing,
for among men pure righteousness is not to
be found; and if so, he must be God, for
what is there above the creature except God
himself? Therefore he must be God and
man, whose life, far exalted above all created
things, must be infinitely valuable. By ren-
dering perfect obedience throughout life,
and even in a death which, as sinless, he did
not owe, and, as God, he might have escaped,
he made satisfaction for men. Thus is the
divine mercy, which seems to be excluded
when we think of divine justice and of the
infinite amount of sin, brought into perfect
harmony with justice, so that our reason can
discern that no better scheme of redemption
could have been devised (86).
The system of Anselm, thus imperfectly
166 LECTURE VI.
sketched, differs from the theory of satis-
faction prevalent among later theologians in
one important respect. Here satisfaction is
distinct from punishment; the one being an
obedience to God’s commands, and the other
the consequence of disobedience. It was by
obeying for men, rather than by being
punished for them, according to Anselm,
that our blessed Lord reconciled them to
his Father. He endured death rather as
a consequence of his obedience than an in-
tegral part of it: his unswerving determina-
tion to pursue holiness led the Jews to con-
spire against him and put him to death, but
the holiness rather than the death was man’s
justification (87). Thus the sufferings of our
Lord occupy a lower place in the scheme of
redemption than they ought to do. But
Thomas Aquinas, who in other respects
adopts the theory of Anselm, has made more
prominent the punishment which Christ
bore for men. And in the distinction to
which I alluded before, between the active
and passive obedience of Christ, or, as it is
sometimes said, between his satisfaction of
the law, and of punishment, the system,
so amended, has passed into modern the-
ology (88).
It may be a thankless office to point out
LECTURE VI. 167
defects in a view which many of my hearers
already know and admire as a beautiful pro-
duct of thought, and which was wrought out
from an earnest wish to make God’s wisdom
known among men. But there is some dan-
ger in applying thus strictly and logically
the notion of satisfaction for a debt, to a
transaction so mysterious, so far above all
comparison with men’s dealings’. The au-
thor himself admits that the condescension
of the Son of God contains much that no
theory can unfold. For is it not, after all,
a fault inseparable from all efforts to exhibit
the Infinite nature in the forms of finite
thought and speech, that they can but offer
a partial and onesided view? And whilst
this theory accounts for the objective part of
Redemption, and shows us on what grounds
the reconciliation was arranged without us,
it seems to omit the subjective part, for it
fails to explain how, by a living union with
the Redeemer, by faith on our side and grace
on his, we become so united with him, that
our life is one with his. At this point the
analogy of a satisfaction made by another for
a debtor breaks down; and therefore those
who would use this theory aright must be
prepared to abandon it here. Most true is
ὁ See page 132.
168 LECTURE VI.
it, that the work of reconciliation must be
completed without us, before the inward
change that follows on it can be commenced.
But in conceiving of the reconciliation itself,
we must represent it as something that can
and must be inwardly appropriated by each
believer. There is some danger, too, lest the
Atonement be allowed to degenerate into a
transaction between a righteous Father on
the one hand and a loving Saviour on the
other, because in the human transaction from
which the analogy is drawn two distinct par-
ties are concerned ; whereas in the plan of
salvation one will alone operates, and in the
Father and the Son alike justice and love
are reconciled. Nor does this theory answer
the main question so as to exclude all cavil,
why were the incarnation and death of
Christ indispensable (89). And _ yet, pro-
vided it is not considered as an adequate
and final explanation of the mystery, which
its author never intended, it will serve to
clear up and harmonize many parts of Scrip-
ture; and prove, if not that God must re-
deem man by this way, at least that in such
a mode of salvation there is nothing repug-
nant to the reason of the pious and reverent.
The existence of these two ideas in the
Church cannot be denied. The former—that
LECTURE VI. 169
of a ransom paid to Satan—prevailed from
the time of Irenzus to the twelfth century ;
and as it went through a regular growth,
and attained a much greater fulness and pre-
cision than it had at first, we must admit
that it was part of the current belief, and not
a mere accidental coincidence in the use of a
rhetorical figure. Still in the writings of
those who held it were the materials for
contradicting it, and they themselves were
not insensible to its incongruity with the
rest of their views. The latter—that of a
satisfaction of a debt due to God, the source
of which may be found perhaps in Athana-
sius (90)—has exercised its principal influence
from the twelfth century downwards. But
we must not judge of the belief of Christians
upon the Saviour’s work from these apparent
differences. On the contrary, there is a funda-
mental agreement among them on this sub-
ject, disturbed by fewer controversies than
most other doctrines. Through a succession
of ages, there were faithful witnesses, who,
with many errors and corruptions, individual
and general, proclaimed that Jesus sanctified
human nature by assuming it; that he there-
by mediated between God and man, and did
away with their estrangement ; that his two-
fold nature made his mediation possible ; that
170 LECTURE VI.
not his incarnation only, but also, in an espe-
cial manner, his sufferings and death, were
instrumental in freeing us from sin and
wrath, and in procuring for us eternal life;
and that so great a proof of love, as the
sending of God’s only-begotten Son into the
world to die for us sinners, ought to awaken
a lively gratitude on our part towards our
great Benefactor. They taught, further, that
he showed us an example of perfect obedi-
ence to God, and taught a purer morality,
and especially that all who came under the
new dispensation of God’s love should show
charity towards each other; that he gave
all believers power to become sons of God,
and to feel a new life within them, with new
impulses to holiness. Great stress is laid
upon the ransom or redemption effected by
the death of Jesus on the cross, although the
precise effects of this sacrifice are variously
explained by some, and left by others as a
mystery transcending all explanation (91).
If then we found in the false religions of the
world signs that the human mind was vaguely
feeling after a Redeemer, we appeal to the
testimony of Christians in all ages, in proof
that the Redeemer we have found enlightens
all those blind wants, and satisfies those ob-
scure longings. And this testimony is more
LECTURE VI. 171
valuable, because it is not that of men who
calmly open the undisturbed archives of our
faith, and read what is written there as occa-
sion requires, but that of men of pure and
fervent spirit, in whom the knowledge of
Christ was a life and a speech, who did not
suffer monstrous forms of philosophy to si-
lence them, nor great heresies to carry them
away, nor the enticements of worldly culti-
vation to work oblivion of the faith intrusted
to them. During the ages from which this
harmonious testimony may be drawn, an em-
pire crumbled away, and a spiritual domina-
tion, far more potent, sat upon the vacated
seat, and the imprisoned human mind awoke
from its long sleep, and broke its bonds, and
carried off the gates of its prison, and walked
into the free air, to begin that active life of
war, of travel, of scientific discovery, of free
discussion, of growing wealth, in which we
find ourselves involved; and yet the witness
to the need of redemption has not failed.
Ask the ages when the Bible was studied by
the few, and those in which it is in every
house and hand; and the same faithful say-
ing, worthy of all acceptation, comes back,
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners. We need not extenuate the errors
that have appeared from time to time; they
172 LECTURE VI.
have been great and destructive. But great
have been the temptations. And if, when
the earth has quaked and the mountains
burned with fire, the needle has sometimes
wavered, it is much that it always comes back
to that one star. Because you have felt
within yourself that the belief in Christ cru-
cified explained the paradoxes of the intel-
lect, and raised the heart to nobler wishes,
and gave an aim and purpose to the desul-
tory life, you will not admit that it is a fable
or a dream. But the same experience has
been realized a thousand times in history ;
and we may go and see how the same belief
reasoned down errors with Irenzus, or lifted
up the heart of a plague-stricken city with
Cyprian, or chastened and hallowed Anselm’s
searching inquiries. For all alike professed
him who put away sin by the sacrifice of him-
self, and so hath perfected for ever them that
are sanctified.
Now in comparing the state of our own
minds with that of any of the great Christian
writers, we shall perhaps become conscious
of a certain separation, which we have allowed
to grow up, between our religious opinions
and the rest of our pursuits and acquire-
ments. They were striving for the most part
to get Christianity recognised as the law of
LECEV RE: VE. 173
the earth, to make philosophy and _ history
and civil policy know the cross and the love
of Jesus. In them the knowledge of God will
seem, as it were, to have leavened the whole
lump; we perhaps have not dared to hide
the leaven in the meal. Thus, if we are stu-
dents, we may find that our real interests
have centred in history or science or politics;
whilst the bare propositions of Christian truth
have been acquired out of some uninviting
compendium, or studied, though with a weaker
purpose, in the word of God, on days which
conscience will not let us devote to the
dearer pursuits of our choice. If we are
called to preach to others, our teaching suffers
from our withholding the best of those things,
new and old, that we have been storing up;
it appears lifeless, formal, traditional. We are
tempted, too, to rest in the “ earthly things”
of Christ’s kingdom, to speak too exclusively
of the visible Church, of its ministry, of the
change of nature in baptism, because these
seem to presuppose less thought and medi-
tation than the heavenly things, such as the
nature of God, the redemption through his
blessed Son, the future hopes of man. To
see, if it were possible, in all things that
exist, him that existed before all; to know, as
we study the harmony of the universe and
174 LECTURE VI.
the beauty of natural products, “how much
better the Lord of them is, for the first
author of beauty hath created them‘;” to
further all those institutions or pursuits that
have any Christian import; to judge, but
without harshness or presumption, the cur-
rent philosophy and literature of the time
by a Christian standard; to be dissatisfied
with all mere activity of mind, unless it can
assist in rounding off the character into a
consistent whole, or equipping the mind with
useful instruments; would be to turn know-
ledge into true wisdom, and to offer wisdom
upon the altar of the Lord. Such a per-
vading consciousness of God would be most
precious, because it would impart a higher
interest to all pursuits, and make us able
to discern truth from falsehood in guiding
others, or in judging of popular opinions.
True wisdom comes by thought, and how can
that thought profit in which there is no
discernment of God ? It is not from a wide
range of literature, nor from protracting the
vigils of study till the stars grow pale, that
wisdom can be gained ; it is not the power of
reasoning, nor that of adorning old thoughts
by new beauties of speech; it begins with
the fear of the Lord. Let a man say, “I
d Wisdom xiii. 3.
LECTURE VI. 175
will expel this lurking distrust. If the
revelation of God is true, if the work of
Christ is real, all my other knowledge should
be adjusted and subordinated to this. His-
tory is a riddle, until I can discern some-
thing at least of the eternal purpose run-
ning through it; ethical systems are worthless,
except so far as they prepare for the pure
morality of Christ’s kingdom; culture and
accomplishments should minister to the illus-
tration and explanation of the highest truth.
I will take the ripest clusters of every vint-
age, to cast them into the winepress which
He trod; I will take the Christian scheme as
the ground-plan on which all my mind shall
be built. For, ‘behold, the fear of the Lord,
that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is
understanding®.’”
Θ Job xxvii. 28.
LECTURE VII.
HEBREWS x. 22.
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance
of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil
conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
THE choice now presents itself, of pursuing
the history of the doctrine of the Atonement
from the Reformation downwards, in the
same manner as in the last Lecture we
traced it almost to that point, or of summing
up the general result at which we have
arrived, and then comparing it with such
current opinions as are likely to meet us at
the present day. The complexity of the de-
tails of the history, the fulness of discussion —
which many parts of it have received already,
even from this place, and the shortness of the
space remaining, must determine me to the
latter course.
I. The Atonement, by which is meant the
work of Jesus Christ in reconciling God to
LECTURE VII. 177
man, and man to God, should be studied by
us in the same mode as it is revealed in holy
Scripture, that is, as a practical doctrine, not
asatheory. Our blessed Redeemer did not
rend the veil of heaven that we might enrich
our philosophy by gazing into the holy of
holies, and opening the very ark of God’s
counsels, any more than he laid open the
marvellous laws of the physical universe, and
endowed us before the time with a system of
astronomy, of physiology, and of chemistry.
He was a living, active teacher, showing men
how they should live and act. If he tells his
disciples that he must suffer, he adds at the
same time the practical precept, that any
man who would come after him must like-
wise deny himself, and take up his cross, and
follow him. If he washes his disciples’ feet,
he tells them that that symbolical act is to
teach them the duty of mutual condescen-
sion. And so the Apostles connect all the
parts of his life and sufferings with some
practical duty ; and exhort us to be humble,
because he took the form of a servant; to
love one another, because of his exceeding
love; to be dead to sin, because he died
for it; to consider ourselves as having
partaken of his rising, and to set our
affections on things above, because he has
N
178 LECTURE VII.
left the earth and ascended into heaven,
to carry, as it were, our hearts and long-
ings with him. Now whilst the early
writers preserved the practical side of the
doctrine of the cross, and insisted, without
ceasing, on the need of repentance and a
living faith in Christ, they manifested, at the
same time, as we have seen already, a grow-
ing tendency to push the bounds of specula-
tion beyond the line of Scripture. They
proclaimed most faithfully that the cross of
Christ redeemed us from our sins; but they
further inquired to whom the ransom was
paid, what was the precise nature of the
transaction, and whether the price was really
sufficient, or only accepted as such; ques-
tions which cannot be without interest to the
mind of man, ever musing upon many things,
but which the word of God, explicit as it is
upon all points needful to be known for sal-
vation, does not encourage us to pursue.
This objective tendency, this proneness to
examine and fill up the scheme of salvation
in itself, of which we might take the treatise
of Anselm as the most favourable specimen, in
the Schoolmen ran into a vicious extreme;
and when we find Aquinas discussing the
questions—whether any other mode of re-
demption would have been possible—whether
LECTURE VIL. 179
this mode was the most suitable—whether
the pain that Jesus endured in his Passion
was the greatest that could be (92)—we feel
that the time is coming for the reassertion
of the subjective side of this momentous
truth, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save us sinners, to the exclusion of all
questions that are devoid of a direct practical |
interest. This was the work of the Reforma-
tion ; which was brought about (so far as
human motives caused it) partly to shake off
the domination of a hierarchy, but partly
also to break the intolerable chains which an
over-subtle logic was forging evermore for the
conscience, struggling up towards God (93).
“If he had wholly and fully given himself to
the holy Scriptures,” said Luther of Peter
Lombard, “then he had been indeed a great
and principal doctor of the Church, but he
confused his books with many unprofitable
questions, sophisticating and mingling all to-
gether” (94). The Reformation, to speak
broadly, was a return from speculation to »
practice, from barrenness to fruit; the sense
of sin was strongly awakened, and the ques-
tion rung through the convicted conscience
—who shall deliver me from the body of this
death ? and the ingenious theories of a wis-
dom that professed to see beyond the stars,
N2
180 LECTURE VII.
and analyse the plans of him who sitteth be-
tween the cherubim, were put aside with
some impatience, by those who thought it
was enough to feel and believe with the
heart that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth
from all sin. Itis not meant, of course, to
assert either that the teachers who preceded
the Reformation entirely neglected practical
religion, or that the Reformers rejected ab-
solutely the scholastic theology: only that
the broad distinction between the two was
the difference between a theoretical and a
practical tendency. Now the progress of hu-
man thought requires to be frequently di-
verted from theory to practice: and it seems
quite as necessary now as it was at the Re-
formation, to present the doctrine of the cru-
cified Saviour in a practical aspect, on one
side against a materialism which seeks all
happiness in improvement of the physical
condition, all truth in physical laws, and on
the other, against a criticism which would take
the Gospel of Christ out of the keeping of the
religious sentiments altogether, and consign
it to philosophy and scholarship. ‘This, then,
is the first proposition we have gained—that
the scheme of Redemption is set forth in
the Bible with sufficient clearness for all
practical guidance, whilst the theory has not
LECTURE VII. 181
been entirely unfolded, as being beside the
grand purpose of revelation, the salvation of
all men.
This proposition, which is equivalent to
saying, that as the Gospel was written to
convert the heart, it must not be tried by
the standard of the mere intellect, should be
borne in mind; because the disappointment
of the student will often be severe, when he
is told that the judicial theory, elaborated by
many thinkers of high intelligence and real
piety, cannot as a whole be maintained, that
the very symmetry and completeness which
delight him are of human origin*, and that he
must be content instead with the simpler re-
presentations of holy Scripture, with the facts
of an exemplary life that he must copy, and
holy precepts that his heart must lovingly
accept. He is not asked to abandon one
theory in order to receive another ; but to re-
linquish all attempts to make a great mys-
tery open and plain, and to believe it him-
self, and offer it to others, as a mystery,
credible, but not yet wholly intelligible ; cre-
dible, because it meets our deepfelt wants,
not yet intelligible, because it concerns God’s .
infinite nature, and our minds are finite.
II. Then as to the nature of the transaction
a See page 162. and notes 86—8g.
182 PE CTUR EF) VIL.
itself. The Atonement is sometimes described
only as the reconcilement of man to God, by
those who think it unworthy of the divine
unchangeable nature to affirm that God is
reconciled to man. He, they say, was love
from the beginning, and he proposed from
the first to redeem the world by his Son, so
that the life and passion of the Son, which
took place in time, cannot have altered the
unchangeable nature of the eternal Fa-
ther (95). But this is no sufficient reason
for deserting the Scripture representation :
“ Being now justified by his blood, we shall
be saved from wrath through him’,” says the
Apostle; and though God is not a man, to
feel wrath, or the affections of love or pity
or repentance, still we believe that these an-
thropomorphic representations are necessary
for the acceptance of the doctrine as a
practical rule. It is not so much a question
whether God can feel wrath, and if not,
what attribute of him it is that bears that
earthly name, but whether we have some-
thing to fear from him which at least would
work tribulation and anguish in us, just as if
wrath it were. Nor is it really so easy to
separate in thought the change in our state
from an apparent change in his. To take
b Rom. v. g.
LECTURE VII. 183
an illustration :—suppose the universe were
cleared of star and planet, and in the infinite
void one sun were suspended, and say if it is
easy to determine whether that sun would
give light or not. As light must be received
before it is light, as the beam passes invisible
through vacancy, and is only realised when
some object confronts it, it seems that the
orb must lavish his rays in vain upon the
brute darkness, and heht is not; but then as
he fulfils all the conditions of light, as, if
you could launch the morning star into the
sphere of his influence, it would at once feel
and reflect the illumination, there must be
light. And is it not so with the eternal Sun
of Righteousness? We doubt not that from
eternity the rays of his love have been given
off through creation, and that he loved
men as much when in days of heathen igno-
rance their foolish heart was darkened, as
when they began to draw under the shelter
of the cross, attracted thereto as to a mar-
vellous manifestation of love; but when all
faces were averted, and would not come to the
light, it was a useless licht, for there were
no recipients. Before the Gospel of Christ,
as seen in the two dispensations, the world
lay weltering in wickedness, and men
wrought their own selfish will, and followed
184 LECTURE VII.
their own imaginations; and if here and
there a teacher of nobler aspect lifted up
his head, and uttered truth with stammer-
ing lips, as doubting the external sanction
of that which seemed to enlighten the spirit
within him, the din and confusion of men
were not hushed to listen. After the Gospel
of Christ, to them that believed was given
power to become the sons of God; every
believer received the light of love and truth,
and reflected back the light of his own love,
and the earth became by degrees a firma-
ment telling the handiwork of God. The
most fastidious metaphysician should not
grudge us the expressions, that God was
wrath and is grace, that he was estranged
from us and is reconciled; because such
words describe the true state of things from a
practical point of view, because it is an inno-
cent, a reverent, a consolatory mode of speak-
ing. This then is the second proposition at
which we have arrived—the Atonement is
the act by which God and man are recon-
ciled, he to us and we to him.
111. In the third place, the Atonement
was effected by a Mediator, who not only
stood between God and man, but partook of
the true nature of both. As man, he was
touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
LECTURE VII. 185
though without sin, and could teach men as
one of themselves, whose face they could be-
hold and live; he could suffer for them a
punishment which he, the only sinless one, did
not owe. As God, he was free from sin, able
to teach the whole will of the Father, able
to know all their thoughts and wants, able to
gather and keep those whom the Father had
given him. His whole work consisted of
three parts, instruction in the truth, ex-
piation of sin, and the foundation of a king-
dom or Church; and he has therefore been
regarded in a threefold character as our
Prophet, our Priest, and our King; a di-
vision of offices, which, if not founded on
express words of Scripture, seems certainly
consonant with its teaching (96). Now as
the union of the divine and human nature
took place at the Incarnation of our Lord,
we may regard that event as one principal
part of our Redemption. When the Word
was made flesh, the separation between God
and man was at an end; although the suffer-
ings that followed were required to com-
plete the reconciliation between them. The
Atonement, then, began at the Incarna-
tion (97).
IV. But fourthly, the sinless life of Jesus
contributed also to our redemption. He
erew in wisdom and stature, he came and
186 LECTURE VII.
went among men, he taught, reasoned, dis-
puted, consoled, that it might be proved to
men and before the righteous Father, that
though divine power dwelt in him, shone out
in his miracles, and enforced his words with
authority, he was like unto us his brethren
in all things except sin; and was fit to be an
example and teacher of holiness, an obedient
servant in pleading for a people that fell by
the disobedience of one, and, lastly, a sin-
less offering for their redemption. “ For such
a high priest became us, who is holy, harm-
less, undefiled, separate from sinners, and
made higher than. the heavens; who needeth
not daily, as those high priests, to offer up
sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for
the people’s: for this he did once, when he
offered up himself. For the law maketh
men high priests which have infirmity; but
the word of the oath, which was since the
law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for
evermore’.” But more, the offering made for
us must be entirely voluntary; “No man
taketh [my life] from me, but I lay it down
of myself. I have power to lay it down, and
I have power to take it again.” The justice
of God required this; the love of man lays
hold chiefly upon this; the just God will
not have a sacrifice that must be bound
¢ Heb. vii. 26. 4 John x. 18.
LECTURE VII. 187
with cords to the horns of the altar, to
atone for the sins of others; he will not
accept a captive taken in war, who must be
forced to his immolation, gagged and chained ;
nor yet bulls and goats, that have no under-
standing of the death that awaitsthem. Our
love to the Redeemer depends upon the be-
lief, that a free and conscious atonement was
made by him for us. “ The life which I now
live in the flesh,” says St. Paul, “1 live by the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
gave himself for me*.” Now perhaps we have
not considered what is required to constitute
an act entirely free. Actions are suffered to
pass for voluntary which certainly are so in
a very limited sense (98). In those deeds we
look on with most complacency, the share of
our own will is often small indeed; baser
motives mingle with and sully the higher ; if
we fix our direct gaze upon the law of the
conscience and of God, there are not wanting
side-glances at human praise, at peace, at pro-
fit. ‘Then, much of our boasted freedom de-
pends on our being sheltered from tempta-
tions: if you withdraw the pressure of public
opinion, of social position imperiled, of cus-
tom, of physical satisfaction, appetites and ten-
dencies for which we frequently express our
d Gal. ii. 20.
188 LECTURE VII.
own abhorrence, may burst up within us. But
all our complex nature influences our actions ;
there is not a thought, a yearning, an appe-
tite, that does not strive at least to have its
share in guiding our hand. The course we
describe is the sum of all the moral forces in
operation in our being. This consideration
takes down our pride, and guards us against
idolatry of men. ‘This makes that startling
estimate of the noble deeds of the heathen,
that, after all, they are but splendid sins (99),
almost literally true; for all is sinful that
proceeds not from a purged and chastened
will, which nothing but the love of God, con-
firmed by habits of obedience to his law, can
confer. But the offering up of Christ for us was
to be conscious and voluntary in the fullest
sense. The full extent of the suffering must
be known; the unworthiness of those he ran-
somed, tried and exposed; the choice, un-
biased, calm and settled; and therefore he
who offered must be free in will, and conse-
quently holy in life. We range through his-
tory, and find a thousand instances of that
cheaper self-devotion, by which men, upborne
by heat and passion, have confronted danger
or welcomed death; until we almost wonder
that it should ever have been said, “Greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay
LECTURE VII. 189
down his life for his friends‘”’” But he is
not truly a free man who rushes upon his
death drunk with the fume and tumult of
the battle, with praise before him and shame
behind; nor he whom difficulties have hem-
med in unawares, and who bears up against
them manfully, because this is on the whole
the wisest course, and does not compromise
his pride. He is free in truth, who, like the
blessed Redeemer of the world, knows no will
but that of his Father in heaven; who, when
the true course of duty once appears, needs
not to call in any baser principle to give the
spur to his intention, or to overbear his fears;
with whom the pride of an external consist-
ency, and the pleasures of sense, and the
world’s theatrical applause, are wholly exclud-
ed from the list of motives. This then is our
next proposition. The sinlessness of Jesus
contributed to our redemption, because dis-
obedience must be atoned for by obedience,
because that which is offered for the life of
others must not be itself forfeit, and because
a perfectly free offering cannot be made but
by a perfectly sinless will.
V. It will not be necessary to advert again
in detail to those passages of Scripture
which establish our next proposition, that
f John xv. 13.
190 LECTURE VIL.
we are reconciled to God by the blood
and the death of Christ. All the attempts
to explain away the meaning of these texts
strike at the very life of the Gospel his-
tory; we must either admit that the re-
demption of man was effected chiefly by the
death of the Son, or we must disbelieve his
own discourses, and hold that the wonderful
success of the apostolic preaching was the
triumph of a lie. In this truth lies the great
mystery of our salvation. No theory can
prove antecedently that the just ought to
have suffered for the unjust. “The great
goodness and clemency of God,” says the
Roman Catechism, “should be proclaimed
with the highest praises and thanksgivings ;
for he has conceded to human weakness that
one may satisfy for another” (100). But
that one should have the power to sum up
all men in himself, and to take upon him
the sins and punishment of all, is a more
marvellous proof still of the divine bounty.
Though we have proved the universality of
vicarious sacrifice in the ancient heathen
world, the doctrine of a crucified Saviour
giving his life for us is still difficult to the
understanding of cultivated men. But, let
it be repeated, this truth, like the rest,
must be viewed in the light of practice,
LECTURE VII. 191.
not of speculation. Systems of ethics may
be made without it; plausible reasonings
devised against it. But from the judgment
of the world, from minds possessed with
prejudice and dazzled by the near and
visible, to the exclusion of the distant and
unseen, there lies an appeal. Ask the man
who is no longer able to find consola-
tion in the smiles or the reasonings of his
brothers, who is shut up, as it were, in his
own heart, with the insufferable presence of
his sins, with his eye just opened to perceive
what sin truly is, whether those promises of
God’s word, which announce forgiveness, jus-
tification, reconciliation, redemption, through
the healing blood of the Saviour, are to be
lightly rejected. To such a one they are
life from the dead. If they are proved un-
true, he is left to the imbecility of his own
corrupt will, to fruitless sorrow, to desperate
fear. It may be said indeed that if we must
await the hour of the spirit’s terror and
desolation, in order to prove to it the doc-
trine of the cross, then the doctrine may be
a delusion, at which the prostrate and the
abject catch, to which the brave and good
are indifferent or hostile. But though it
finds easier entrance in time of dejection, it
has a restoring, invigorating power, that per-
192 LECTURE VIL.
vades all the energies of life. We cannot
but confess that in every attribute of manli-
ness the Christian character excels all others.
For the practical lesson which the passion of
Jesus teaches, is, that the most holy God
abhors sin; and all purity, all constancy in
right purposes, all noble aims, all desires to
help them that are out of the way, must
spring out of that conviction. This pro-
position, then, may likewise be considered as
proved—that Christ gave his life a ransom
for us. And as the Scriptures distinctly
assert that he takes away the sin of the
world, it may be added that the ransom was
given for all mankind, although many refuse
to use their interest in it (101).
VI. The resurrection of Christ is con-
nected with our redemption, as it is the
miracle which proves that God accepted him
and his work, and that he is able to fulfil his
promise of raising us from the dead. All
that was required for our reconciliation was
accomplished by the death upon the cross ;
and therefore the Apostle’s words, that Jesus
Christ “was delivered for our offences, and was
raised again for our justification’,” cannot be
intended to set forth the resurrection as the
act by which we are justified; but only that
5. Romans iv. 25.
LECTURE VII. 193
by which we come to the knowledge and as-
surance of justification (102). When Jesus
rose and ascended, he sent the Holy Spirit
upon his Church, by the light of which men
learnt to remember and believe on him who
was their righteousness ; and thus the resur-
rection tended to justification, but did not
effect it.
We are now in a position to describe the
Atonement by combining these statements.
It is that transaction by which men are re-
deemed from sin and death, and reconciled
to God, as he is to them. It is a mystery;
which can be apprehended by faith, because
it answers perfectly to an idea of reconcile-
ment which all forms of religion have striven
to express, and which each individual has felt
at some time and in some measure. But it
cannot be made intelligible in a complete
theory, because it has no parallel in human
experience. It was effected by the Incarna-
tion of the eternal Son and Word of God,
who thus became a Mediator between God
and man, as uniting the perfection of the two
natures in himself; who in that character
rendered an entire obedience to the Law
which men had broken, acceptable to God
instead of theirs; and who carried his obedi-
ence unto death, that by his sacrifice of him-
O
194 LECTURE VII.
self, freely made, the guilt of sin might be
manifested, at the same time that God’s love
and forgiveness were secured. His resurrec-
tion gave assurance that man’s justification
was complete; for it proved that he had
power to take again the life he had laid
down, and was the conqueror of death and
the grave. The Ascension was his resump-
tion of his own glory and majesty; and he
still receives gifts for men, and makes inter-
cession for them, and in the end of the world
he shall separate those who have accepted
from those who have refused the salvation
freely offered to all.
Now without condemning indiscriminately
all the attempts at a speculative Christology,
it is evident, upon the most superficial view
of history, that they result in disjointed and
partial views of a truth, which from a prac-
tical point of view can be regarded as one
harmonious whole. They offer us some-
times a plan of the work of God in re-
demption, in which no account is made of
man’s interest in it; they part asunder the
person of Christ, one but twofold, and assign
the chief share of the Atonement to one
nature or the other; they divide his acts
from his sufferings, though, as we have seen,
the two were intimately blended; they ap-
LECTURE VII. 195
portion out, with a precision not warranted
by Scripture, the share in the work which
the Incarnation, or the Obedience, or the
Crucifixion sustained. On the other hand, he
who resorts to the inspired writings in order
to draw near to Christ, as to one who can
remove the sore burden of sin, and to believe
on his power, and to learn his precepts, will
have an image of him and his work formed
in his consciousness far more true and real
than any express theory could have em-
bodied. And this is no mystical dream.
We tell the student that art is long and life
short, and surround him with beautiful forms,
and bid him study and copy them faithfully
for years, till his spirit is saturated with
beauty, before we suffer him to reproduce: we
refuse to confide the conduct of great affairs
to any on whom the furrows of thought and
toil are not written as a guarantee for his
experience. And if the artist and the states-
man require a training and a preparation be-
fore they realize the perfection of their powers,
it is not too much to say that though the
knowledge of the divine scheme of salvation
must begin in a deep-felt need of a Saviour,
and though salvation is brought within the
reach of the simplest, so that he that believes
is at once justified ; still the full understand-
02
196 LECTURE VII.
ing of the ways of the Holy One must open
by degrees on those who walk in holiness ;
and it would be an unreasonable impatience
to complain that on the first serious effort all
difficulties do not disappear.
But the tendency of speculation to divide
the doctrine of redemption, and by conse-
quence to divide Christians into sects, might
be illustrated from the present state of opin-
ion. In the Socinian scheme, the greatest
stress is laid upon the teaching and the re-
surrection of Jesus, whilst his sufferings and
death sink into a subordinate place. His
resurrection it is which assures us of the
power of God to redeem his people from all
dangers and death; whilst his sufferings were
an example of patience and constancy, and a
sign that he who had tasted all the bitterness
of the worst afflictions would know how to
aid his disciples in their trials. The notion
of a sacrifice this system rejects, because it is
repugnant to Scripture, because a temporary
death would be an inadequate expiation for
the eternal death owed by man, and because
a vicarious sacrifice would encourage sin or
make us slothful in well-doing (103). As to
the first reason, many of our own divines have
shown conclusively that holy Scripture is
against the Socinian view ; the second reason
LECTURE VIL. 197
assumes that we can measure the worth
of the sufferings of the Lord, as Aquinas,
Scotus, and the Lutheran theologians had
already assumed the same, though with an-
other purpose; and the third reason, that a
forgiveness by sacrifice encourages license,
must surely operate with equal force against
the doctrine of immediate forgiveness held
by the Socinians themselves.
The rationalistic scheme attenuates the
worth of the Redeemer’s death to that of a
mere symbol of reconciliation and of the aboli-
tion of theJewish sacrifices, with which stronger
minds can well afford to dispense, though it
may still be held up to the weaker (104).
The mythical theory, explained more fully
in the fourth Lecture, rejects the historical
account, partly as unfounded, and partly as
needless; it sees in the Gospel history a re-
presentation that has sprung out of the
unconscious invention of the generation in
which Christianity was founded, not of what
really befell one individual, but of what the
whole human race is doing and seeking after.
The union of spirit and matter in us (to
repeat what was then said) is the true Incar-
nation ; the conquest of mind over matter is
the working of miracles; the gradual eleva-
tion out of the gross, sensual material life into
198 LECTURE VIL.
the heavenly and spiritual, which marks the
course of human civilization, is represented
in the death, resurrection, and ascension as-
cribed to an individual in the Gospels. This
is not the occasion to vindicate the historical
character of the sacred books, nor to expose
the enormous difficulties that attach to this
scheme, regarded as mere matter of specula-
tion’. But tried by any practical test, it
dwindles into the most miserable mockery
of religion. Go to the bed of some remorse-
ful sufferer, whose life is suspended over that
abyss which no mortal eyesight can explore,
with the last strands of the cord cracking
and parting asunder, whose belief in immor-
tality is only the stronger now that his veins
are filled with death, and his dull senses re-
fuse their work, and open the Bible to which
he has been accustomed to look, not very
carefully perhaps, for the charter and assur-
ance of his hopes in that other country; and
tell him that it contains, wrapped up in figures
and stories, a theory of human nature and
of human progress; and what will he an-
swer? “If I am to spend my last strength
and thoughts over this book that you have
preached as a history, important for all to
learn, in doubtfully disentangling a hidden
h See notes 59 to 63.
LECTURE VII. 199
truth from the obvious falsehood, and if, after
all, that truth does not assure me that my
individual sins are hidden and covered before
that Judge in whose presence I shall soon
stand naked and ashamed, you may take
away the dead volume out of which you
have juggled the life and help, and I will
cover my face and meet the hour of terror
like the heathens of old, with nothing to
come between God and my vague feelings of
hope and piety.”
According to another theory, intended to
mediate between Rationalism and the the-
ology of the Church, the Christian finds that
from his position in the Church, or Christian
community, he enjoys a clearer consciousness
of God, and greater aid in freeing himself
from evil and sensuality, than if he were
isolated or placed in some merely worldly
society. This aid towards holiness must
either have come from God, or from the hu-
man beings who make up the Church: but
the latter is impossible, because each feels
his own sinfulness and confesses it, and holi-
ness cannot result from the aggregation of
many unholy natures. It is traceable, then,
to the Founder of the society, that is, to
Christ. He has communicated to us his full
consciousness of God, and, in the light of
200 LECTURE VII.
that, we can set our affections on things
above, can overcome the hinderances to a
good life which our social state at its best
must cast in our way, can even cease to re-
gard the troubles and pains that infest our
lower life as evils, because they have no
effect in obscuring our view of the Deity.
The expiation and redemption which the
Saviour wrought consisted in his taking upon
him our sinful human nature, and enduring
all its evils, in order to receive us into com-
munion with him. This theory lays stress
almost exclusively upon the Incarnation, as
being that which we can securely infer from
the Christian consciousness; the Miracles,
the Resurrection, and Ascension, are not in
the same sense essential to Christianity, be-
cause, though historically true, they are not
required in order to account for the fact
with which we set out, namely, the exalted
knowledge of God, and capacity for holiness
which our Christian position confers (105).
Lastly, in direct contrast to this subjective
method, the pantheistic theory offers itself,
which seeks a ground of the Atonement
wholly objective, in the nature of the Deity.
According to this, the life of the Divine
Being is known to us under three forms;
first, as pure and independent being, prior
LECTURE VIL. 201
to creation ; next, as unfolding itself in the
creation of the universe and therein of finite
minds; and, lastly, in the recall or return of
the creation to the Infinite Spirit. As the
progress, so to speak, into the finite attains
its furthest point, when God allows of sin
and death, it is then, and in connexion with
these, that the need of reconciliation is most
evident. And the work of Christ consists in
this, that by exhibiting his twofold nature,
divine and human, and so encountering suf-
fering and death, he awakens men to the
knowledge of the possibility of reconcilement
between the finite nature and the infinite.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to carry into
the minds of all the same consciousness of
a union with God, which the life of Jesus
was intended to display. Thus the three
points or moments of the divine life answer
to three kingdoms ; that of the Father ; that
of the Son, in which the infinite creates the
finite, and at the same time proves by a liy-
ing example of their union that both are
divine; and that of the Holy Ghost, in which
all men are to be brought to a living, daily
consciousness of the reality of the union.
Enough of this abstruse theory may perhaps
be understood, to see that it describes the
reconcilement of God with himself rather
202 LECTURE VIL.
than that of man to God. It excludes alike
God’s righteousness and his love ; it knows
not divine grace nor human will; it is a
description of a supposed necessary deve-
lopment of the divine nature, and not a
scheme that meets our practical wants and
interests (106).
Thus we have glanced at some of the many
combinations which the kaleidoscope of hu-
man thought has thrown together. If time
had allowed of a more orderly historical in-
quiry, the views with which the names of
Osiander, Piscatorius, Grotius, and others
are connected, might have been cited to
strengthen our position (107). But it is evi-
dent from what has been adduced, that spe-
culative inquiry alone will not lead us to
Christ, will not form in us all one and the
same image. Let me not be supposed to as-
sume the right to blame others for a fault
into which, too probably, my own attempts
to explain this subject have often betrayed
me: a theory almost compels a counter
theory ; and many a pious believer that would
gladly have looked upon the cross of the
Lord with an unquestioning adoration, has
been forced to rise from his knees and enter
the strife, and choose his side. Happy are
we that the influence of these disputes is
LECTURE VII. 203
more distantly and indirectly felt in this
country. But felt it is; and if the day
comes for defending the truth against closer
attacks, it is by disencumbering ourselves of
human additions to holy writ, and by preach-
ing the cross of Christ as a practical truth,
that we must contend. Why should we
stand gazing up into the mysteries of heaven
which have not been brought down to earth,
with idle feet and hands that hang down ?
We feel and know that one fervent prayer,
one deed of compassion, one drunken orgy
avoided, one act of lust foregone, will teach
us more of the truth of Christ than months
spent in the curious idleness of speculation. If
at the age when noble resolves are most easy
to form, most permanent in their impres-
sion, we could but determine to live for our
ascended Lord, and to carry his name both
by our example and exertions somewhat fur-
ther into that waste of ignorance which the
smallest parish or hamlet may present, we
should lay hold by degrees upon the know-
ledge of his work far more surely than by
the mere understanding. And though we
cannot foreorder our own life; though God
may have determined for good to feed us
with the bread of tears, and give us tears
204 LECTURE VIL
to drink in great measure’; though he may
cover our high hopes with an obscure life,
or cause the strong limbs to wither, or the
bright light of intelligence to grow dim; still
there is in the consciousness of reconcile-
ment with him, attested to us by a growing
purity of life, something which cannot be
taken away, something which shall be a foun-
tain of peace here, and by which the Lord
will remember and recognise us in his king-
dom.
i Psalm Ixxx. 5.
LECTURE VIII.
MATTHEW XxXVIt. 20.
Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
world.
THE traveller in the Silesian mountains
has often heard with surprise the words of
greeting which the country people employ
instead of the more usual form—* Praised be
Jesus Christ!” (108). He is struck with this
attempt on the part of well-meaning teachers
to bring into the very highways and hedges
the memory of Christ’s salvation. It is true,
that careless custom has clipped and con-
tracted the syllables; and that the holy
thought they should express seems often to
fail of lighting up even for a moment the
cloud of worldly care and hardship that
hangs fixed upon the face. But this will
only make the practice in question more in-
teresting, to one who reflects that Christians
in all countries in one respect resemble the
Silesian peasant, that they are trying, or pro-
fessing to carry about in their daily life, the
206 LECTURE VIII.
remembrance of the work of Jesus, as he
carries it on his lips, whilst yet the witness
of their actions to the power of Christ is
stammering and confused like his words.
And the question we are to answer to day
must often have suggested itself to those
who have so patiently followed the present
Course of Lectures. How shall we appro-
priate to ourselves the redeeming work of
Christ, so that it may create in us a spirit
of gratitude to God, and purity and _ holi-
ness ?
If we divide the means of coming to a
knowledge of Christ into intellectual, moral,
and sacramental, it must not be supposed
that these classes are mutually exclusive.
No argument upon such a subject can be
addressed to the intellect, that does not pre-
suppose a certain moral state; without hu-
mility, and a consciousness of sin, there will
befno need of a Saviour, and therefore proofs
of his actual advent will be viewed with in-
difference at the best, and probably with
hostility. Again, no sacrament can have its
full effect without repentance and faith, in
other words, without a certain state of know-
ledge and of the will. Lastly, no moral dis-
cipline ought to bring us to believe that
which is repugnant to our reason (109). Still
LECTURE VIII. 207
we may divide the helps to Christian know-
ledge into these three classes, according to
the prominent, but not the exclusive, charac-
ter of each.
I. All reasoning upon the work of our
blessed Redeemer must begin from the con-
ception of sin. ‘The whole creation, man ex-
cepted, acknowledges, though unconsciously,
that God is its only Lord and King. One
will guides all things with unerring preci-
sion; through the rolling firmament that
marks the hours and years and _ cycles,
through the world with its seedtime and har-
vest, and frost, in the hive of the bee, and
the beaver’s hut, and the lion’s lair, the will
and Spirit of God breathes, and blows all
things whither it listeth. There are no re-
bellious stars, no inversions of the seasons, no
brute creatures that become conscious of the
laws of their instinct, and turn and refuse to
obey them. Resistance to God begins with
that creature that alone knows him. Man
turns from God to do that which is right in
his own eyes; he makes himself the law for
himself; he is selfish, and therefore he is
sinful. But conscience will not leave him
tranquil in his isolation. He knows that
God is, and suspects that he is a rewarder
of them that diligently seek him. And whe-
208 LECTURE VIII.
ther he seeks refuge in a philosophic apathy,
hopeless of a nearer approach to the high
and holy One who inhabits eternity ; or in
spasms and agonies of self-renunciation ima-
gines schemes of reconcilement, and drags to
the altar the most precious victims he can
procure, and slays them with shrieks before
the awful presence, mingling sometimes his
own blood with theirs; in either mood, he
bears witness, as we have urged already’,
to the need of atonement and reconciliation,
not as a feeling or a sentiment only within
him, but as the logical consequence, so to
speak, of the admissions that the Deity ex-
ists, and that he himself is estranged from him.
But the scriptural scheme of reconciliation
seems to include every condition that reason
can exact. What can give greater assurance
of reconcilement between God and man than
the visible union of these two natures ? What
can more strongly stamp the hatefulness of
sin than the greatness of the sufferings by
which it was removed? What could more
appropriately condemn and destroy selfish-
ness than a renunciation out of love and
compassion of the glory of God’s throne and
an assumption of the human nature, debased
and corrupt, that was to be redeemed ? What
ἃ Lecture II.
LECTURE VIII. 209
could better secure men in their reconciled
condition than an example, pure and perfect,
of the life they ought to lead and the temper
they ought to exhibit ? The passion of Jesus
does, what the heathen proposed by his sacri-
fices, turn away the wrath of God, and that
by shedding of blood; it does set forth a
high priest who will worship for us, yet
whom we may also worship; it dispels all
doubts as to our connexion with and interest
in the sacrifice, for here the victim is himself
aman, with whom we may by love and trust
and imitation unite ourselves more surely
than a people to their king, or brethren to
their brother. The passion of Jesus makes
it possible to conceive of the union of in-
finite justice with infinite mercy in one and
the same divine nature. In working this
out into a theory, the analogy of an earthly
transaction has been pushed indeed too far ;
and in particular, Anselm, in describing the
Redeemer’s coming only as something ne-
cessary to repair the ravages of sin, seems to
exclude all Christian joy from the contem-
plation of his life and working. Intimately
connected with our sins as every part of
them must be, the tears that seem proper to
his Cross and Passion should be shed also at
his manger-cradle. But if, out of the myste-
P
210 LECTURE VIII.
rious counsel of God, the guilt of man gave
cause, not merely for its reparation, but for
the revelation of him in whom dwelt all the
fulness of the Godhead bodily, if man’s dis-
obedience gave occasion for the advent of
him who was the perfection of created
things, we may dwell with wonder upon
what has been boldly called the fortunate
transgression (felix culpa), which, terrible
and deplorable in its consequences to us,
was yet made the cause of adding to the
creation its flower and crown and glory,
the sinless man, the Redeemer. And thus,
among the many sides of this mystery, there
is room for joy and sorrow, for Christmas
and for Passion-week ; for we indeed are
leprous with sin, and defiled and loathsome,
and grief becomes us well; but just because
we have been sitting long by the wayside
with dust upon our heads and heaviness in
our hearts, brooding on our impurities, shall
the King of Glory pass by, to speak the word
that shall heal us, and the world shall see
his glory that else had been concealed, and
shall lift up Hosannahs of joy to him who is
their wisdom and righteousness and sancti-
fication and redemption, who came to de-
clare that Father that all had been obscurely
feeling after (110). It is in attempting to
LECTURE VIII. 211
remedy this defect of Anselm’s system that
the strength of the pantheistic theory, itself
erroneous and defective, consists. That God
should create finite natures, rising in regular
progression nearer and nearer to himself, and
that he should thus contemplate himself in
his own works, this theory regards as neces-
sary to the divine nature. In allowing sin
and death, he, as it were, advances to the
furthest point in the region of the finite ; in
creating finite souls, with the power to know
him, the infinite Being, he begins to return.
And when the Son of God comes into the
world, and exhibits in his own person the
divine and human nature, so as to convince
men of the possibility of reconciling divine
and human, infinite and finite, his appear-
ance is just as truly an integral part of the
divine plan as the creation of the universe
itself; the creation would have been incom-
plete without that essential step in the pro-
cess by which God, who first planted it off
from himself, subdues and recalls it all unto
himself again. Upon the errors of this sys-
tem I touched in the last Lecture; and they
need, perhaps, with my present hearers, no
caution from me. Nor must we omit to
recall the argument from Christian con-
sciousness, among the intellectual helps to
P2
212 LECTURE VIM.
the appropriation of the doctrine of redemp-
tion. The member of a Christian church
can form a purer and clearer notion of God
than others less favoured; he can see more
beauty in holiness, and less allurement in
sin; he is surrounded by fewer temptations
to vice and sensuality; he can pray more
freely and confidently; in a word, he is part
of a community in which moral improve-
ment and knowledge of God are secured in
an unequalled degree. In seeking an ade-
quate cause for this superiority of his po-
sition he must exclude human agents, because
the component members of the Church are
frail, like himself, and each for himself real-
izes, or may do so, the same contrast between
his own sinfulness and the advantages of his
position as a Christian. His thoughts are
naturally directed to the Founder of the
Church as the source of the blessings he en-
joys. In the union of the divine and human
natures in Christ he finds the origin of his
own greater knowledge, his longings for holi-
ness, and his higher hopes. And so long as
we do not attempt to pare and clip the
Gospel-history to suit the demands of this
kind of argument, it is both safe and neces-
sary. To account for Christendom, some
preternatural cause is required ; and it seems
LECTURE VIIL 213
a conclusive objection against the mythical
method of interpretation that it destroys the
adequate cause we possess, the revelation of
God in the person of Christ, without suggest-
ing another that is fit to satisfy even the
most obvious requirements. But we must
not, on the other hand, assume that the
cause in question will be just such, and so
ereat, as to account for our view of the effect;
and when Schleiermacher, the chief expositor
of the doctrine of Christian consciousness,
decides that the immaculate conception, the
miracles, the resurrection and ascension of
our Lord, are not essential to his theory in
the same sense as the incarnation and the
passion, we see how defective the theory
itself must be; for if there is one event in
the Gospels on which Christian hope is
taught to fasten, as the victory over death,
and the assurance of our immortality, and
the pledge of our justification, it is the Re-
surrection of the Lord (111).
But why these remarks upon the philoso-
phy of salvation? not to gain disciples for
Irenzeus, or Gregory Nazianzen, or Anselm,
or the later theorists whom we have been
discussing ; still less to recommend the con-
struction of an eclectic Christology to which
all past thinkers may contribute that portion
914 LECTURE ΥἹΠ.
of truth, that gave influence and endurance
to their schemes, in other respects perhaps
erroneous. But let it be at least admitted,
that the scheme by which man is redeemed
from death by the Saviour’s blood is not
merely a crude and artificial analogy from
human things, in which all that reason has
to dois to make a plausible defence against
the charge of injustice in allowing the inno-
cent to perish for the guilty. The idea of
mediation is as old and deepseated as reli-
gion itself; in the Christian view of it, minds
pious and profound have discovered truths
and awakened harmonies that have helped
them to understand the purposes of the
Creator and the mystery of their own being.
The study of the speculations of l[renzus
and Anselm might well be added by the
theologian to that of the urbane dialectic
and splendid assumptions of Plato, and of
the verbal subtleties and keen practical sense
of Aristotle. But this great design refuses
to be girt in by the narrow rim of any hu-
man system. Meditate as we will, the per-
mitted existence of evil in the realm of the
Omnipotent Lord, and all the consequences
that follow from it, will be matter of wonder,
and not of scientific analysis. And yet no
one shall turn his thoughts to this subject,
LECTURE VIII. 215
in a spirit of eager yet reverent inquiry, but
shall be enabled, we may well hope, to see
Christ as “ the power of God and the wisdom
of God.”
II. But the moral conditions for such an
inquiry may not be neglected. “If any man
will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross, and follow me’.” Great
must be the power of the teacher over his
people, who can say this. It is the power of
the general who has shared the soldiers’ hard
fare, and wrapped himself in the same coarse
cloak, and taken rest upon the same wet
ground as they, and whom they will follow
to a man, through fire and carnage, till the
strife is done. The ambassadors of Jesus
Christ preach a holiness of life that has been
shown on earth already. With what face
would the messengers of a glorious and
prosperous king, such as the Jews desired
their Messiah should be, go into the reeking
lanes and courts of our towns, where suffering
heaped on suffering festers and ferments, or
stand by the sleepless bed of sickness, or call
on the mourner to lift up his hidden face
and hearken, if their message only came to
this, that a prince in purple, faring sumptu-
ously, vouchsafed to remind them that suffer-
Ὁ Matt. xvi. 24.
216 LECTURE VIII.
ing made men perfect, and trials of faith
wrought patience, and the sick and wretched
were beloved of God ? Would not the mes-
sengers be struck dumb by the obvious retort
—“If the Lord cares for suffering, and knows
that it is good, it is strange that he has
chosen to manifest himself in luxury and
splendour. He is great and high; we are
weak, and tempted beyond our strength; we
have nothing in common with him.” But as
it is, the story of the Gospel must ever gain
the ear of the poor and wretched, so long as
the sound of sympathy is dear to the aching
human heart. It is a story of one who mixed
with men in all their conditions and tempers,
dealing tenderly with all; of one who preached
good tidings to the meek, and bound up the
broken-hearted, and proclaimed liberty to
the captives, and the opening of the prison
to them that were bound, and gave to them
that mourned in Zion beauty for ashes, the
oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness; of one, who, in
spite of all good works, was despised and
rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief, until he made his grave with the
wicked ; of one, who yet was highly exalted
of God, and whose name is raised above every
name. Even if the secret aids of grace and
LECTURE VIII. 217
the Spirit were put aside, there would be a na-
tural influence in such a record, that none but
the very hardened could entirely resist (112).
It is the strength of our religion that our
High Priest is touched with the feeling of
our infirmities, and has set us the example of
overcoming them. No one wonders that
Christianity has raised, and is raising, the
humblest human person into a respect un-
known so long as man’s pride and strength
gave laws; for the divine mission of Christ
began among the humble, and conquered
princes and emperors last. The care for
sickness and suffering is but natural, in the
followers of one who proved himself to be
God and Lord by miracles wrought to remove
such evils. The consolations that we offer:
to the unhappy—the worth of which can be
fully known to the unhappy alone—acquire
their reality from their connexion with him
who suffered to save the world. But if the
Gospel finds its way among the wretched and
humble, because of a kindred element in it
with which they can sympathise, the conse-
quence is plain, that it cannot find entrance
into minds whose prevailing mood is pride
and selfishness. If Christ had been only a
more glorious Solomon or a better Herod, he
could not have been the friend of the captive
218 LECTURE VIII.
or the guide of the penitent. But now he is
the humble Son of man, preaching a gospel
of self-denial during a life of many sorrows;
and we try to reign as kings without him,
throned on our own self-esteem, carefully
exacting the tribute of the regards of others,
and turning life into a feast and rejoicing.
And who can wonder that we miss the drift
of the divine message—that the cross of
Christ suggests to us neither divine power
nor divine wisdom ? Let us humbly return to
those warning words—“ If any man will come
after me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross, and follow me.” Let us very reve-
rently ask what they signify.
That sin is selfishness has been often put
-before my hearers, but not more often than
a truth so fundamental requires*; and it fol-
lows of course that renouncement of sin is
self-denial. Our Redeemer represents his
own holiness, as consisting in his renun-
ciation of all merely human self-dependence,
and living in and upon the will of the Father.
“T seek not mine own will, but the will of
the Father which hath sent me’.” And St.
Paul exhibits this, “ Even Christ pleased not
himself; but as it is written, The reproaches
of them that reproached thee fell on me*.”
© See p.1gand note 14. 4 Johnv.30. ¢ Rom. xv. 3.
LECTURE VIIL. 219
Standing out in the strongest contrast to the
self-denying spirit of holiness, does the same
apostle exhibit the self-asserting, self-pleasing
spirit of evil, as it is to reveal itself at the
end of the world, when the man of sin, the
son of perdition, shall oppose and exalt him-
self above all that is called God, or is wor-
shipped, so that he as God shall sit in the
temple of God, showing himself that he is
God*. Now, as we might expect, the in-
ward change that in some form or other must
show itself in every man that has turned from
sin to follow Ged, is described in Scripture
as an abandonment of the selfish principle.
“ None of us liveth to himself, and no man
dieth to himself. For whether we live, we
live unto the Lord, and whether we die we.
die unto the Lord; whether we live there-
fore or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this
end Christ both died and rose again and re-
vived, that he might be Lord both of the dead
and living *.” “In lowliness of mind let each
esteem other better than themselves. Look
not every man on his own things, but every
man also on the things of others. Let this
mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus.” In that parable in which man’s
estrangement is so aptly yet so profoundly
f 2 Thess. ii. 3,4. 8 Rom.xiv.7—9. ἢ Phil. ii. 3—5.
220 LECTURE VIII.
illustrated, the essential feature in the pro-
digal son’s transgression is his wish to be in-
dependent of his father, to take his share of
goods to himself, and go on his way; as that
of his reconcilement is, that he dwells with
his father, using all that he has as his own.
Now how should any one who has allowed
religious doubts to enter his mind reason
upon these statements? “I find it hard,” we
will suppose him to say, “to answer critical
objections to the history of the Bible, and
harder still to find and keep up a real living
relation between those facts which commence
with the birth and end with the ascension of
Jesus, and my own needs. That God, who
usually acts by laws controlling large masses
of facts, should have bound up the salvation
of his people with one pattern man, born in
Judza and not elsewhere, when Herod held
weakly, by foreign permission, the tarnished
sceptre of God’s failing people, and at no
other time, seems strange and hard to pa-
rallel. If the culminating period of the glory
of Rome, when she made the same name
serve to designate her own empire and the
whole inhabited world, had been connected
with the Redeemer’s advent, and Rome had
been the herald, as she was the persecutor, of
the Gospel, then the power of her empire and
LECTURE VII. ΟῚ
the success of Christianity would have been
explained as cause and effect reciprocally
of each other. Orif when England and
America had fastened the Anglo-Saxon speech
like a girdle round the world, our common race
had been made the messengers of new tidings
of peace to all nations, which our greatness,
our energy, our success might have recom-
mended and enforced, some natural proportion
between means and results would have been
discernible to any eyes. But the small and
weak beginnings of that system of belief that
issuedfrom an upper-room at Jerusalem, where
one quaternion of soldiers might, by all human
calculation, have trampled it out under their
feet, appear so different from other divine
operations, that scepticism regards their suc-
cess as challenging the explanation of acci-
dents or of natural causes. Yet why should
I seek only for physical and social analogies
to justify this supposed strangeness of the
ways of the Most High ? If, on a closer study,
I find that the Gospel sets forth the highest
example of self-denial and of pleasing God—
and if sin proves on reflection to be the exact
opposite of self-denial, a self-seeking spirit—
then here, in the history of this divine man,
would seem to be the proper field on which
to seek the condemnation of sin and death,
222 LECTURE VIII.
and the reconciliation of man with God. If
selfishness is that which has polluted the
world from the beginning, and one unselfish,
and therefore sinless Being has manifested
himself to make many like him, then is he
greater than the greatest, and I cannot won-
der that the battle with sin gathers round
him, and that nations of men should adore
him, because they feel that he has conquered
it. ‘The reason, then, that I feel there is any
thing little or contemptible in the Gospel-
history, is, that I try it by physical or social
tests, rather than by moral. <A conqueror is
called great, with the world’s full consent,
because every one can mark the track of his
devastation. A physical discoverer is great:
a nation with a wide commerce and a grow-
ing population is great. But the more ob-
scure greatness of one who has overcome sin
in himself, and discovered anew to the earth
the lost light of God, and sent out messengers,
few and weak, but with sure credentials,
to carry it abroad, is to a discerning eye
something far more excellent.—But what is
it in me which prevents me from discerning
moral grandeur, and ranking it the highest ?
It is the selfishness, still unreclaimed, that
makes my own moral nature coarse and low.
A man could not discern the sun, says Plo-
LECTURE VIII. 223
tinus, unless there were something sunlike in
his own eye (113). Warned by the blindness
of those who in all ages have put martyrs to
death, destroying in God’s name that which
had the spirit of God, and cheered on the
other hand by the examples of those who
have found the Gospel to be a light and a
living reality, I will turn my attention, not
so much to external arguments upon Christ-
ian truth, as to the internal sense that is to
receive them, not to the quality of the light,
but, before all things, to the singleness of my
own eye. Returning to a simpler life, and
calling back the vague affections that have
been allowed to range too freely through sin
and frivolity, I shall discern my own position
better. It was a miserable self-deceit, to sup-
pose that senses drowned in wine, or lusts
inflamed by indulgence, or extravagance that
was undermining a home and health, sacred
from me at least, because the pure flame of a
love I did not requite was burning there,
could ever suffer me to understand the depth
of the riches of his love who suffered to save
the world. He suffered for men; and what
part or lot can those have in such a one,
who feed fat their selfishness on the suffer-
ings of others? For there can be no sin that
does not involve others in its ruin; the min-
994 LECTURE VIII.
isters of base pleasures, the boon-companions
that borrow our recklessness to aid in drown-
ing the last protests of their conscience, the
creditors that trust us, the father that has
garnered up his hopes in us, the general
circle of which we are part, whose moral
tone declines under the weight of our ex-
ample, these all suffer because we sin. And
so sin makes the sinner an Ishmael, with his
hand against every man, and every man’s
hand against him; whilst piety brings into
view the deep relations that bind a man to
his fellows. Duties to a parent’s love, duties
to the feebler moral nature of companions,
duties of example, duties to the poor, come
up to light; and a man finds that he is a
branch on the great stem of the human
family, drawing through it from God, who
sustains it, the common life that circulates
throughout. And who shall best understand
the love of Christ? The sinner in his isola-
tion, or the good man in his love and sym-
pathy? The most prominent difficulty in the
scheme of redemption 15, that Christ should
be able to sum up in himself (so Irenzeus ex-
presses it') the whole human species, and thus
as one, suffer for all. How one should sin for
all, as Adam did, and how one should atone
i See Page 154, and note 8o.
LECTURE ὙΠ 225
for all, as our Redeemer did, it is hard to
understand ; but only a mind in which love
has at least begun to work can realize the
fact of a universal redemption wrought by
one. Thus then are self-denial, and the bear-
ing of the cross, and imitation of Christ, a
preparation for knowledge of God, as well as
conditions of salvation.”
And hence we may understand how it is,
that, whilst the creation of the world oc-
cupies but a few verses in the sacred _his-
tory, the restoration of it fills so large a
space; and why the one was wrought by the
mere fiat of the Almighty, who “spake, and
it was done; who commanded, and it stood
fast*;” whilst years of suffering and con-
tradiction were lengthened out in effecting
the other. Men are to study there the ana-
tomy of self-denial; they are to watch that
sacred life, until “the depth of the riches
both of the knowledge and wisdom of God”
dawn upon their hearts. Not ina moment, -
nor in a single act, can that pure and per-
fect life be understood. He who is the
brightness of God’s glory and the express
image of his person, the equal of God, the
King of kings, the Lord of angels, to whom
all power in heaven and in earth is given,
K Psalm xxxill. g. 1 Romans xi. 33.
Q
226 LECTURE VIIL.
passed a life on earth, among those who
opposed or misunderstood him, in doing
miracles for men and _ suffering evil from
them, until he finished his work by his
death. His life lies open in the sacred
pages in all its articulate details, that all
who have sinned, in ali countries and times
whither his word shall come, may become,
not his servants, but his personal disciples,
and see, better than Peter, James, or John,
because they may use the lights cast back
from all history to aid them, the full signifi-
cance of all his labours, watchings, and in-
struction, of his patience and meekness, his
wisdom and love.
III. Besides inteliectual and moral helps
to the realization of scriptural truth, sacra-
mental aids were to be considered. A sacra-
ment is an act in which spiritual blessings
are at once represented by and conferred
through some visible thing, according to a
positive institution of God, to those who re-
ceive it with faith. The annexing of spiritual
blessings to a visible symbol tends to fix
the eye of faith upon the historical cha-
racter of our religion, and upon the Man
who has both shown forth the perfection of
our nature and redeemed our fallen race
from God, whose eternal Son he is. Thus
LECTURE VIII. 297
we are saved from the cloudy abstractions of
a so-called absolute religion, much vaunted at
present, which vainly attempts to raise us
above historical Christianity to the contem-
plation of “ Absolute Being.” We have been
baptized into one visible company, following
the example and the precepts of Jesus him-
self. We eat and drink the Lord’s Supper,
as the Apostles did from the very hands of
their Lord. If we cannot see and hear the
ministry of him who once on earth reconciled
in himself the divine and human natures,
sundered by man’s sin, we can restore the
memory of them in these sacramental acts, to
which the positive command of the Son him-
self has given a spiritual meaning and effect.
But the effect is not magical, but moral; the
sacraments confer the grace of God, they do
not contain it; they are channels, not foun-
tains. Nor are they the sole or the peculiar
means of conveying to believers the effects
of our Lord’s Incarnation. He has already
included in himself the whole human species;
his redemption is the counterpart of Adam’s
perdition, and all are made alive in the one
as they died in the other. The effects of
the Incarnation are perceived whenever faith
awakens to the need of it and to its reality.
Man, who fell by an act of will, by the spi-
Q2
228 LECTURE VIEL
ritual part of him, cannot be restored without
his will and by the material part of him. At
the Fall, the hand of faith lost its hold upon
God, and man began to trust in himself ;
what is it but the outstretching again of that
hand of faith that constitutes his return to
God ? What but that act of the mind, which
opens every channel through which his grace
is appointed to flow? Our Church has taken
care to discountenance the Romish view,
which would degrade a sacrament into a
charm or talisman, by clear statements; “the
mean whereby the body of Christ is received
and eaten in the supper is faith.”...“The
wicked and such as be void of a lively faith,
although they do carnally and visibly press
with their teeth ....the sacrament of the
body and blood of Christ, yet in nowise are
they partakers of Christ; but rather to their
condemnation do eat and drink the sign or
sacrament of so great a thing” (114).
Only one topic remains. If Jesus has
done such great things for us, his life is the
principal scene of the world’s history, and all
thoughts and feelings ought to be turned
towards it, as all plants follow the light.
What place, then, should the doctrine of the
Atonement hold in preaching? On the one
hand, many pious minds are afraid that the
LECTURE VIII. 229
constant iteration of the fact that Christ died
to save the world may defeat its own aim, by
producing weariness and inattention, or may
lull the impenitent into the security of a
false peace. On the other hand, where the
cross of Christ is kept back, a dull and flat
morality takes the place of the Gospel, or
less vital questions, about the effect of sacra-
ments, or the position of ministers, usurp an
undue prominence. But if the whole life
and person of the Redeemer are set forth,
together with their necessary connexion with
our life and actions, there is little danger
either of tedious iteration or of self-de-
ceit. To preach Christ and him crucified,
to proclaim that he is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and re-
demption, to show how this one great truth
ramifies through all the paths of knowledge
and duty, is the business of every Christian
teacher ; and if the line of the duty is clearly
discernible, the consequences belong to God.
There has ever been in the doctrine of Re-
demption an efficacy that has surprised even
those who have administered it. Go forth,
it might be said to one who had undertaken
to win souls for Christ, and preach the whole
truth without distrust. You may not see
how the news that Jesus lived and suffered
230 LECTURE. VIIL
is to enter into and vehemently move the
souls you try to instruct; but for well-nigh
two thousand years has the cross of Christ
been lifted up, and has been drawing all men
unto it. In every congregation, though the
attrition of custom seems to have rounded
all men into the same outward manner, al-
most like the twinned pebbles in the brook,
there are many secret influences at work,
and for each does the news of Christ provide
some food or medicine. There is the yearn-
ing of affection, and the heartache of baffled
hope, the irritation of sickness, the decay of
manly strength, the fear of the end. Beware
of ministering to these various ailments with
an empiric’s arbitrary hand; dispense fairly
what the great Physician of souls has in-
trusted to you. Ears long closed will be
opened when you expect not; trials befall
men daily, under which the hardest discovers
that he has a heart of flesh. And not far
before us lies a point at which we must
either rest on heavenly hopes or remain
without hope. Think what it must be to
die. Will a theory of the visible Church,
of an Apostolic ministry, of the precise ef-
fects of sacraments, provide a man sufficiently
against that great transition? Death is not
in most cases—not always even with the
LECTURE VIII. 231
good —a glad and speedy progress to a
higher state of life, cheered by the con-
sciousness of a good fight fought, with the
lights of another world breaking into this,
and glimpses of the angels round about the
throne. No; it is often a state in which
the mind is weak and prostrate, and full of
fear and awe; and the embracing hands of
affection must be unclasped, not without
suffering; and all pursuits that made the
mind’s activity must be abandoned; and in
the disturbed perspective of memory old
sins and new shall struggle for the foremost
rank ; and the tide of life must slowly recede
from limbs and senses, and the curtain of a
strange gloom fall down. “He restoreth my
soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righte-
ousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with
me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me™.”
Into your hands, as his minister, has Christ
intrusted the vials of his consolation. Go
and pour them out for each. ‘Vell them
what shall make life at present real and
true; assure them of something that shall
stand them in good stead when the pageant
is over and the lights go out. Bid them
m Psalm xxill. 2, 4.
232 LECTURE VIII.
know that their Redeemer liveth ; tell them
that one who is the Resurrection and the
Life compasses them about already with the
cords of his sympathy, and will never for-
sake them. And you will wonder at the
tenacious grasp with which those will em-
brace the cross who have no other hope ;
you will see, that so long as we teach all
things that he has commanded, he is with
us always, even unto the end of the world.
jis fll, oes Gan Diag or
“Ὥσπερ yap ἐν τῷ ᾿Αδὰμ πάντες ἀποθνήσκουσι, οὕτω Kal ἐν τῷ
Χριστῷ πάντες ζωοποιηθήσονται. 1 Cor. Xv. 22.
Αὐτὸς ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν. St. ATHANASIUS.
7»ὺρ ᾽ μ
ΝΘ dir:
LECTURE I.
Note 1. p. τ'
“ THE Doctrine of Atonement Illustrated and Defended
in Eight Sermons preached before the University of Oxford
in the Year 1795....- by Daniel Veysie, B.D. Fellow of
Oriel College, and one of his Majesty’s Preachers at White-
hall.” This series of Bampton Lectures was directed prin-
cipally against the “ History of the Corruptions of Christ-
ianity,” by Priestley; and is much esteemed by many as a
polemical work against the Socinians.
The word Atonement is derived from at one, though this
is sometimes questioned. “ He made them both at one
with God, that there should be nothing to break the atone-
ment.” Udal, Ephes. ii. And by Tyndale, “ mediatour” is
explained as ‘advocate, intercessor or an atonemaker.”
Shakspeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher, use the verb
active to attone. In Romans vy. 11, Tyndale and Cranmer
have attonment. The etymology may seem less suspicious on
comparing the Latin adunare, adunatus, adunatio. Cyprian
speaks of “ adunatus et verus Christi populus dominici gre-
gis caritate connexus.” Ep. 57. (al. 60.) I do not find that
adunare is used in the sense of reconciling ; but it seems to
account for the formation of to at-one.
Note 2. p. 4.
Ταῖς κοιναῖς ἐννοίαις ἀρχῆθεν cvvayopevovta. Origen. cont.
Cels. III. 40. (ἀρχῆθεν Gelenius renders per omnia: in
C. Delarue’s edition it is ad communem sensum ab initio
nobis insitum. The latter best suits the context.) But on
236 NOTES.
κοιναὶ ἔννοιαι see a note in Sir W. Hamilton’s Reid, p. 774.
b. note. ‘“ The soul,” says Origen, “ which partakes of
reason, recognising [in God] a nature related to itself, casts
aside at once the things it hitherto regarded as gods, and
conceives a natural love towards the Creator, and by this
love cleaves to him, who first taught the nations these
things.” Ibid. Compare the quotations in Sir W. Hamil-
ton’s Reid, note A.
Note 3. p. 5.
Anselm’s argument is, that if we can form a notion of a
nature that has nothing higher than itself, we imply exist-
ence in that notion; for otherwise, a thing that existed
only in thought would be inferior to one that existed in
thought and in fact too, and so our conception of the high-
est nature would not exclude a higher, namely one that
existed in fact as well as in thought. Et certe id, quo
majus cogitari nequit, non potest esse in intellectu solo. Si
enim vel in solo intellectu est; potest cogitari esse et in
re: quod majus est. Si ergo id, quo majus cogitari non
potest, est in solo intellectu; idipsum, quo majus cogitari
non potest, est quo majus cogitari potest: sed certe hoc
esse non potest. LExistit ergo procul dubio aliquid, quo
majus cogitari non valet, et in intellectu, et in re. Proslo-
gium, Chap. II. See Chapters I—V. This argument is
anticipated by Cleanthes (see Sextus Empiricus adv. Math.
IX. 88—g1.); the mind is led to conceive a highest thing
in each class, and thus comes to an absolutely highest na-
ture, i.e. God. Also by Plato, whose arguments for a deity
turn mainly on the position that the mind out of an in-
stinct of self-respect cannot help ascribing to reason the
supremacy and absolute power. (Philebus, 28. C.) Also
by Augustine (de Lib. Arbit. II. 3 foll.) And by Boethius
(de Consol. Philos. ITT. 10.)
Note 4. p. 5.
Gaunilo, a monk, in a short book “ Pro insipiente” shows
how absurd it would be in other matters to argue from a
conception of some perfect thing to its real existence. See
Gerberon’s Anselm, pp. 35, 36. Anselm rejoins (Contra
LECTURE I. 237
Insipientem, Chap. II.) by showing that his argument only
applies to one nature, namely, id quo majus cogitari non
potest. For other objections see below.
Note 5. p. 5.
Mendelssohn admits (Morgenstunden IX and XVII.)
that, the sphere of thought being distinct from that of fact,
it is absurd to argue from the conceivable to the actual, in
any other case than that of the most perfect Being. In all
the sciences this argument would be a glaring fallacy ; but
not here. His argument is summed up in the text.
Note 6. p. 6.
Descartes gave a new form to the ontological argument.
We find an idea within us of a being infinite, eternal, im-
mutable, independent, omniscient, omnipotent, by which we
and all things which exist have been created and produced.
(Medita. III. 26.) Now the formal cause of this idea can-
not be found in ourselves, for we are finite, and are con-
scious of being far removed from such attributes of per-
fection; indeed the idea itself makes us feel our own
inferiority. Nor do we obtain it as a mere negation of
what is finite, for the idea of the infinite is more real than
that of the finite, and ought to be conceived before it as
its ground. Nor can we have compounded this idea from
several actual existences, as with the centaur, the chimera
&c., because in all those cases we can recover, by a very
simple analysis, the components of our notion, but not
here; and because unity is implied in this idea. (Réponse
aux Obj. de Caterus. 6. Medita. III. 40.) We conclude
then that the cause of this idea is a being who has in him-
self all the perfections that we conceive in our thoughts.
Again we can deduce the idea of God’s existence from his
very nature; for the conception of the divine nature not
only implies, like all others, a possible existence, but a
necessary one. Al] that we clearly perceive to be implied
in the idea of a thing, is true of the thing itself. Now we
conceive clearly and distinctly that the existence of God is
implied in our idea of him, and therefore he exists. (Me-
238 NOTES.
dita. V.6. Réponse aux Obj. de Caterus 6. Medit. dispos.
géométriquement, prop. 1.) See Renouvier Manuel de Phil.
Moderne, p.69. Also Spinoza Prine. Phil. Cart. I. Props.
5, 6, 7. Leibniz Ep. ad Bierlingium. With Descartes
the two arguments cogito, ergo sum and est notio Dei, est
ergo Deus are so connected that our existence is made the
ground of the divine. (Medit. ITI. 34, 35, 39.) But it has
been contended (ex gr. by Marheineke Dogm. II. 76) that
the process ought rather to be reversed. The assurance of
an absolute existence is required as the ground of the
belief in relative and derivative existences. The form given
to this proof by Ammon (Sum. Theol. Christ. p. 110) is
worthy of citation: “ Quum idea infiniti, qua Deum con-
cipimus, intellectui canonem preebeat in judicandis veris
et falsis; falsum autem ex mero phantasmate judicari et
corrigi non queat; colligitur etiam merito, notioni absoluti,
que mentem humanam occupat, et per vim conscientize et
officii inopiam arguit, respondere veritatem zternam in in-
tellectu numinis archetypo.” In the text I have given the
form of this proof which may best meet the objections
brought against it. The existence of God is assumed as a
primary fact; the ontological argument explains at least
the nature of the assumption. Here belongs another proof,
to which no place has been given in the text, the historical
proof (argumentum a consensu gentium) which establishes
the universality of this assumption from the examination
of all times and nations. ‘“ Ut porro firmissimum,” says
Cicero, “hoe afferri videtur, cur deos esse credamus, quod
nulla gens tam fera, nemo omnium tam sit immanis, cujus
mentem non imbuerit deorum opinio: multi de diis prava
sentiunt: (id enim vitioso more effici solet:) omnes tamen
esse vim et naturam divinam arbitrantur; nec vero id col-
locutio hominum, aut consensus effecit: non institutis opi-
nio est confirmata, non legibus. Omni autem in re con-
sensio omnium gentium lex nature putanda est.” use.
Disput. I. 12. And why do we assume that God exists?
because we not only think of, but love and tend towards,
him. Our thought impels towards an object, which it of
course presupposes to exist. ‘ Qui se suosque affectus
LECTURE 1. 239
clare et distinete intelligit,” says Spinoza, “ Deum amat,
et eo magis, quo se suosque affectus magis intelligit....
Hic erga Deum amor intellectualis mentem maxime occu-
pare debet. ... Mentis amor intellectualis erga Deum est
ipse Dei amor, quo Deus se ipsum amat, non quatenus
infinitus est, sed quatenus per essentiam humans mentis,
sub specie eternitatis consideratam explicari potest, ἢ. 6.
mentis erga Deum amor intellectualis pars est infiniti amo-
ris, quo Deus se ipsum amat. Hine sequitur, quod Deus,
quatenus se ipsum amat, homines amat, et consequenter
quod amor Dei erga homines, et mentis erga Deum amor
intellectualis, unum et idem est.” (Ethie. V. Prop. 15, 16,
36. vol. 1. p. 399. fol. Bruder’s Ed.) This would need qua-
lifying, as in its present form it is pantheistic; but that we
are related to God, and are still in some degree conformed
to his image, is the reason we know him to exist, and turn
towards him.
Note-7. p. 9.
The cosmological proof of the divine existence, as drawn
out in the text, relies on the principle of sufficient reason
(ratio sufficiens, see 'Thomson’s Laws of Thought, p. 280.
3d ed.) Carneades employed it, according to Cicero (de
Nat. De. II]. 13.) Aristotle uses it; whatever moves, re-
ceives its motion from another; but we cannot go on to
infinity in the search after sources of motion, therefore we
must stop at last in something which is immovable and
eternal. (Phys. Ause. VIII.) I have followed Leibniz:
“ Quia preesens status deducendus est ex statu adhue an-
teriore, et hic rursus ex anteriore, qui et ipse alio adhue
anteriore indiget : ideo, et si in infinitum procederes, nun-
quam rationem invenires, que non rursus ratione reddenda
indigeret. Unde sequitur, rationem rerum plenam in par-
ticularibus reperiri non posse, sed queerendum esse in causa
generali, ex qua non minus status preesens quam precedens
immediate emanat, nempe in auctore universi intelligente.”
“This proof” says Knapp in his Vorlesungen ‘‘ when stated
in connexion with others, and especially with the moral
proof, is well caleulated to produce conviction even in the
common mind. The Bible frequently contrasts the eternity
240 NOTES.
and immutability of God with the perishable nature of the
material world. Psalm xe; cii. 26—28; Heb. i. 10 fol.”
Note 8. p. Io.
The proof of God’s existence from the order and beauty
of the universe, called the physico-theological proof, “ de-
serves at all times to be mentioned with respect. It is
the oldest, the clearest, and the most adapted to ordinary
human reason. It animates the study of nature, just as it
has its own existence from this, and thereby ever receives
fresh force.” Kant, Kritik, p.651. Among ancient writers
this was the favourite argument. In Holy Scripture see
Psalms viii; xix; civ; Isai. xl. 21—26; Job xxxvii; xli;
Mat. vi. 25: - 03) Acts XiV.15 . 05° XV. 24. ..3, Rom. ἀπο
Those who have treated the general argument most popu-
larly are Fenelon and Paley, who followed closely Van
Nieuwentyt. Writers on special parts of creation are too
numerous to mention.
Note 9. p. 11.
Kant thus states the moral argument: “The highest
good of man consists of two parts, the greatest possible
morality and happiness. The former is the demand of his
spiritual, the latter of his animal nature. The former only,
his morality, is within his own power; and while, by per-
severing virtue, he makes this his personal character, he is
often compelled to sacrifice his happiness. But since the
desire of happiness is neither irrational nor unnatural, he
justly concludes, either that there is a supreme being who
will so guide the course of things (the natural world, not
of itself subject to moral laws) as to render his holiness
and happiness equal, or that the dictates of his conscience
are unjust and irrational. But the latter supposition is
morally impossible; and he is compelled, therefore, to re-
ceive the former as true.” Kritik, p.620....This form was
given to the argument by Raimund de Sibunde. Theol.
Natur. Tit. 83. In its more usual form, the proof runs—
When injustice or oppression or undeserved misfortune
appears in the world, the mind by a natural instinct flees
to a just judge, who can punish the wrong-doer and lift up
LECTURE I. 241
the suffering; and for this it must believe in God. See
also Lecture V. p. 120.
The so-called practical arguments for the belief in God,
are scarcely worthy of a place in the present discussion.
They are, 1. that as the mind abhors annihilation, it is
driven to believe, and should believe, upon one who is able
to give eternal life. ii. That human weakness is so great
that without the belief in God, temperance, moderation,
honesty would be difficult or impossible ; we should there-
fore cleave to a belief so useful. iii. The belief in God is
safe even if he does not exist; disbelief in him, if he does
exist, is fatal: we ought then to adhere to a belief in God
for the sake of safety. But a belief founded on the first
or second of these arguments alone would be rather a self-
ish tendency to our own good than a religious reliance
upon and reverence for the most High. The third (which
Bp. Butler employs in his Analogy [Introduction] as a use-
ful caution to arrest a sceptical mind on the threshold of
enquiry) would easily tend to self-deceit if employed as the
ground of religious belief, for how can the admission of a
proposition, as less dangerous than its contradictory,
amount to real belief in God? Compare Daub, Theologu-
mena, p. 163.
Note 10. p. 13.
The proofs for the existence of God, first naturalized in
philosophy by the Wolfian school, have been subjected to
a searching criticism by Kant and later writers. And it
must be admitted, against the ontological proof, that it is
formally illogical to argue from an idea of possible exist-
ence to an assertion of actual. The attempt to include
existence as one of the predicates in our analytic view of
the divine nature, because (see p. 5) existence is one ele-
ment of perfection, and it would be a contradiction to
represent the perfect God apart from it, is thus handled
by Kant: “If I do away with the predicate in an identical
judgment, and I retain the subject, a contradiction thus
arises, and consequently I say that the predicate belongs
to the subject necessarily. But if I annul the predicate
together with the subject, then there arises no contradic-
R
242 NOTES.
tion, for there is no more any thing which could be contra-
dicted. To suppose a triangle, and yet to do away with
the three angles of the same, is contradictory; but to do
away with the triangle, together with its three angles, is
no contradiction. It is just the same with the conception
of an absolutely necessary being. If you do away with the
existence of this, you thus do away with the thing itself,
together with all its predicates: whence then is the con-
tradiction to be deduced? Externally there is nothing
which would contradict, for the thing is not to be exter-
nally necessary—and not internally, for you have by the
suppression of the thing itself, done away with, at the same
time, every thing internal. God is omnipotent—this is a
necessary judgment. The omnipotence cannot be done
away with, if you suppose a Divinity, that is an infinite
Being, with the conception of which the first is identical.
But when you say God is not, neither the omnipotency, nor
any other of his predicates is then given, because they are
all annihilated together with the subject, and in this
thought there is not manifested the least contradiction.”
Kritik. (p. 454 Eng. Trans.) The cosmological argument
depends upon the assumption that the law of causality is
universally applicable, and that an infinite chain of causes
is inconceivable. The admission or rejection of the former
will depend upon the theory of causation we adopt: Hume
would reject it because experience, observation and analogy
give rise to the idea of cause and effect, and we must not
apply the idea in a region where these cannot have place.
(Kssays, vol. II. On Necessary Connexion.) Kant would
join in a protest against transferring causality from the
world of sense to a higher world. (Kritik, p.637. Compare
the conspectus of different views of Causation from the
master hand of Sir William Hamilton in Discussions, &e.,
p- 585. Thomson’s Laws of Thought, p. 255 note. 3d ed.)
It is true that the supposition of an infinite series of causes
gives no suffcient, because no original, cause for what we
see; but so far as the idea of cause belongs to the uni-
verse and the finite, it would go to prove the existence of a
necessary being, not however a supernatural being, but an
LECTURE I. 243
eternal ground of existence in the world itself. (Strauss
Dogmatik. I. 382.) Compare, on this argument, Leibniz
(Nouveaux Essais. [V. ch. 10.) upon Locke (Hum. Under.
IV. το. ii.) Against the physico-theological proof Kant
objects that it can never alone prove the existence of the
Supreme Being. Strictly, the order and beauty of the uni-
verse incline to the belief in a being capable of producing
them ; but whether znjinite power, wisdom and goodness, or
only great power, wisdom and goodness, whether an infinite
or a finite being, this cannot inform us, and must rely upon
the ontological proof for aid. Against the moral proof, (see
note g,) in the form adopted by Kant, it is denied that there
is any contrariety between morality and happiness; the high-
est happiness being that which arises from a felt harmony
between our actions and the moral end we ought to seek.
(Strauss, Dogmatik, I. 393. from Hegel Phinomenologie,
Ρ. 465.) ‘ The last and only ground of our religious belief
in God is our own religion or love of God, in which the
belief in One beloved above all is necessarily contained.
Therefore the being of God is just as certain to a man, as
his own religion is.” (Hase, Dogmatik, p.115. 1850.) In
the text the mode of operation of these arguments, when
used conjointly, and as analysing and illustrating the idea
of God, the existence of whom is already postulated, is
described.
Note 11. p. 13.
This objection is by Siiskind ; see Storr and Flatt Theol.
b. IL. p.i.
Note 12. p. 15.
Δύο yap σαφῶς ἔχω ψυχάς .. .. οὐ yap δὴ μία ye οὖσα ἅμα
ἀγαθή τέ ἐστι καὶ κακή. οὐδ᾽ ἅμα καλῶν τε καὶ αἰσχρῶν ἔργων
ἐρᾷ, καὶ ταὐτὰ ἅμα βούλεταί τε καὶ οὐ βούλεται πράττειν: ἀλλὰ
δῆλον ὅτι δύο ἐστὸν ψυχά, καὶ ὅταν μὲν ἡ ἀγαθὴ κρατῇ, τὰ καλὰ
πράττεται, ὅταν δὲ ἣ πονηρά, τὰ αἰσχρὰ ἐπιχειρεῖται. Χοπο-
phon. Cyrop. VJ. i. ὃ 41. Crates, according to Diogenes
Laertius (VI. v. § 89.) used to say that it was impossible to
find a man who had not fallen, just as every pomegranate
had a bad grain in it. Plato uses the beautiful image of a
good and bad horse yoked to the same chariot and driven
RQ
244 NOTES.
by the same charioteer, to illustrate the condition of the
soul. (Phedrus. 253.) He attributes, in the Meno, a
natural depravity to children, otherwise it would be enough
to confine them in order to keep them good. His “ Re-
public” is founded on the conception that in man and ina
state, elements of disorder, which is the same as sin, exist,
and these are ever struggling to subdue the ruling prin-
ciple, the reason. So the well-known passage in Ovid
(Met. vii. 18):
Si possem, sanior essem,
Sed trahit invitum nova vis; aliudque cupido,
Mens aliud suadet. Video meliora proboque
Deteriora sequor.
Note 13. p. 17.
Sin as the privation of good.| Οὐκοῦν ὁ ἀγαθὸς τῷ ὄντι 6
αὐτός ἐστιν. ᾿Εναντίον δὲ τῷ ἀγαθῷ τὸ κακὸν ἢ τὸ πονηρὸν.
καὶ ἐναντίον τῷ ὄντι τὸ οὐκ ὄν. Οἷς ἀκολουθεῖ ὅτι τὸ πονηρὸν
καὶ κακὸν οὐκ Ov..... Οἱ δὲ ἀποστραφέντες τὴν τοῦ ὄντος μετο-
χὴν τῷ ἐστερῆσθαι τοῦ ὄντος γεγόνασιν οὐκ ὄντες. Origen, in
S. Joh. 1. 7. According to Athanasius, all thought and
being consists in the knowledge of God. ‘“ What profit
could there be to the created, as long as they did not
know the Creator? or how could they be reasonable crea-
tures, so long as they knew not the Father of reason?” (de
Inearn. Verbi, 11.) Thus departure from God is a return
to a state of non-entity. God ean only be the cause of
what is good, and so evil is represented as the privation of
God. (C. Gent. 6.) Οὔτε οὐσία τις ἔστι [τοῦ κακοῦ]. ἀλλὰ ἄν-
θρωποι κατὰ στέρησιν τῆς τοῦ καλοῦ φαντασίας ἑαυτοῖς ἐπινοεῖν
ἤρξαντο καὶ ἀναπλάττειν τὰ οὐκ ὄντα. (Ibid. ὁ. 7.) Gregory
of Nyssa uses the same conception: Φύσις δὲ κακίας οὐκ
ἔστι. (Cat. ὁ. 28.) Καθάπερ yap ἡ ὅρασις φύσεώς ἐστιν ἐνερ-
γεία, ἡ δὲ πήρωσις, στερησίς ἐστι τῆς φυσικῆς ἐνεργείας, οὕτως
καὶ ἡ ἀρετὴ πρὸς τὴν κακίαν ἀνθέστηκεν" οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἄλλην
κακίας γένεσιν ἐννοῆσαι, ἢ ἀρετῆς ἀπουσίαν. ..... ᾿Αλλ᾽ ἐμφύε-
ταί πως τὸ κακὸν ἔνδοθεν τῇ προαιρέσει τότε συνιστάμενον, ὅταν
τις ἀπὸ τοῦ καλοῦ γένηται τῆς ψυχῆς ἀναχώρησις. (Cat. ὁ. 5.)
Augustine in the same view says, Mala vero voluntas
LECTURE I. 245
prima defectus potius fuit quidam ab opere Dei ad sua
opera quam opus ullum. (de Civ. Dei, xiv. 11.) Nemo
igitur queerat efficientem causam male voluntatis, non enim
est efficiens, sed deficiens; quia nec illa effectio est, sed
defectio. (Ibid. xii. 7.) Elsewhere he describes evil as
amissio boni—privatio boni—corruptio naturee—inopia.
But, as will be seen, he could not rest satisfied with the
bare negative conception of sin. With Boéthius the mode
of proof is—God is omnipotent, and nothing can be impos-
sible to him. But evil is impossible to him, therefore it
ean have no true existence. (de Consol. Phil. II].12.) These
representations reappear continually. Thus Anselm: In
bonis quidem facit [Deus] quod sunt et quod bona sunt:
in malis quidem facit quod sunt, sed non quod mala sunt.
Nam omni rei esse justam vel bonam est aliquid esse;
nulli vero rei est esse aliquid, injustam vel malam esse....
Justitia namque aliquid est, injustitia nihil. Qu. i. 6. 7.
Peccatum originale est justitiz debite nuditas. (de Con.
Virg. 27.) Also T. Aquinas, Summa. II. 1. 85. 3. Ibid. I.
Qu. 82. 3. Duns Scotus in Lib. Sent. il. 30. Bonaventura
in Lib. Sent. XXX. 2.1. See for other citations Petavius
Theol. Dogm. I. vi. 4. Ritter Geschichte Christ. Phil.
vols. i—iil. The passage of Plotinus referred to is Ennead.
I. viii. 11. An exclusive adherence to the negative con-
ception of evil would obliterate man’s responsibility; in
respect of God, evil is truly nothing more than a want or
privation, but in respect of man it takes a share in guiding
his life. In holy Scripture, it is true, sin is often held up
as a privation of, or absence from, God. “ The light shineth
in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
(John i. 5.) ‘“ The natural man {(ψυχικὸς) receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness
unto him.” (1 Cor. 11. 14.) ‘* Ye were sometimes darkness,
but now are ye light in the Lord; walk as children of
light.” (Eph. v. 8.) But the revelation of God is for prac-
tice, rather than theory; and that which appears to phi-
losophy as a negation of being, is denounced in religion as
a substantive principle in man himself, having tangible
consequences for those who obey it. And the view of sin
246 NOTES.
as a mere negation lends to pantheistic views of the uni-
verse, or to Pelagianism in morals, according to the use
made of it.
Note 14. p. 19.
Sin as selfishness.| Πάντων δὲ μέγιστον κακῶν ἀνθρώποις
τοῖς πολλοῖς ἔμφυτον ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἐστίν, οὗ πᾶς ἑαυτῷ συγ-
γνώμην ἔχων ἀποφυγὴν οὐδεμίαν μηχανᾶται τοῦτο δ᾽ ἔστιν ὃ
λέγουσιν ὡς φίλος αὑτῷ πᾶς ἄνθρωπος φύσει 7 ἐστὶ καὶ ὀρθῶς
ἔχει τὸ δεῖν εἶναι τοιοῦτον. τὸ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ γε πάντων ἁμαρτη-
μάτων διὰ τὴν σφόδρα ἑαυτοῦ φιλίαν αἴτιον ἑκάστῳ γίγνεται
ἑκάστοτε. τυφλοῦται γὰρ περὶ τὸ φιλούμενον ὃ φιλῶν, ὥστε τὰ
δίκαια καὶ τὰ ἀγαθὰ καὶ τὰ καλὰ κακῶς κρίνει, τὸ αὑτοῦ πρὸ τοῦ
ἀληθοῦς ἀεὶ τιμᾷν δεῖν ἡγούμενος. Plato Laws 731 E. Mala
vero voluntas prima, quoniam omnia mala opera precessit
in homine, defectus potius fuit quidam ab opere Dei ad sua
opera quam opus ullum, ὅσο. Augustin. de Civ. Dei, XTV. 11.
(Here the views of sin, as a negation, and as selfishness,
are combined.) In holy Scripture (see above p. 218) the
identity of sin and self-seeking is strongly marked. The
prevailing national sin of the Jews was pure self-will. The
character of Jacob, who even whilst trusting in the power
of God to carry out his gracious promises, spent his life in
little plans of his own to further the designs of providence ;
the waywardness of the children of Israel in the wilder-
ness; their wilful determination to have a king of their
own; the fate of Saul, who fell, not by forsaking or defying
God, but for mixing up his own will and designs with those
he was chosen to carry out; these are but a few examples
of what the Old Testament exhibits in every part. The
words of Samuel were applicable to the wayward children
of Israel at all times. ‘“ Hath the Lord as great delight in
burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the
Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to
hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin
of witcheraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath
also rejected thee from being king.” 1 Sam. xv. 22, 23.
“ΑΜ Christ, when he bears witness to his own perfect holi-
ness, makes it to consist in his not seeking his own will
LECTURE I. 247
and his own honour, but the will and honour of the Father,
(John v. 30. vil. 18. vill. 50 with Mat. xx. 28. xxvi. 39,)
so is he exhibited by the apostle Paul as our example, in
that he did not live to “ please himself,” but entirely for
God. Rom. xv. 3. And in agreement with this, the great
turning point between the old life under sin as the domi-
nant principle, and the new life, wrought by the Holy
Spirit, is exhibited in several places both by the Lord and
the apostle Paul as one in which the man ceases to live for
himself, and to seek his own, to love the worldly life of
self; (Rom. xiv. 7,8; Gal. 11. 20; 2 Cor. v.15; Phil. w.
3—S8, 21; 1 Cor. x. 24, 33; Luke xiv. 26; John xii. 25;)
in a word, the power of selfishness in him is broken.
But that which must first of all be broken, if the true
sanctification of a man is to begin, can be nothing else
than the peculiar principle of sin. And so Paul in draw-
ing the character of the abandoned race of the last times,
(2 Tim. 111. 2—5,) places selfishness at the head of the long
roll of sins and vices. And thus in the profound parable
of the lost son, the son’s fall begins with the signifieant
trait, that he first wishes to have his own portion separated
from his father’s property, and then severs himself entirely
from his father and his home (Luke xy. 12, 13); and it is
indicated afterwards as the right form of relation to a
father, always to be in intercourse with the father, and to
regard his goods as one’s own (v. 31). The history of the
Fall of Man agrees completely with this.” The writer now
quoted goes on to show from 2 Thes. 11. 3, 4, 8. how selfish-
ness is to characterise the complete development of evil.
Julius Miller, Lehre von der Siinde, i. p.187, 3d ed. Breslau
1849. (It would be unfair not to caution the student
against a discreditable translation of this important work,
lately published; it is utterly useless.) Such being the
scriptural representations, it is not wonderful that later
writers adopt them largely. In the celebrated little book
ealled Teutsche Theologie, highly commended by Luther, we
find (ch. 2.) “ What else did the devil, or what was his
_rebellion or fall, if it was not that he thought himself to be
something, and presumed to be something, and pretended
that something belonged to him. This presuming to be
248 NOTES.
something, this ‘ 1’ and ‘me’ and ‘ mine’ and ‘for me’ were
and are his rebellion and fall.” The works of Tauler and
other mystical writers speak similar language.
Note 15. p. 20.
When sin is represented as pride, as by Augustine, pride
is explained as being the love of one’s own excellence or
pre-eminence, as the desire to rule and not to have even
God to rule over us; so that it is closely allied to selfish-
ness. In the following passage the alliance appears. “ Me-
rito initium omnis peccati superbium Scriptura definivit,
dicens: Initiwm omnis peccati superbia (Keel. x.15.) Cui tes-
timonio non inconvenienter aptatur etiam illud quod Apo-
stolus ait, Radix omnium malorum est avaritia (1 Tim. vi.
10); Si avaritiam generalem intelligamus, qua quisque
appetit aliquid amplius quam oportet, propter excellentiam
suam, et quemdam propriz rei amorem.’”’ Augustine (de
Gen. ad lit. xi. 15.)
Sin is sometimes explained as impatience of the restraints
of the divine law (impatientia); but this is only the
other side of the definition that it is the wish to make self
the law and be a law to oneself.
Concupiscence again is made the root of sin; and it is
explained in the Apologia Confessionis Augustane (1. 11. 27)
as “que carnalia queerit contra verbum Dei, hoe est,
queerit non solum voluptates corporis, sed etiam sapientiam
et justitiam carnalem, et confidit his bonis, contemnens
Deum.” But this would agree with the definition of self-
ishness.
That unbelief is the root of sin may be also asserted,
inasmuch as, before the soul can reject the law of God and
rely on its own law and impulses, it must cease to have an
active belief in the former. This follows from the terms
in which the divine law speaks; it makes the wages of sin
to be death and the end of obedience to be life everlasting :
if the threat and the promise are believed they will be
acted upon. At the fall the tempter weakened the hold
upon the divine command by “ Ye shall not surely die”
before the woman “saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be
LECTURE I. 249
desired to make one wise,” and obeyed the temptation.
Thus with all sound theologians as faith and righteousness
are associated, so are unbelief and sin.
Note 16. p. 21.
Sin as disobedience.| ‘AH ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία. 1 John
iii. 4. This is not to be regarded as a definition of sin ; it
is a caution; “you cannot commit sins without transgress-
ing the divine law; for sin is a breach of the law of God.”
Nearly all the words, in Hebrew Greek and Latin, which
denote sin, imply a deviation from a line or aim. See
Knapp. Vorlesungen, § 73. (Eng. Trans. p. 232) for a lst
of Hebrew and Greek. In Latin “‘peccare est tanquam
transilire lineas” (Cicero) ; delictwm means the act of one
who fails to come up to his duty; in impietas, nefas, flagi-
tium, scelus, other notions predominate. Augustine uses
transgressio, a going beyond a limit ; also enobedientia. In
all these words, when the notion of a Being able and en-
titled to impose the law or draw the line or mark the
limit, comes in, the thought of disobedience towards him
appears. Hence in the Old and New Testament, the reve-
lation of God, sin is always represented as disobedience.
Note 17. p. 22.
In distinguishing between atonement and reconciliation
I do not forget that the derivation of the former word
almost identifies it with the latter (see p. 235.) But atone-
ment has come to imply more than the mere setting us at
one with God ; it includes the removal of guilt and conse-
quently of punishment. On a similar distinction between
the German Erlésung and Versohnung, see Baur Lehre v. d.
Versohnung, p. 5.
Note 18. p. 28.
A parallel between the individual, with his reason, anger
and appetites, and the state, with its rulers, army and
populace, is the groundwork of Plato’s political philosophy.
Injustice in the man, and disorder in the state, consist in
the usurpation of the highest authority by some lower part.
See Republic.
NEMO UH, eh:
LECTURE II.
Note 19. p. 31:
“ DAS Opfer ist also urspriinglich eine Gabe an die Gott-
heit, und zwar eine solche, wodurch der Mensch die immer
noch unvollstandige Hingebung seiner selbst an Gott zu
vervollstandigen strebt.” Tholuck. Hebraer. Beilage II. p.
71. Enlarged into a theory in a learned Essay by Pro-
fessor Ernst Von Lasaulx, of Munich, called Das Sitihnopfer
d. Griechen u. Romer u. s. w. Wurzburg, 1841.
Note 20. p. 31.
In the essay of Tholuck (quoted in the last note) p. 77,
foll. is a classification of the various theories of sacrifice.
See also the remarkable work of Bahr: Symbolik des
Mosaischen Cultus. (11. 269 foll.) to which I am much in-
debted in this Lecture, and in the following.
Note 21. p. 32.
See page 46. Note 33.
Note 22, p. 33.
See Bahr II. 294. Besides these definitions, every theory
of sacrifice implies one. See reff. in Note 20. “ Language,
from which in many cases the original idea may be deduced,
offers no solution of the problem. The Greek word, jé¢o,
in the Boeotian dialect ῥέδδω ἃ, by transposition and change
of ὃ and ¢ ἔρδω, is and means nothing more than ἔργων,
a Eustathius to Il. XIV. 261.
> Eustathius to 1]. II. 305, and IV. 29.
LECTURE II. 251
work. Inthe same way épave, as well as the Latin terms
for sacrifice, facere’ and operari®, has only the general
signification of act, do; since sacrifice was especially con-
sidered as an effective act, and to kill a living animal was
looked upon as an important deed‘. The word odd,
σφάγω, is connected with φάγω, and signifies separate into
parts, cleave, slaughters. In Homer, the word θύω is still
only used for the burning of vegetable oblations® ; it is the
same word with the Latin fio, which is retained in suffio,
and means sindle, fumigate. The words σπένδω and λείβω,
used for drink-offerings, etymologically signify, as does
libare, nothing more than pour out'. The German word
opfern, is manifestly formed from the Latin offerre, and
designates every offering*. But all these conceptions are
so external and material, that the religious and funda-
mental idea of sacrifice can hardly be recognised in them.”
Ernst von Lasaulx. [Unable to procure the original I
quote an American translation. |
Note 238. p. 33.
“ς This idea will be found to pervade all the ancient reli-
gions. And especially was the voluntary sacrifice of the
innocent thought to be effectual and pleasing to the gods,
in proportion to the purity of will of him who thus offered
himself for others. ‘‘ A pure soul, when voluntarily offered
¢ Atheneus XIV. 79. Eustathius to Od. X. 349. Hesychius vy.
δρᾶν and δράσεις Tom. I. 1030, 1031. Alberti.
ἃ Cato de re rust. 134. 139. porco piaculo facito. Columella II. 22.
4. Catulo facere. Virgil. Ecl. II. 77. facere vitula pro frugibus. Ti-
bul. IV. 6, 14. ter tibi fit libo, ter, dea casta, mero. Cicero pro Mur.
41, 00. Junoni . . . omnes consules facere necesse est.
© Operari, the same as, operam dare rei divine, Nonius Marcellus
XII. 21. Virg. G. I. 339. Propertius III.29,2. Tac. Ann. II. 14.—
Operari sacris, Liv. 1. 31,8. Operari deo Tibul. II. 1, 9. 5. 95. Ope-
rari Libero Patri Curtius VIII. το, 17.
f ὥς τι μέγα δρῶντες τὸ θύειν ἔμψυχον Plutarch. Mor. p. 729. F. Sylb.
& Eustathius to Il. I. 459 and to Od. XII. 385. Comp. Ammonius
de Diff. p. 71.
h Atheneus XIV. 79. Scholia antiqua ad Od. XIV. 446.
i Isidor. Orig. V. 19, 32.
« J. Grimm’s—Deutsche Mythologie, p. 22.
252 NOTES.
up, is surely in a condition to make satisfaction for thou-
sands! ;” are the words, we find in Sophocles, addressed to
(Edipus, the sufferer, when about to be glorified. And in
the Sohar we read, ‘‘the death of the just expiates the
sins of the world™.” In Grecian Mythology, I find no
earlier example of such a voluntary, expiatory death, than
that of Chiron in the story of Prometheus. As a punish-
ment for stealing the fire from heaven, Prometheus was
chained to the Caucasian mountains by order of Zeus,
where an eagle was ever to devour his ever growing liver.
Through many generations of men he endured these tor-
ments, until at last Hercules, in his wanderings through
Asia, killed the bird of prey; and Chiron, the Centaur,
who ruled over the mountainous regions, voluntarily offered
himself to death instead of Prometheus". In history we
find similar instances. When once the plague was spread-
ing through all Aonia, the Gortynian Apollo proclaimed,
that the pestilence would be stayed, when the infernal
gods, Hades and Persephone, should be appeased by two
virgins, offering themselves up, of their own free will, as
an expiatory sacrifice. The daughters of Orion, Metioche
and Menippe, consecrated themselves to death for their
fellow-citizens, and the pest ceased. To these virgins, the
Aonians erected a splendid temple, in the Boeotian Orcho-
menus, and thither boys and maidens brought to them
thank-offerings every year®. In Attica, the daughters of
Erectheus, the Hyacinthians, and the daughters of Leos,
voluntarily suffered a sacrificial death for their father-land ;
and in later times, the grateful Athenians brought to them
public libationsP. Known to all is the voluntary death of
Codrus for his people. The prophet Tiresias in Thebes,
1 Soph. Cidipus. C. 498 seq.
m Sohar to Levit. p. 100: mors justorum est expiatio seeculi. Comp.
Gfrorers’s Philo II. τού.
n Apollod. II. 5, 4, 11.
© Antoninus Liberalis c. 25.
P Demosthenes Epitaph. 27, 29, p. 587. seq. Bek. Apollod. III. 15, 4.
Diod. XVII. 15. Aelian. V. H. XII. 28. Cicero Tusce. I. 48 and N. Ὁ.
III. 19 seq.
LECTURE II. 253
proclaimed victory to the Cadmeans, in case the son of the
king should give himself to be slain for a sacrifice. When
Menoeceus heard this, he offered himself up to death before
the gates of the city’. This mode of voluntary sacrifice
(θῦσαι) was carefully distinguished from suicide, and from
the killing of another (φονεῦσαι); and only the first was
deemed piacular™. In the first Messenian war, a Delphic
oracular declaration announced to the hard-pressed Mes-
senians, that they would obtain redemption from their
miseries, if an immaculate virgin, of royal dignity, of the
blood of Aepytus, and chosen by lot, were sacrificed to the
infernal deities; and should she in any way escape the
sacrifice, then they must take some other, who might
voluntarily (ἑκουσίως) consecrate herself to this object.
Aristodemus offered his own daughter; and when her
suitor protested against it, (falsely denying her virginity,)
in his rage her father slew her with his own hand. And
now, some other must give up a daughter, since Aristode-
mus had not offered his to the gods, but had murdered her.
Yet the other Aepytidae succeeded in making it appear,
that the death of one maiden should suffices. When the
priest Epimenides of Crete was called upon by the Athe-
nians, about the forty-sixth Olympiad, 596 years before
Christ, to perform a sacred lustration for their city, on
account of the guilt they had incurred by the death of
Cylon, (who was persuaded to leave the sanctuary of Mi-
nerva, under a promise that his life should not be forfeited,
but was afterwards killed), he declared that the blood
of a man was needed for this; the Athenian youth Cra-
tinus offered himself as a voluntary sacrifice ; and thus was
the expiation completedt. One other remarkable fact de-
serves to be adduced. The priestess Comaetho with her
paramour Melanippus once desecrated the temple of Ar-
temis Triclaria in Achaia. The wrathful goddess brought
4 Apollod. III. 6,7, Eurip. Pheen. 913 seq. Statii Theb. X. 6 το seq.
Juv. XIV. 240,
τ Paus. ΤΡ] Ὁ. 5. Ss Paus. IV. 9.
Ὁ Herodotus V. 71. Thucydides 1. 126. Ulrici’s Gesch. der Hellen.
Poesie I. 458 seq. II. 235 seq.
254 NOTES.
sterility and infection upon the whole land, and the Del-
phian oracle declared, that they should not only sacrifice
to Artemis both the guilty ones, but every year bring to
her the sacrifice of a beautiful virgin and youth, until upon
a time a foreign king should come into the land, and teach
them the worship of another God".””? Ernst von Lasaulx.
Among the Romans the example of Publius Decius is re-
markable. See Livy, viii. 9, and Arnold’s Rome, II. 149.
Note 24, p. 36.
On the self-devotion of Buddha, I have quoted Professor
Max Miller's Prolegomena to the Vedas, (still unpub-
lished) p. 70. On the position of the Priest, as mediating
between the gods and men, Baur (Symbolik, IIT. 302, and
the reff. there given) ; also Bahr (II. 22 foll.) The people
with an instinct of devotion, would turn to those who could
offer them the knowledge of God, and as an insight into
the powers of nature was by them identified with it, the
priests were the depositaries of all science. The reverence
paid to priestly functions, and the respect for a king, are
so far akin that we do not wonder to find the two offices
united frequently in one person, (as in early Greece, Heeren,
Ideen, p. 97.) Rex Anius, rex idem hominum Pheebique
sacerdos, says Virgil, and Servius thereon remarks ‘“ Sane
majorum hee erat consuetudo, ut rex etiam esset sacerdos
vel pontifex, unde hodieque Imperatores pontifices dicimus.”
That the king in the heroic times exercised the functions of
general, judge, and priest, see Aristotle Polit. III. 14, also
Stobzus, Serm. 46. On the priest representing the divinity,
in the Eleusinian mysteries, see Kreuzer Symbolik, ITT. 447,
and in Arcadia in the worship of Demeter, Pausan. VIII. 15,
and among the Aztecs, in the worship of the god Tezcatle-
poca, Prescott’s Mexico I. p. 62. (1850), referred to again
below. Besides these references see an eloquent sketch
of heathen religions in their development, though not to be
trusted as historical, in Gérres, Mythengeschichte, I. pp.
16—31. Also Kreuzer Symbolik. Introd.
u Paus. VII. το.
LECTURE II. 255
Note 25. p. 38.
Cyril of Alexandria (Dial. I. de Trin.) mentions that the
Arians considered Christ as the mediator (μεσίτης) as hold-
ing an intermediate position between God and his creatures.
See also Petavius (de Incarn. Lib. XII. Cap. 1.)
Note 26. p. 38.
‘* There grew up even in Athens the horrible custom, of
nourishing every year, at cost of the State, two poor
forsaken persons, male and female ; and then at the festival
of Thargelia, of putting them to death for the expiation of
the people, as though they had assumed their sins. Hung
about with figs, and scourged with rods of the fig-tree*,
these φαρμακοί, to the sound of an ancient melody, called
kpadias, were led in solemn procession out of the city to
their sacrificial death, and then either hurled down from
the rocksy; or burned, and their ashes cast into the seaz.
The same expiatory custom existed in the Phocaean colony,
Massilia. As often as the plague prevailed, they were wont
to lead through the city a poor creature, adorned with
wreaths and festive garments, who a year long had been
fed at the public expense, to imprecate upon his head all
the calamities of the people, and afterwards to cast him
down from the rocks*. Upon the island Leucas, a man
was thrown every year into the sea, for the absolution of
the people>. In like manner, at Rhodes upon the sixth of
the month Metageitnion, a man was sacrificed to Chronos
This custom was afterwards so changed, that any one con-
x The fig-tree is famed for its sweetness. By figs, it would then
seem, is here to be implied, that the sacrifice was sweet. On this
account the fig was an ἐπιβώμιον of all sacrifices. It was also reputed
to be an antidote against every poison. Julian. Epist. 24. p. 391 seq.
y Aristoph. Ran. 733 and Eq. 1133, with the Scholia. Helladius in
Photius Cod. CCLXXIX. p. 534. col. A. Bek. and Photii Lex. p. 533.
Harpocration p. 179. Ammonius de Diff. p. 136. Suidas t. III. 581.
Hesychius v. κραδίης νόμος p. 337. and v. φαρμακοί p. 1494.
2 'Tzetzes Chil. v. 23, 735. Oracula Sibyli. HII. 361. Galleus.
@ Petronii Satiricon c. 141 extr. and Servius ad Ae. III. 57.
> Strabo X. 2. p. 332.
256 NOTES.
demned to death was kept till the festival of Chronos, and
then strangled outside the gates, opposite the temple of
Artemis ἀριστοβούλη, after they had given him wine to
drink*. So in Cyprus, in the cities Amathus and Salamis,
a man was every year sacrificed to Zeus’; in the latter
city, in the month Aphrodisios, one to Agraulus, and in
later times to Diomedes. The one appointed for the sacri-
fice, led by youths, ran three times around the altar, the
priest then thrust a lance into his throat, and burned him
whole upon a funeral pile, ὡλοκαύτιζεν. Diphilus, king of
the Cyprians in the times of Seleucus the Theologian, first
abolished this custom, by substituting the sacrifice of bulls
for that of ment. At Laodicea in Syria, a virgin was
yearly sacrificed to Athena; instead thereof, in later times,
a hind was offered'. In general it may with certainty be
assumed, that human expiatory sacrifices prevailed in all
parts of Greece; among no other people are there found
more or more various accounts of such offerings, than among
the Hellenists. In the Pelasgian Arcadia, from the first pe-
riods till the Roman imperial times, men were sacrificed to
the Lyecaean Zeus®: he that went into the Lyceum no
longer cast a shadow, At Halus in Thessaly, all the
descendants of Athamas that entered the sanctuary of
Zeus Laphystius, were offered in sacrifice’. Upon the
island Lemnos, virgins‘ were sacrificed to Artemis Orthia;
upon Tenedos to Palaemon!; upon Crete, children™ to Chro-
nos and to Zeus; and Theseus was the first that abolished
the tribute brought every year to the Minotaur". Upon
the islands Lesbos, Chios and Tenedos, human sacrifices
were offered to Dionysos ᾿Ὡμάδιος ; and in Lacedaemon to
¢ Porph. de Abst. 11. 54.
4 Ovid. Metam. X. 224 seq. Lactantius I. 21.
6 Porph. de Abst. II. 54, 55. f Id. II. 56.
& Plato Min. p. 254. Theophrastus in Porph. de Abst. II. 27. Pausan.
VIII. 2, 38. Varr. fr. p. 361 seq. Bip.
h Plut. Mor. p. 300. i Herod. VII. 197. Plato Min. as cited.
k Steph. Byz. v. Λῆμνος p. 183. Miiller’s Orchom. p. 310.
1 Lycophron 229 with Tzetzes.
m Tstrus in Porph. de Abst. IL. 56. Plutarchus Thes. p. 6, Ὁ.
n Isocrates Encom. Hel. 27. p. 234. Bekker.
LECTURE II. 257
Ares®. The Locrian Ajax, son of Oileus, after the taking
of Troy, dishonoured Cassandra, daughter of Priam, priest-
ess of Athena. The goddess avenged the outrage not only
upon the criminal, who in his voyage back was shipwrecked,
but also upon all the Locrians, whom she visited with
general public calamities. They consulted the oracle, and
received for answer, that for a thousand years they must
each year send two virgins to Troy, to serve in the temple
of Athena, and this they did till the so-called holy war?.
The virgins were burned, and their ashes cast into the sea
from mount Trarond’. Achilles, the noblest of Grecian
heroes, sacrificed twelve Trojan youths to the manes of
Patroclus' ; Neoptolemus immolated Polyxena to the
memory of his father Achilless. Menelaus, detained in
Egypt by adverse winds, sacrificed two boyst. In the
midst of the proper historic period of Greece, Themisto-
cles, before the battle of Salamis, brought three Persian
prisoners" to the altar of Dionysos the Ferocious, Διόνυσος
ὠμηστής ; in accordance, as Phylarchus maintains, with an
ancient custom, that all Greeks, ere they went to war, must
offer human sacrifices *.”
“Prisoners were afterwards substituted for these voluntary
sacrifices. In the year of the city 397, three hundred and
seven Roman prisoners were immolated at one time, by the
Etruscan Tarquinii, with Punic crueltyy. As often as any
great and general calamity threatened the existence of the
Roman State, by order of the books of fate, human victims
© Dosidas in Clemens Alex. Cohort. p. 36. Porph. de Abst. IT. 54,
Euseb. Prep. Ev. IV. τό. and de Laud. Const. 13. 4 seq. Other m-
stances of human sacrifices are adduced in Clem. Alex. Cohort. 3, p.
36 seq. and Cyrill. adv. Julianum, p. 128.
P Plut. Moral. p. 557, D. and Scho]. Lycophr. 1135.
4 Callim. fr. p. 564 Ern. and Tzetzes Chil. v. 23, 738.
tT]. XXI. 27 seq. In like mode Aineas in Virgil X. 517 seq.
53 Eurip. Hec. 37 seq. 104 seq. 215 seq. 516 seq. Ovid. Metam.
XIII. 441 seq.
τ Herod. II. 119.
ἃ Plut. Themist. p. 119, A. Aristid. p. 323 seq.
x Phylarchus in Porph. de Abst. II. 56.
¥ Liv: Vil 7:
5
258 NOTES.
were sacrificed. A man and woman of the Gauls, a man
and woman of the Greeks, or natives of whatever country
threatened them with danger, were buried alive in the
cattle-market2, with magical forms of prayer repeated by
the president of the College of the Fifteen, who had charge
of the Sibylline books. It was not until the year 657 of
the city, or 97 years before Christ, that the senate issued
a decree forbidding human sacrifices>. But in spite of
this we read, that the dictator J. Cezesar, A. U. 708, or 46
years before Christ, commanded a sacrifice of two men,
with the traditionary solemnities, upon the Campus Mar-
tius, by the Pontifices and the Flamen Martis®. And
Augustus, after the defeat of L. Antonius, immolated four
hundred senators and knights upon the altar of the deified
Julius, at the Ides of March 713, or 43 years before
Christ¢. Even in the times of Adrian, the beautiful Anti-
nous died a voluntary sacrifice for the emperor®; and the
annual immolation of men to Jupiter Latiaris, upon the
Alban mount, is said to have continued even into the third
century of our eraf.”
‘* Asit was in Greece and Rome, so it was among almost
all the oriental and occidental nations. Nowhere are to
be found more bloody and fearful human sacrifices, than
among the idolatrous descendants of Shem, especially in
ancient Canaan, in Pheenicia and Carthage. Here, per-
haps, we find human sacrifices in their primitive form.
Not any and every human being was immolated, but the
innocent children were selected; and among these, the
2 Plin. XXVIII. 2, 12.
8. Liv. XXII. 57. Plut. Marc. p. 299, C. and Mor. p. 283 seq.
D Pline ΧΧΧ τ τῷ. ¢ Dio Cass. XLIII. 24.
ἃ Dio Cass. XLVIII. 14. Suet. Octav. 15. Seneca de Clem. [. 11.
Sextus Pomp. had not only horses but men thrown into the sea, as a
sacrifice to Neptune. Dio Cass, XLVIII. 48.
€ Xiphilinus p. 356, 21. Sylb. Ael. Spartianus Hadriano 14. Aur.
Victor de Ceesaribus 14.
f Porph. de Abst. 11. 56. Just. Martyr Apol. II. p. 100, ἢ. The-
ophilus ad Autol. III. p. 412, E. Tatian. adv. Grecos p. 284, B.
Euseb. de Laud. Const. 13, 5. 1198. Zimmerm. Tertul. Apol. 8. and
Scorp. adv. Gnost. 7. Minucius Fel. Octav. 21, 15. 30, 4. Lactantius
I, 21, 30. Prudentius adv. Symmach. 1. 380.
LECTURE It. 259
preference was given to the only child or to the first-born.
A king of the Moabites, whom the three united kings of
Israel, Judah and Edom had driven back into his principal
city, takes his first-born son, and slays him upon the wall
for a burnt-offering ; and the three kings, indignant at
this barbarity, returned to their own land*. The Sephar-
vites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and
Anammelechi. The valley of Hinnom is especially de-
signated as the place of abominations, where children were
immolated to the Moloch of the Ammonites*. The Phe-
nician history is full of such sacrifices. In all great
calamities, in war or general sterility, in plague or famine;
they believed that they could appease the wrath of Baal,
who inflicted these punishments, by offering to him the
dearest child as a piacular sacrifice!. At Carthage there
was a metallic statue of Chronos, in a bending posture,
with hands stretched out and raised upwards. This statue
was heated, till it glowed, by a kiln beneath ; into its arms
were placed the children destined for sacrifice; from its
arms they fell into the gulf of fire beneath, dying in con-
vulsions, which were said to be of laughter™. ‘The child-
less were wont to buy children of the poor. “The mother,”
says Plutarch, “stands by, without shedding a tear or
uttering a sigh; should sigh or tear be observed, the
money is lost, yet the child is sacrificed: around the image
of the god, all resounds with the noise of kettle-drums and
flutes, that the crying and wailing be not heard". Another
author informs us, that the tears of the children were
& Kuseb. de Laud. Const. 13, 4 τὰ μονογενῆ καὶ ἀγαπητὰ τῶν τέκνων
κατασφάττειν.
h 2 Kings 3: 27. [The English version reads, “indignation against
Israel ;” but the original is sy, super. ]
i 2 Kings 17: 31.
2 Chron: 28: 8.59: 6. 15: 87: δ. «0861: 7: 32. 19: 2,4 seq. Ex. 16:
20 seq. 23: 37 seq.
1 Sanchoniathon in Porph. de Abst. II. 56 and in Euseb. Pr. Ev. I.
το. IV. τό.
m Clitarchus in the Schol. Plat. p. 396. Bekker. Diod. XX. 14.
n Plut. Mor. p. 171, B.
5.9
260 NOTES.
stifled by caresses, ne flebilis hostia immoletur’. [ὑ is
evident that every attempt was made, to have at least the
semblance of a voluntary sacrifice. When the Sicilian
king Agathocles appeared before the walls of Carthage,
the besieged, to repel the invaders, immolated upon the
altar of Chronos two hundred boys of the noblest families ;
and three hundred more were voluntarily offered to a like
sacrifice? ; and after the defeat of Agathocles, the best
and most beautiful prisoners were slain as a thank-offering
to the gods4. Gelon had, indeed, (Ol. 75, 1,) when he con-
quered the Carthaginians at Himera, granted them peace
only on condition that they, from that time forth, should
sacrifice no more children to Chronos; but the agreement
had no duration. The old and fearful superstition main-
tained its validity, until, under the reign of Tiberius, the
public immolation of children ceased, but in secret it still
continueds.”
“‘ Among the gloomy and austere Egyptians, the existence
of human sacrifices cannot be denied. Manetho testifies,
that in the city Eileithya, every year in the dog-days, some
so-called Typhonian (i. e. red-haired) men were burnt alive,
and their ashes thrown into the air with winnowing-sho-
velst; and like persons were sacrificed by the kings at the
grave of Osiris". Milder was the custom of the religious
o Min. Felix Octav. 30, 3. Tertul. Apol. 9.
P Diod. XX. 14 and Pescennius Festus in Lactant. I. 21. p. 132.
q Diod. XX. 65.
τ Plut. Mor. p. 175, A. 552, A. Comp. Just. 19, 1.
5 'Tertul. Apol.g. From a passage in Porph. de Abst. II. 27, it
would seem that children were still sacrificed there in his times, 300
years after Christ. For a more full view of the Punic human sacri-
fices, see Fr. Miinter, Religion d. Karthager, 8. 17 ff.
t Plut. Mor. p. 380, C. D.
ἃ Diodorus I. 88. The grave of Osiris is called, by the Egyptians,
Busiris. Hence, the well known Grecian fable, that Busiris was an
‘gyptian king, who sacrificed foreigners and devoured their flesh, till
Hercules put an end to the enormity. Pherecydes in the Schol. Apoll.
Rh. IV. 1396. Apollod. II. 5. 11. Panyasis in Athen. IV. 72. Virg.
Ge. III.5. Ovid. de Arte Am. I. 649. Met. IX. 182. Trist. ILI. τὰ,
LECTURE II. 261
Ethiopians. Every twentieth generation, or every sixth
hundredth year, there was a general purification of the
land by two men, usually foreigners. They were put into
a small boat, with provisions for two months, and com-
manded to sail towards the south, where they would arrive
at a happy island, inhabited by just men*. The Persians
buried alive the men who were to be sacrificedy; and it
would seem to have been a custom amongst them, as with
the Greeks, before a battle to slay prisoners?. The Du-
matians in Arabia sacrificed a boy every year, and buried
him under the altar*; the Arabians, in garments sprinkled
with blood, offered regularly to Mars a warrior, and every
Thursday to Jupiter a sucking childb. The same human
sacrifices, in fine, are found among the Northern nations ;
among the Scythians, the Getae and the Thracians‘;
among the Russians on the Dnieper¢, the Swedes and the
Danes¢; among the Germans‘, the Gaulsg, the Britons"
39. This fable was adequately refuted, even among the ancients, by
Herod. II. 45. Isoc. Busir. 5. 36, 37 and Diod. I. 88. Compare Creu-
zer, Symb. und Mythol. I. 352 seq.
X Diodorus II. 55. When, on account of the wrath of Poseidon,
Ethiopia was inundated, and was laid waste by a sea-monster, the
oracle of Ammon declared, that the land would be delivered from the
disaster, if Andromeda, the daughter of the king, should be cast out to
this monster of the deep. The virgin was chained to a rock, but re-
leased by Perseus, and carried home as his bride. Apollod. II. 4, 3
and Heyne’s Observ. p. 126.
Υ Herod. VII. 114, with Wesseling’s Comment.
2 Herod. VII. 180. a Porph. de Abst. 11. 56.
> Stuhr’s Religion der heidn. Volker des Orients, p. 407.
eHerod. IV. 62. 71,72. V.5. Plut. Mor. p. 171, B. Porph. as
above. Ovid. ex Ponto IV. 9, 84. Lucian de Sacrif. 13. The human
sacrifices offered to the Taurian Artemis are known through all the
world, comp. Diod. IV. 44, 45. Ovid. Trist. IV. 4, 61 seq. and ex
Ponto III. 2, 45 seq. Lactan. 1. 21 and A.
ἃ Solinus 15, 2.
© La Cerda advers. sacra c. 43. Mone, Gesch. d. Heidenthums I.
261, 270. Grimm, deutsche Myth. p. 29.
f Tac. Germ. 9. 38. Grimm, deutsche Myth. p. 26 seq.
& Cesar B. G. VI. τό. Just. XXVI. 2. Diod. V. 31, 32. Strabo IV.
4. p. 319. Lactan. 1. 21. Min. Felix Octav. 30 and Plac. Lactan. in
Statii Theb. X. 788.
h Cesar B. G. VI. 13. Tac. Agr. 11.
262 NOTES.
and the Celts'. Iwill adduce only one additional instance,
found among the Albans, from which it is made very clear,
that those who offered it sought by contact with the
sacrifice to become partakers of its expiatory virtue.
After the man was slain, the body was carried to another
place, where all, for the sake of the purification, touched
it with the foot, ἐπιβαίνουσιν ἅπαντες καθαρσίῳ χρώμενοι.
Ernst von Lasaulx. <A full account of the Aztec sacrifices,
particularly of that to the god Tezcatlepoca, is found in
vol. I. of Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. As the facts
given there rest on somewhat suspicious authority, their
probability will be heightened by comparing a pamphlet
“ An Account of the Religion of the Khonds of Orissa, by
Capt. S.C. Macpherson, 1852.” See also Prof. H. H. Wilson
“On the Sacrifice of Human beings, as an element of the
ancient religion of India,” who seems to agree with Cole-
brooke, that the human sacrifices mentioned in the earliest
Hindu documents are to be considered as only typical.
But that the idea existed, in despite of the abhorrence of
bloodshed of that people, even though not carried out into
act, is a significant circumstance. ‘“ That human offerings
to the dark forms of Siva and Durga were sometimes per-
petrated in later times, we know from various original
sources.... No such divinities, however, neither Siva nor
Durga, much less any of their terrific forms, are even
named, so far as we know, in the Vedas, and therefore
these works could not be authority from their sanguinary
worship.” On the human sacrifices of Crete, which had a
common origin with those of Carthage, both being Pheeni-
cian, see “ Pashley’s Crete” I. p. 132 foll. The worship of
Chronos in Carthage is related to that of Moloch, (Lev.
XVill. 21. xx. 2,) which Solomon allowed to take root in
Judea, influenced therein by the women of his household,
(i Kings xi. 5, 7. 2 Kings xi. 33,) and the Jews seem to
have continued it in the valley of Hinnom (2 Kings xxiii.
10. Jer. Xxxii. 35) until Josias put an end to it (2 Kings
XX 10,' 73).
i Lucanus 1.444. Zeuss, die Deutschen und die Nachbarstamme, p.32.
k Strab. XI. 4. p. 417.
LECTURE II. 263
Note 27. p. 40.
Of the ordinary sacrifices of the Greeks and Romans
there is a very full account in the tract of Professor Von
Lasaulx. See also De Maistre Soirées, &e., vol. II. Also,
for those of various religions, Creuzer’s Symbolik, and
Guigniaut’s French translation, with many valuable notes.
For the Brahminical rites, see Lassen (Indische Alter-
thumskunde).
Note 28. p. 42.
That the blood is the life has been the opinion of differ-
ent ages, nations, and stages of knowledge. “So taught
the Egyptians (Horapollo I. 7) and Persians (Strabo XV.
Ῥ. 503, 504. Casaub. 1587), the old Roman pontifical books
(Servius ad Ain. II. 118) and all the physiologists of
ancient times, Pythagoras (Diog. La. VIIT. 30.) Empedo-
cles (Fr. 315. ed. Sturz. Cicero. Tuse. I. 9.) Hippocrates
(I. 490, 583. 11. 209. ed. Kiihn.) Critias (Aristot. de An.
I. 2. 405. Ὁ.) Galen (de plac. Hip. et Plat. 11. 8 [V. 208.
ed. Kiihn]). With this idea of the blood is also connected
the ancient popular superstition, that a bath or draught of
fresh human blood is the only remedy for certain otherwise
incurable diseases, particularly for leprosy and epilepsy.
(Aretzeus de curatione morb. diu. I. 312. ed. Ktihn. Celsus
Ill. 23. Plmy XXVI. 1. XXVIII. 1, 4. Tertul. Apol. 9.
Minucius Fel. Oct. 30, 5. The Pseudo-Jonathan’s Chaldee
paraphrase of Ex. 11. 23, and Midrasch Rabbah to Ex. ii.1),”
Ernst von Lasaulz. Harvey says, “ Vita igitur in sanguine
consistit (uti etiam in sacris nostris legimus) quippe in
ipso vita atque anima primum elucet, ultimoque deficit...
Sanguis denique totum corpus adeo circumfluit et penetrat,
omnibus ejus partibus calorem et vitam jugiter impertit ;
ut anima primo et principaliter in ipso residens, illius gra-
tia, tota in toto et tota in qualibet parte (ut vulgo dicitur)
inesse, merito censeatur....Clare constat sanguinem esse
partem genitalem, fontem vite, primum vivens et ultimo
moriens, sedemque anime primariam; in quo, tanquam in
fonte, calor primo et preecipue abundat, vigetque ; et a quo
- reliquee omnes totius corporis partes, calore influente foven-
264 NOTES.
tur et vitam obtinent....[deoque concludimus, sanguinem
per se vivere et nutriri; nulloque modo ab alia aliqua
corporis parte, vel priore vel prestantiore dependere.” (De
Generatione li. quoted in Hunter’s Works, iii. ro4.) An
elaborate argument on the same point is found in Hunter,
(Works, ii. 103. Treatise on the Blood, ch. I. § 6.) “ Al-
though,” says J. Miiller, “‘ organic matter generally be con-
sidered as merely susceptible of life, and the organised
parts as living, yet the blood also must be regarded as
endowed with life, for its actions cannot certainly be com-
prehended from chemical and physical laws.” (Physiology I.
154. Baly’s Trans. Ed. II.) Miiller it is true extends the
same observation to other fluids; but all that is contended
for here is confirmed by him and by other authorities, viz.
that the blood performs functions in sustaining and repair-
ing the bodily organs, and by a vital power in itself, so
that it may truly be said that “ the blood is the life.” See
also, for signs of {79 in the blood, Copland’s Dictionary,
Art. Broop.
Note 29. p. 43.
See De Maistre Soirées II. p. 270.
Note 30. p. 45.
The career of Buddha was mainly a protest against the
exclusive claims of the Brahmins to teach the way to divine
knowledge. His principal doctrines were that worldly
things undergo perpetual change, that men’s condition in
this life is the consequence of their conduct in an earlier,
that there is an endless series of births and new-births,
that the highest happiness consists in freeing oneself from
the necessity of being born again, that pain is the destiny
of all existence, and that each must strive to free himself
from it. These tenets he taught, not, like the Brahmins,
in schools where only pupils of the privileged caste were
admitted, but by preaching and teaching them every where
to the whole people. By maintaining that he was in posses-
sion of the highest knowledge, he virtually denied the au-
thority of the sacred books, and with them undermined
the elaborate sacrificial system of which the Brahmins
LECTURE II. 265
were the exclusive directors. He received men of all castes
as his followers, and taught them all alike the same moral-
ity. Whilst the Brahmins held it as the highest duty to
observe all the ceremonies and ordinances of their books,
and in doing this were withdrawn from all sympathy with
the general welfare, the object of Buddha was to carry
light to all men and to draw all to practice virtue and
self-denial. See Lassen’s Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. II.
p- 439. The chief historical feature of Buddhism is its
hierarchy ; the Brahmins were an influential corporation,
widely diffused, but they were not a hierarchy such as
Buddhism exhibits. This portion of the system of Buddha
still remains. But the spirit of the founder has passed
away from the body he constituted. See Lassen, Ibid.
p- 449, also Kreuzer Symbolik, vol. I. ch. 2. ὃ 5. with
note; Guigniaut’s translation of Kreuzer with notes there.
Colebrooke’s Essays, vol. I. p. 390. Burnouf, Introd. a
Vhist. du Budd.; two elaborate works by the Rev. R. 5.
Hardy, lately published, on “ Eastern Monachism” and
‘“* Buddhism” (for Cingalese Buddhism); Hue’s Travels in
Tatary, &e. (for Chinese form.) Abel-Remusat, Mélanges
Asiatiques. B. H. Hodgson’s Sketch of Buddhism, Trans-
actions of Asiatic Society (400), vol. II. and many other
papers in those Transactions. I believe the 2d vol. of
Lassen is the best, partly because the latest, source of
knowledge of Buddhism.
Note 31. p. 46.
Homer 1]. XTX. 267. Apol. Rhod. III. 1033. Porph. de
Abst. II. 44. Pausan. III. 20. 9. V. 24. 2. But in trans-
ferring this to the Jewish system, a caution is required,
see pp. 68—7o, and note 40.
Note 32. p. 46.
Tum per frequentes mille rimarum vias,
Illapsus imber tabidum rorem pluit ;
Defossus intus quem sacerdos excipit,
Guttas ad omnes turpe subjectum caput,
Et veste et omni putrefactus corpore.
266 NOTES.
Quin os supinat, obvias offert genas ;
Supponit aures ; labia, nares objicit,
Oculos et ipsos proluit liquoribus :
Nec jam palato parcit, et linguam rigat
Donec cruorem totus atrum combibat.
The inscription quoted in the text is No. 2352 in Orelli’s
Collection. It dates however within Christian times (A.D.
376). The tawrobolion was the offering of a bull (the crio-
bolion, of a ram) to Cybele the mother of the gods. A deep
trench was dug, and planks pierced with holes were placed
over it; under these the person who was to undergo this
disgusting lustration placed himself, whilst the beast, with
its horns gilded, was brought and slain upon the planks.
The blood flowed down upon every part of the man below,
who thus considered himself purified for twenty years to
come, or even for ever. Many inscriptions relating to it
are found in Gruter and Orelli.
Note 33. p. 47.
Plato, Alcibiades 11. 149. E.
Note 34. p. 48.
The Rev. G. 8. Faber on Expiatory Sacrifice, p. 52.
Note 35. p. 51.
This is the view of Spencer, Meiners, Winer and others.
See Bihr II. p. 269.
Note 36. p. 52.
‘‘ Superstition by an easy corruption of mind might soon
come to think that the animal victim was not merely the
representative of a deserved punishment, in which use it was
rational; but the real equivalent for it, in which sense it
was most unreasonable: and might thus resort to sacrifice
for pardon, as well as confession.” Davidson’s Inquiry, &c.,
p- 144. ‘* Neque alio nisi sensu symbolico victimarum sub-
stitutio in locum offerentis sumi potest, licet postea sicut
omnia symbola in superstitionem verterit.”. De Wette (De
Morte Christi).
LECTURE II. 267
Note 37. p. 52.
‘“‘ According to the maxim, ‘in sacris etiam simulata pro
veris haberi®, since the wi/] is the essential and funda-
mental point, in the whole matter of sacrifices, we find the
principle of substitution still further carried out and deve-
loped. At Heliopolis, in Egypt, it was the custom to
sacrifice, every day, three men to Hera. King Amosis
abolished this; and, instead thereof, commanded the obla-
tion of as many wax figures®. In Rome every year, after
the vernal equinox, on the Ides of May, three or four and
twenty so-called Argei, that is, images of men made of
rushes, were cast down from the Sublician bridge into the
Tiber, by the priests and Vestal virgins, for the expiation
of the people. Hercules is said to have introduced this
custom by teaching, that the images of men were to be
substituted for human victimsP. In like manner, at the
festival of the Compitalia, to the Lares of the cross-ways,
instead of the original sacrifices of children, dolls and
skeins of wool were afterwards hung up; and the consul
Brutus ordered, that the heads of the poppy and onion
should be offered instead of human heads, in order to
satisfy the letter of the law, ut pro capitibus capitibus sup-
plicaretur4. The city Cyzicus was sacred to Persephone ;
at her festival a black cow was sacrificed. When in the
second Mithridatie war, at the siege of the city, this had
become impossible, they made of wheat-meal an image of a
cow, The poor were generally wont to sacrifice these
cows made of meal instead of the actual animals. The
n Serv. ad At. 11. 116. and Mythogr. Vat. III. 6, 30. p. 193, 18.
© Porph. de Abst. IT. 55.
P Varro de L. L. VII. 44. Ov. Fast. V. 621. Dionys. I. 38. Plut.
Mor. p. 172, A.
4 Macrob. Sat. I. 7. Festus, p. 91 and p. 207.
r But the goddess then sent a black cow over the sea, that of its
own accord ran into the temple, and stood still by the altar. Plut.
Lucullo, p. 498, A. App. de bello Mith. 75. and Porph. de Abst. I. 25.
5. Suidas v. βοῦς ἕβδομος T. I. p. 448 seq. In like manner acted
Empedocles after the precedence of Pythagoras. See Athenzus I. 5.
and Philostratus V. Apoll. I. τ.
268 NOTES.—LECTURE II.
Locrians made small bulls even of wood, as a substitute
for the real creaturet; and at the festival of the Boeotian
Hercules, apples were offered instead of sheep, because both
are called μῆλαυ," Ernst von Lasaulx.
t Zenobius V. 5. and Leutsch on the passage.
u Pollux I. 30, 31.
IN OE otk ay
LECTURE III.
Note 88. p. 65.
“ THE legal sacrifices, though merely symbolical in refer-
ence to acceptance with God, were strictly vicarious and
possessed a real efficacy with respect to the outward theo-
cracy.” The law was too complicated for perfect observ-
ance. Hence sacrifices were provided to atone for sins of
ignorance and negligence; and, so far as the preservation
of the offender’s position in God’s people went, they were
effectual. Great sins wilfully committed were punished
with excommunication or death. “ But the sin-offering
affected not merely the relation of the sinner to the out-
ward theocracy, but also to the holy and righteous God ;
in this respect however they were not efficacious but only
symbolical. When the sinner caused the blood of the
animal to be poured out, he declared that he had deserved
death, if God were disposed to deal with him according to
his justice instead of his mercy. The efficacy of the saeri-
fices, in this respect, depended entirely on the disposition
with which they were presented.” Hengstenberg Christolo-
gie, vol. I. p. 265. (p. 196-7 American Trans.)
Note 39. p. 66.
The chief passages of holy Scripture that speak of the
trespass-offering are Lev. v.1, 15; vi.1; Num. v. 6; Lev.
xix. 20; Num. vi.g; Lev. xiv.12, 21. But the greatest
uncertainty prevails as to the distinction between the sin-
offering (NM ἁμαρτία, περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας LXX) and the
270 NOTES.
trespass- offering (OWS πλημμέλεια, TO τῆς πλημμελείας).
According to Reland, Venema, Buddeus and others, the
sin-offering was for a transgression of which there were
witnesses, the trespass-offering, for one known only to the
offender’s conscience, supported by Josephus, Antiq. III. g.
§ 3. Philo de Vict. p. 844. Paris ed. Michaelis and Jahn
assign the sin-offering to sins of commission, and the tres-
pass-offering to those of omission ; see above, the rendering
of the LX X. Grotius holds the same ground of difference,
but reverses the arrangement. Other opinions are given,
but none are free from difficulty. See the matter discussed
in Bahr II. 400—412. De Wette, de Morte Christi, p. 14
(Opuscula, p. 20) note. Hebrew Archeology, ὃ. 202. Wi-
ner, Realwérterbuch, Art. Schuldopfer.
Note 40. p. 69.
The former of these opinions is the more general; see
quotations in Ugolini Thesaur. Antiqu. Sacer. X. 680, and
Outram de Sacrif. I. 22. for Rabbinical authorities. In
the present day it numbers Gesenius and Hengstenberg
among its supporters. The latter is the view of Bahr, (II.
Ῥ. 210,) and is not far different from that of De Wette
(Archaologie, ὃ 202). The principal arguments for the
theory that the victim bore the anger of God instead of
the worshipper, have been thus summed up, 1. The blood,
as the life of the victim, is shed, (Lev. xvii. 11, see p. 263,)
and the victim becomes unclean, as if by the passing over
of the sin to it (Lev. vi. 24—30, but this has been other-
wise explained by Bahr, II. 393 note, who proves that the
blood is treated as sacred not as impure). 2. The analogy
of other sacrifices, as the sacrifice of a covenant (Jer. xxxv.
18. Compare Sophocles, Ajax 1141. Iliad xix. 267); the
explation of a murder (Deut. xxi. 1—g); and the seape-
goat (Lev. xvi. 21). 3. The analogy of other nations ;
Egyptians (Herod. II. 39), Gauls (Cesar de Bel. Gal. VI.
15), and Romans (Ovid. Fasti vi. 160). See De Wette, de
Morte Christi (Opuse. p. 23); Dogmatik, § 126; Archiio-
logie, ὃ 202. Also Biihr, 11. 277. See above, notes 31
and 38.
LECTURE III. 271
Note 41. p. 71.
De duobus hircis diei expiationis mandatum est, ut sint
pares in aspectu et statura et pretio, et ut simul etiam
eapiantur. Mischna Joma, vi. τ. (in Bahr.)
Note 42. p. 72.
Spencer (de leg. Hebr. III. 8.1) in modern times, not
without Rabbinical authority, was the leading supporter of
this view. But ““ Binery i is the Pealpal form” [ Pe’al’al, in
Roorda Gram. Heb. I. iol] “Tol oy removit, with the elision
of the last letter of the penultimate syllable, and its replace-
ment by an unchangeable vowel, as 7yixmM for WSN 5
this form heightens the sense, “for complete sending away.”
Tholuck (Hebrier, Beilage, II. p. 83. Comp. LXX. ἀπο-
πομπαῖος, Vulgate, emissarius). Kwald Krit. Gram. 243.
Note 43. p. 72.
The whole subject is discussed by Bahr, IT. 664 foll.
Note 44. p. 75.
Hengstenberg, Christologie, I. p. 59 (p. 50 American
Trans.), reviews the various opinions.
Note 45. p. 81.
Hengstenberg, I. p. 283. (p. 210 American Trans.)
Note 46. p. 83.
See the eloquent “ Discourses” of John Smith, of Cam-
bridge, (ob. 1652,) 8. “of the Shortness and Vanity of a
Pharisaic righteousness.”
Note 47. p. 83.
According to Josephus the Sadducees τὴν μὲν εἱμαρμένην
ἀναιροῦσιν, οὐδὲν εἶναι ταύτην ἀξιοῦντες οὔτε κατ᾽ αὐτὴν τὰ ἀν-
θρώπινα τέλος λαμβάνειν, ἅπαντα δὲ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς τίθενται
ὡς καὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν αἰτίους ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς γινομένους καὶ τὰ χείρω
παρὰ ἡμετέραν ἀβουλίαν λαμβάνοντες. Antiqu. XIII. 5, 9;
and Bell. Jud. 11. 8. 14.
Note 48. p. 86.
Pliny to Trajan (Ep. lib. X); Tacitus (Annal. 15, 44).
N OCT, ES.
LECTURE IV.
Note 49. p. 93.
SEE Catena Aurea, Kuinoel, and Alford, on John xiv. 28.
Note 50. p. 94.
Besides the places in holy Scripture where the name is
ascribed to Jesus, we should consider those where divine
powers and attributes are given him; he existed before
the world (John viii. 58; xvu.5; Phil. ii.6; Heb. 1. 10);
he is Omniscient (Mat. xi. 27; John vi. 46; xvi. 15, 30);
Almighty (Mat. xi. 27; xxvill.1g; Luke x. 22); the Cre-
ator and Governor of the world (Col. 1. 16; 1 Cor. viii. 6;
Heb. i. 2,10); the Cause of the resurrection, and Judge of
all men (John v. 21; Mat. vil. 22; xxv. 31; Phil. iii. 20);
and the honour due to God is paid him (Acts 1. 24; vil. 59;
Rom. ix. 1; x.125, 1 Cor. 1. 2; 2 Cor. xu.8; ΗΘ ἵν. 16:
Rey. v. 8; vil. 12).
Note 51. p. 95.
The name of Son of Man, which, as we have seen, our
Lord applies to himself, whilst others rarely apply it to
him, is the name of a creature applied to the Lord of all
creatures, of a finite nature applied to the Infinite himself;
therefore it implies humiliation (Phil. ii. 5). But this does
not hinder us from understanding it as a name for the
Man κατ᾽ ἐξοχὴν, the Messiah, derived probably from Dan.
vii. 13. In respect to God, it implied humiliation ; in re-
spect to men preeminence and kingly power, not without
an implied parallel between the Fall and the Redemption ;
“since by man came death, by man came also the resur-
rection of the dead.” 1 Cor. xv. 21—45.
LECTURE IV. 273
Note 52. p. 95.
In using an ancient name for the Son of God, not found
in holy Scripture, I am not unmindful of the excellent
remarks of Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, on the employ-
ment of titles other than scriptural. See his “ Scriptural
Types and Sacraments,” pp. 85,103. In the text I have
used once for all a name that brings out strongly the truth
under discussion ; against the habitual substitution of other
names for those which our Lord and his apostles use to
designate his divine person, Dr. Hawkins’ remarks apply.
Note 53. p. 97.
This seems to answer the sceptical question—W hat pur-
pose did the Transfiguration answer in our Lord’s ministry ?
See “ The Transfiguration, A Sermon preached at Oxford”
by the present writer.
Note 54. p. 97.
“ Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et constans opinio ;
esse in fatis, ut eo tempore Judzea profecti rerum potiren-
tur.” Suetonius, Vespasian. cap. ΓΝ. “ Pluribus persuasio
inerat antiquis sacerdotum literis contineri eo ipso tem-
pore fore ut valesceret Oriens, profectique Judzea rerum
potirentur.” Tacitus, Hist. V. 13.
Note 55. p. 99.
Besides Mat. xx. 28, xxvi. 28, it is worthy of remark
that al/ the Evangelists alike refer to Isaiah lui. in con-
nexion with Jesus; Mat. vili.17; Mark xv. 28; Luke xxii.
37; John xii. 38. Note too the reference to the Old Tes-
tament in connexion with his sufferings in Luke xxiv. 25,
26; see also Lecture III. p.60. On the “ characteristic
differences in the Four Gospels,” there are many suggestions
in the Rey. I. Williams’ “‘ Study of the Gospels ;” though
some of them seem to me fanciful, they are brought toge-
ther, from patristic sources almost exclusively, with great
spiritual insight and pious feeling.
274 NOTES.
Note 56. p. 101.
See Bishop Butler’s admirable Sermons “ Upon Com-
passion” (Serm. V. VI).
Note 57. p. 106.
Christology of De Wette.| The view in the text is that of
the learned De Wette. His own words are annexed, from
his Essay De Morte Christi expiatoria, p. 11. § 23: “ Natus
est Jesus eo tempore, quo populus Judaicus eo rerum et
sacrarum et publicarum statu erat, ut non solum populus
antique illi Messiz, patrize vindicis, expectationi impense
indulgeret, sed cordatiores etiam rerum in melius mutatio-
nem desiderarent. Pro diversa autem animi indole et cultu
diverse sentiebant de ratione ac modo hujus salutis, com-
munibus votis expetite. Et plurimi quidem Messiam re-
gem victoriosum atque potentissimum, alii vero, lidemque
pauciores, non solum victorem, sed etiam legislatorem, sa-
crorum restitutorem, morum censorem, prophetam expecta-
bant. Jesus autem ulterius progressus, ab omni politic
libertatis et potentiz recuperande spe abstinendum, om-
nemque salutem in animi morumque emendatione et veree
pietatis affectatione queerendam esse sibi persuasit. Ad
quam internam salutem populo suo afferendam cum se a
Deo electum sentiret, prodiit, exspectati Messiz persona
suscepta, et felicem rerum conversionem a se perficiendam
preedicavit. Ne autem reipublicee vindicem se fore spera-
rent, statim prima oratione, quam ad populum habuit, di-
serte est professus, se eorum tantum causa venisse, qui
novis rebus moliendis plane renuntiantes nonnisi mentis
saluti consulere vellent. Abolevit itaque usitatam Mes-
siz notionem, et novam eamque spiritualem induxit. Qua
in re autem aceommodationem, quam dicunt, adhibuisse
Jesum haud dixerim; nam Messiam se esse non simulavit,
sed re vera persuasum habuit, et diserte professus est.
Alium Messiam, nisi talem, qualem ipse se preebebat, cogi-
tare non potuit. Neque ab initio dubitasse videtur, quin
populares simulae vere salutis viam iis monstrasset, hane
se duce ingressuri essent. Quod omnibus, qui pura incor-
LECTURE IV. Q75
ruptaque animi indole gaudent, accidere solet, ut nimis
bonam de hominibus habeant opinionem, id Jesu accidisse
videtur, qui in rebus ccelestibus habitans, in terrestribus
peregrinans, amore humani generis plenus, rei suze optima
queeque augurabatur. Speravit fore, ut non solum disci-
puli, licet rudes et indocti, sublimem suam de regno divino
doctrinam amplecterentur, sed etiam universus populus,
paucis licet, Phariszeis preesertim, reluctantibus et contra
rem ipsius pugnantibus, ad regnum sacrum a se conden-
dum accederet. Qua fiducia fretus, cum discipulos in oppida
Israelitarum mitteret, ut regnum divinum annuntiarent,
jussit eos in persecutionibus et calamitatibus, quas iis haud
defore previdebat, bono animo esse, promittens, fore, ut,
priusquam totam regionem peragrassent, Messianam digni-
tatem adeptus de inimicis triumpharet (Mat. x. 23). Sed.
multum eum fefellit opinio tum de discipulis, tum de popule
universo. Illos vulgaribus de Messia ejusque regno imbu-
tos opinionibus, nihil nisi dominationem spirantes, in suam
de regno divino sententiam frustra adducere studebat ; hic
ad miracula spectanda et eloquentiam admirandam undi-
que concurrebat, multi etiam eum prophetam veneraban-
tur; pauci, quid vellet, capiebant. Quze cum ita essent,
vel ab incepto prorsus erat desistendum, vel imbecillitati
popularium quodammodo parcendum. Quod si Jesus aperte
declarasset, se nihil nisi societatem sacram instituere velle,
ideoque ab omni Messianze felicitatis spe abstinendum esse :
sane ab omnibus desertus et explosus esset. Necesse ita-
que ei fuit, quam in presentia prestare nec volebat nec
poterat felicitatem, eam saltim in futurum tempus promit-
tere. Locutus igitur est de futuro suo ad regnum Messia-
num instituendum adventu, de judicio habendo, de eterna
plis doctrinee suze adseclis destinata felicitate et eeternis
improborum pcenis, sperans fore, ut his promissis ad
doctrinam suam allectos animos sensim sensimque ad ve-
ram pietatem probitatemque et sublimiorem de regno Mes-
siano sententiam perduceret. Sed et hee eum fefellit spes.
Messianze felicitatis, licet in futurum tempus rejectze, ex-
spectatio nihilominus animos occupatos tenebat, abstrahe-
batque ab eo, quod Jesus intendebat. Preeterea verendum
9
T2
276 NOTES.
erat, ne, exspectationi eventu haud respondente, fraudis
eum accusarent, remque ejus prorsus desererent. Hic no-
dus expediri non potuit nisi morte Jesu. Jure suo spera-
bat, discipulos, si mortuus esset, spem terrestris regni
penitus abjecturos, animumque ad ccelestia directuros.
Mortem igitur sibi esse subeundam intellexit, subire nullus
dubitavit. Neque solum hoc modo causze suze optime con-
suluit, sed gravissimo animi desiderio satisfecit. Nimirum
quo letiorem ab initio de regno divino in terris condendo
spem aluerat, eo magis, postea animo afflictus et meestitia
depressus fuisse videtur. Hominum perversitatem, mali-
tiam, czecitatem satis superque expertus, sacro cuidam do-
lori atque meerori se dedit, qui eum inter vivos diutius
morari vetabat. Hxsulere quasi in terris se sentiens, cce-
lestem patriam repetiit. Internee huic mortis oppetendz
necessitati accessit externa. Liberiore doctrina, qua rei
Leviticee intentum minitabatur, et severa procerum, Pha-
riseeorum preesertim, de sceleribus et fraudibus reprehen-
sione tantum invidiam sibi paraverat, ut nisi veritatem
deserere et prodere vellet, insidiis inimicorum succumben-
dum esset. Mortem igitur, quam causze suze utilem fore
intelligebat, quamque animus a rebus terrestribus avoca-
tus appetebat, ei necesse non fuit sponte quzerere, sed
tantum non turpiter fugere.” Strange as this theory is, it
is more strange as proceeding from a learned and laborious
scholar, with a power of clear expression rare in his coun-
try, and above all of a blameless life. See Hagenbach’s
Sermon at De Wette’s funeral. Basel 1849.
Note 58. p. 110.
Compare the Crito of Plato; the whole argument is full
of exalted self-devotion.
Note 59. p. 112.
See the Leben Jesu of this author; of which there is an
English translation; also his Dogmatik and Streitschriften.
“This is the key to the whole of Christology, that, as sub-
ject of the predicate which the Church assigns to Christ,
we place, instead of an individual, an idea; but an idea
which has an existence in reality, not in the mind only,
LECTURE IV. 277
like that of Kant. In an individual, a God-man, the pro-
perties and functions which the Church ascribes to Christ
contradict themselves; in the idea of the race, they per-
fectly agree. Humanity is the union of the two natures—
God become man, the infinite manifesting itself in the
finite, and the finite spirit remembering its infinitude ; it
is the child of the visible Mother and the invisible Father,
Nature and Spirit: it is the worker of miracles, in so far
as in the course of human history the spirit more and
more completely subjugates nature, both within and around
man, until it lies before him as the inert matter on which
he exercises his active power; it is the sinless existence,
for the course of its development is a blameless one, pollu-
tion cleaves to the individual only, and does not touch the
race or its history. It is Humanity that dies, rises, and
ascends to heaven, for from the negation of its phenomenal
life there ever proceeds a higher spiritual life: from the
suppression of its mortality as a personal, national, and
terrestrial spirit, arises its union with the infinite spirit of
the heavens. By faith in this Christ, especially in his
death and resurrection, man is justified before God: that
is, by the kindling within him of the idea of Humanity,
the individual man participates in the divinely human life
of the species. Now the main element of that idea is, that
the negation of the merely natural and sensual life, which
is itself the negation of the spirit, (the negation of nega-
tion, therefore,) is the sole way to the true spiritual life.”
Leben Jesu 11. 709. (lil. 437. Eng. Trans.)
Note 60. p. 112.
Strauss, Leben Jesu, (Introduction § 10.) who quotes
George; and Miiller’s Mythology (p. 12. Eng. Trans.)
Note 61. p. 114.
Amand-Saintes, Histoire, p. 458. foll.
Note 62. p. 115.
So many works have been written against the theory of
Strauss, that it would be difficult to specify them. Nean-
278 NOTES.
der, Leben Jesu; some papers by Nitzsch in the Studien
und Kritiken vols. 15 and 16; an essay by Julius Miller
of Halle on the Theory of Myths, in the same series ; Tho-
luck, Glaubwiirdigkeit der Evang. Gesch.; are but a few
of the number. Dr. J. R. Beard has combined, under the
inappropriate title of “‘ Voices of the Church in reply to
Strauss,” several tracts by members of various commu-
nions in defence of the Gospels; Dr. B. himself, Professor
Quinet, Athanase Coquerel, Tholuck, J. Miller, and Nean-
der are among the contributors. In the Preface he men-
tions several works bearing on the subject. In spite of active
efforts it can scarcely be said that Strauss’ theory as a system
has made much impression on the English mind; but old
doubts have been revived by it, and new ones started. Paley’s
Evidences and Horee Pauline, Lardner’s works, Blunt’s Un-
designed Coincidences, supply a defence against them. The
neglect of the first-named work in Oxford is to be regretted ;
the Analogy of Bishop Butler by no means covers all the
ground contested at present. There is a criticism of
Strauss’ views in Dean Milman’s History of Christianity.
The principal points to which his opponents address them-
selves are, that his theory begs the question in assuming
that miracles are impossible ; that it would destroy all faith
in history ; [Archbishop Whateley’s Historic Doubts rela-
tive to Napoleon Bonaparte, and a similar treatment of “the
hfe of Luther” by J. F. Wurm, found in Beard’s Voices,
&c., and a mythical view of the history of the United States,
cleverly done by Theodore Parker in his Miscellaneous
Writings, show how easy it is to raise plausible doubts as
to the nearest and surest facts]; that it would leave Christ-
ianity, which has changed the face of the world, an effect
without a cause; that if the Gospel only embodied the
floating ideas of the age in which Christ was crucified, it
would contain political views and allusions, the thoughts of
an oppressed people turning naturally to civil freedom; that
an age of doubt and mockery like that was, by no means
favourable to the growth of myths, which require an at-
mosphere of credulity; that the space of thirty years,
between the death of Christ and the destruction of Jeru-
LECTURE IV. 279
salem, was far too short for the growth of a system of
myths, as supposed in Strauss’ theory; that the true con-
ditions for the formation of such a system were not present
in the case of Jesus of Nazareth; [Coquerel eloquently
contrasts with his lowly life the brilliant position and ex-
ploits of Charlemagne, which in a romantic age grew up
into the Charlemagne of the Pseudo-Turpin’s Chronicle,
“the hero’s great renown; the interval of nearly three
hundred years between the real history and the written
fiction; generations of unparalleled ignorance and credu-
lity, the vast extent of the theatre of events; an excessive
power of superstition, and the double flight that chivalry
and the crusades gave to the imagination’”’]; that the style
of the Gospels is not that of men who deal in fables, but is
simple, plain, unaffected and familiar, and that this becomes
more evident on a comparison with the Apoeryphal Gos-
pels; that the distinct individuality of the persons in the
New Testament, as of the Virgin Mary and St. Paul in
particular, are a proof of its historical character; that
the character of Jesus himself, as a practical ideal of virtue
and holiness, never surpassed or to be surpassed, is beyond
human invention, and certainly was not the result of float-
ing fables and ideas in men’s minds; and lastly, that the
unity of idea and of purpose in Christianity as a system
could not have proceeded from such causes. Besides these
general arguments, particular passages of Scripture have
been defended, as by Tholuck and Neander in the works
above referred to. But even against the ground taken by
the apologists, we should find matter of objection, as the
advocates of the historical character of the Gospels in Ger-
many have surrended far too much. Dr. Mill (of Cam-
bridge) in his ““ Christian Advocate’s Publications” has done
excellent service in this way.
Note 63. p. 116.
See Strauss on this point. Life of Jesus, concluding
Dissertation, ὃ 152. He candidly opens the whole diffi-
culty, but leaves the question unsettled—how shall the
280 NOTES.—LECTURE IV.
philosopher holding the mythical view preach to the people,
who hold the historical, without hypocrisy ?
Note 64. p. 117.
See Baur, Verséhnung, for an account of later views in
Germany ; in our own country they are not so rife.
Note 65..P.117.
Such poets as Philip James Bailey and Alexander Smith
would not lose in real strength by a more reverent use of
the Divine Name.
Note 66. p.117.
The rich rewards from them have turned the attention
of man to the material sciences; at the same time that the
worship of strength and of genius has insensibly confounded
their view of the beauty of holiness and obedience.
Note 67. peir7.
The “ Positive Philosophy” of Auguste Comte attempts
to bind this state of things into a system; but the obvious
tendencies of ordinary thought at this moment are in the
same direction.
γύπα Si
LECTURE V.
Note 68. p. 121.
STRAUSS, in his Soliloquies, reprinted from the “Freihafen,”
and translated into English. Bengel rightly apprehends
the passage, which has been too often interpreted in a way
to give colour to the specious objection of Strauss. “ Ceteri
homines omnes nee falsa spe letantur, et preesentis vite
fructum libere percipiunt; nos si mortui non resurgunt,
falsa spe leetamur stolide, et per abnegationem nostri et
mundi, certum preesentis vitee fructum amittimus, dupliciter
miserabiles. Jam nune Jcati sunt Christiani: sed non in
iis rebus, quibus ceteri homines pascuntur ; et sublata spe
alterius vitee, preesens leetitia spiritualis imminuitur. Pree-
sentissimum in Deo gaudium habent fideles, et ideo jam
sunt beati: sed si non est resurrectio, gaudium illud mag-
nopere debilitatur. Hoc momentum est alterum: prius
momentum est, quod Christianorum beatitas non est sita
in rebus mundanis. Utroque momento confirmatur feli-
citas ex spe resurrectionis.”
Note 69. p. 126.
See Kant, Kritik, p. 322. The old Rhetoricians used the
word ἀντινομία when one law contradicted another. Quinct.
Inst. VII. 7. Voss. Inst. Rhet. I. p. 165.
Note 70. p. 134.
A misquotation from Tertullian misled me here, as it
has others. The words attributed to him, “ Christus pec-
cata hominum omni satisfactionis habitu expiavit” (De
Pat. 10), do not oecur in the place assigned them, nor, it 15
believed, in any other of his writings. He introduced the
282 NOTES.
word satisfactio, but in the sense of making amends for
one’s own sins by repentance and a better life: in the
sense of satisfactio vicaria it does not seem to occur. [Com-
pare Cic. in Verr. II. 1. 3. In qua civitate legatus populi
Romani violatus sit, nisi publice satisfactum sit, ei civitati
bellum indici solere.| See Tertullian de Cultu fem. I. 1.
which has probably suggested the spurious quotation, Si
tanta in terris moraretur fides quanta merces ejus expecta-
retur in ccelis, nulla vestrum ltiorem habitum appetisset,
ut non squalorem potius affectaret, ipsam se cireumferens
Evam lugentem et pcenitentem, quo plenius id, quod de
Eva trahit, omnis satisfactionis habitu expiaret. De Pati-
entia, 3. Patientia Domini in Malcho vulnerata est. Ita-
que sanitatis restitutione ei, quem non ipse vexavyerat,
satisfecit per patientiam, misericordiz matrem. Also de
Jejun. 3. Cont. Jud. 10. Satisfacere in Roman law differed
from solvere, in that the latter applied to the simple dis-
charge of a debt, the former to any mode of appeasing the
creditor. “Satisfactum autem accipimus, quemadmodum
voluit creditor, licet non sit solutum.” Ulp. Dig. 13. 7. 9.
Note 7/1. p. 135.
See Modestin. Dig. 46. 4.1. for the sense of acceptila-
tio, as an acceptance of an imaginary payment. Duns
Scotus held (see L. III. dist. 19.) that Christ merited for
us non quatenus Deus, sed quatenus homo. His merit then
must have been finite, but was accepted of God as infinite,
of his will and pleasure. Pro quantis et pro quot Deus voluit
passionem illam sive bonum velle acceptare, pro tot sufficit.
This scheme gives no answer to Anselm's question— Would
not the death of a man or an angel have sufficed? On the
other hand Thomas Aquinas (Summa, IIT. Quest. 46—
49) held that the merit of Jesus was infinitely great,
and the satisfaction made by it was not merely sufficient
but superabundant. So speaks the Romish Church now;
Est integra atque omnibus numeris perfecta satisfactio,
quam Christus Patri persolvit. Neque vero pretium debi-
tis nostris par solum et «quale fuit, verum ea longe super-
avit. Catechism. Rom. I. 2.6. In the prayer of conse-
LECTURE V. 283
eration in the Communion Service of our own Church, it
is said that Christ made upon the Cross “ by his one obla-
tion of himself, once offered, a full perfect and sufficient
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole
world.” On the use of unscriptural terms, see Dr. Haw-
kins’ (Provost of Oriel) Scriptural Types and Sacraments,
Ρ. 85. Also above, Note 52.
Note 72. p. 136.
The former opinion is that of Hollaz; the latter of
Quenstedt. In the Formula Concordié our sins are de-
scribed as forgiven ‘‘propter totam obedientiam, quam
Christus agendo et patiendo, in vita et morte sua, nostra
causa Patri suo ccelesti preestitit,” Il. 3.15. Passive obe-
dience alone is put forward, Confess. Aug. 4. Apol. p. 190.
§ 45. p. 202. ὃ 8. Art. Smal. 8. Cat. Min. p.73.§ 4. The
references are to Francke’s edition, published by Tauch-
nitz. The moderation of our own Church is here as always
apparent. Christ “came to be the Lamb without spot,
who by sacrifice of himself once made should take away
the sins of the world ;” (Article XV) here, his spotless obe-
dience and his sufferings are connected as conditions of his
atoning work.
Note 73. p. 137-
“Jesus is the ideal of virtue, such as the human con-
science conceives it,—so perfect that all the efforts of the
most delicate conscience, the most fertile imagination, and
the most expansive charity, cannot add to it the least
trait ;—that, from circumstance to circumstance through
all the Gospel, one continually asks oneself, but in vain,
what Christ could possibly have done more, otherwise, or
better, than he did ;—that, in a word, to figure to oneself
Christ more virtuous (may we be pardoned ‘ the foolish-
ness of our preaching, according to the words of St. Paul,
1 Cor. 1.21%) is a moral impossibility. But what forms an
irresistible demonstration against Dr. Strauss and his de-
plorable doctrine, is, in our opinion, that Jesus, the ideal
of virtue, is a practical ideal. His perfection has nothing
of that impossible heroism which the imagination of poets,
284 NOTES.
and even sometimes the imprudent exaggeration of moral-
ists, attach to the models they exhibit. His perfection has
nothing of that of heroes, according to fable, or of angels
according to revelation. His virtues are all human, and
do not quit the earth, or step out of the just proportions
of humanity. He is virtuous, as people may be in a world
like ours, in the interval comprised between a cradle and
a tomb. He never forgets, in his struggles with the
wicked, in the devotedness of his charity, in the most sub-
lime flights of his piety, even in his indignation, he never
forgets, that he had not taken the resemblance of angels
(Heb. ii. 9), but ‘the form of a servant’ (Phil. ii. 7), and
that he was made ‘in all points like as we are, yet without
sin’ (Heb. 11.173; iv.15). Man amongst men, he was Is-
raelite amongst the Israelites, taking part in all the inter-
ests of his age and nation, as well as in the worship of his
country; mingling with all the agitations of the moment ;
suffering his heart to beat with the same emotions which
swelled all breasts; ‘the last Adam,’ as St. Paul again
says (1 Cor. xv. 45), keeping so close to us all, sons of
Adam and his brethren, that he condescends even to weep
with mourners at the very moment of a resurrection, as if
to authorize and sanctify at the same time our sorrows,
our tears, and our hopes. From this complete and conti-
nued absence of impossibility in the virtues of Christ, there
results to Christianity one advantage, which alone, amongst
all the religions of the world, it possesses and will possess ;
namely, that of having exhibited to the world a model
which is the ideal of perfection, but which is not inimit-
able, which does not leave the sinner, who is inyited to
follow this perfect model, the pleasing and legitimate ex-
cuse ‘I cannot.’ When contemplating the virtues of Christ,
we feel ourselves in the presence of the ideal, but at the
same time of the possible. We admire, we extol, we worship,
we seek for some holiness beyond this, but find none. We
search in the most sublime conceptions of human genius for
some virtue more virtuous, some charity more charitable,—
an effort, an appearance, a shade, of devotion more gene-
rous, but find none. All is in Christ; and when, after
LECTURE V. 285
these ecstasies of admiration, we come back to ourselves,
and recall the sanctities of that life into the midst of our
own, we are quite surprised to find them on a level; and
when having embraced the cross, we by anticipation carry
the heroism of that death to that which awaits us, we
find it adapted to our end, and placed within our reach,
so that we are all obliged to endeavour to descend into
our tomb, in the same manner as he ascended his cross.
And the ingenious and cold learning of incredulity would
fain rob us of this example, as reflection dissipates the
prepossessions of a dream of the night. No: poets, in their
dreams, and the people, who are poets also, in theirs, may
create an ideal, and make it act in the midst of accumu-
lating impossibilities; but a practical ideal is necessarily
real. If Jesus were perfect only as the Son of God, in-
eredulity might be in the right; but Jesus has clothed
himself with a perfection proportional to our faculties ; he
is perfectly human, and consequently the Gospels are a
history.” Athanase Coquerel.
Note 74. p. 141.
᾿Αθηναῖοι δ᾽ ὥσπερ περὶ τὰ ἄλλα φιλοξενοῦντες διατελοῦσιν,
4 Ν \ XN / Ν SS n lo ε a
οὕτως καὶ περὶ τοὺς θεούς. πολλὰ yap τῶν ξενικῶν ἱερῶν παρε-
δέξαντο, ὥστε καὶ ἐκωμῳδήθησαν, καὶ δὴ καὶ τὰ Θράκια καὶ τὰ
) ἢ
Φρύγια. Strabo, X. 472. ¢.
Note 75. p. 142.
Σύνδεσμος οὖν ἄρα τῆς ἑνότητος ἡμῶν τῆς πρὸς Θεὸν καὶ Ta-
/ ΄ Ἔ γ΄ Ν ς a Ν «ς lad ° / c »
τέρα διαφαίνεται ὁ Χριστὸς, ἑαυτοῦ μὲν ἡμᾶς ἐξαρτήσας, ὡς ἄν-
θρωπος, Θεῷ δὲ ὡς Θεὸς ἐνυπάρχων φυσικῶς τῷ ἰδίῳ γεννήτορι.
Cyril. Alex. IT. in Joan. p. 102.
Note 76. p. 145.
See Thomas a Kempis, II. 12, II. το. Deutsche Theo-
logie, chs. 3. and 52. ‘Tauler’s Sermon on Good Friday.
Arvisenet Memoriale Vite Sacerdotalis, cap. xix. Augus-
tine, Medit. 1.6,7,8. Anselm, Meditationes X et seqq.
(p. 221. ed. Gerberon). Also the excellent practical appli-
cation in Barrow’s Sermon on the Passion. Works, vol. I.
δ ye Pt Bee By
LECTURE VI.
Note 77. p. 151.
ON the finality of the Creed of Niczea and Constantinople,
or Nicene Creed, see the 7th Canon of the Council of
Ephesus. Routh’s Opuscula, IT. p. 8.
Note 78. p. 153.
Arius regarded our Lord as a created being (κτίσμα καὶ
ποίημα. Athanasius, Cont. Ari. I. ὃ 9); but this affects the
worth of the price paid for our redemption. Apollinaris
denied the completeness of his human nature, by excluding
the human will; but this affects his fitness to be our
High-priest (Heb. iv. 15; v. 2; x. 19...). The tenet of
Nestorius, of a junction (συνάφεια) rather of two persons
than of two natures is inconsistent with our views of the
true reconciliation of God and man (see below, note 97).
Eutyches, in confusing the two natures, altered the cha-
racter of our Mediator and his office of Mediation. (See
the Letter of Leo the Great in Mansi, v. p. 1359.)
Note 79. p. 153.
Baur, Gnosis, p. 36. Compare Dr. Burton’s Bampton
Lectures, and Notes there. Matter, Histoire du Gnosti-
cisme. Stieren’s ed. of Irenzeus, vol. ii. On the contro-
versy as to the origin of Gnosticism see Gieseler, Church
History, Period I. ch. ii. ὃ 44.
Note 80. p. 155.
. “Verbum potens et homo verus sanguine suo ratio-
nabiliter redimens nos, redemtionem semet ipsum dedit pro
LECTURE VI. 287
his, qui in captivitatem ducti sunt. Et quoniam injuste
dominabatur nobis apostasia, et cum natura essemus Dei
omnipotentis, alienavit nos contra naturam, suos proprios
nos faciens discipulos, potens in omnibus Dei verbum, et
non deficiens in sua justitia, juste etiam adversus ipsum
conversus est apostasiam, ea quee sunt sua redimens ab eo
non cum vi, quemadmodum ille initio dominabatur nostri,
ea quee non erant sua insatiabiliter rapiens; sed secundum
suadeam, quemadmodum decebat Deum suadentem, et non
vim inferentem, accipere que vellet, ut neque quod est
justum confringeretur, neque antiqua plasmatio Dei deper-
iret.” Irenzeus adv. Her. V. 1. 1.
Note 81. p. 156.
Dorner (Person Christi, p. 479 note) seems to me to
establish clearly against Baur (Versodhnung, p. 35), that the
Suadela is not used towards Satan but towards man. In
V. xxi. the position in which Irenzeus represents Satan in
the transaction of redemption is that of a vanquished foe.
And the following words from that chapter seem to sug-
gest, though they do not express, a parallel between the
persuasion that drew men astray and that which recalls
them to God: ‘“ Quoniam enim initio homini suasit trans-
gredi preeceptum factoris, et ideo eum habuit in sua potes-
tate....per hominem ipsum iterum oportebat victum eum
contrario colligari iisdem vinculis, quibus alligavit homi-
nem, ut homo solutus revertatur ad suum Dominum, illa
vineula relinquens, per quee ipse fuerat alligatus, id est
transgressionem.” By his own will man fell, by his own
will and by moral means does the just God redeem him.
Dorner’s view is strengthened by a reference to the Epistle
to Diognetus, ch. vii. God sent his Son into the world,
ὡς σώζων ἔπεμψεν, os πείθων od βιαζόμενος, Bia yap ov
πρόςεστι τῷ θεῷ. Gallandius Bib. Pat. 1. p. 323.
Note 82. p. 157.
Origen, in Joan. T. I]. 21. Ibid. T. XXVIII. 14. In
Mat. XVI. 8. τίνι δὲ ἔδωκε τὴν ψυχὴν αὑτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ πολ-
λῶν; οὐ γὰρ δὴ τῷ θεῷ μή τι οὖν τῷ πονηρῷ; οὗτος γὰρ
288 NOTES.
ἐκράτει ἡμῶν, ἕως δοθῇ τὸ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν αὐτῷ λύτρον, ἡ TOD ᾿Ιησοῦ
ψυχὴ, ἀπατηθέντι, ὡς δυναμένῳ αὐτῆς κυριεῦσαι, καὶ οὐχ ὁρῶντι
ὅτι οὐ φέρει τὴν ἐπὶ τῷ κατέχειν αὐτὴν βάσανον" διὸ καὶ θάνα-
τος αὐτοῦ δόξας κεκυριευκέναι, οὐκέτι κυριεύει, γενομένου ἐν
νεκροῖς ἐλευθέρου καὶ ἰσχυροτέρου τῆς τοῦ θανάτου ἐξουσίας, καὶ
ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον ἰσχυροτέρου, ὥςτε καὶ πάντας τοὺς βουλομένους
αὐτῷ ἀκολουθεῖν τῶν κρατουμένων ὑπὸ τοῦ θανάτου δύνασθαι
ἀκολουθεῖν, οὐδὲν ἰσχύοντος kat αὐτῶν ἔτι τοῦ θανάτου. Com-
pare Origen, in Rom. II. 13. (p. 495. ed. Delarue.) Si ergo
pretio emti sumus, ut etiam Paulus adstipulatur, nee ab
aliquo sine dubio emti sumus cujus eramus servi, qui et
pretium poposcit quod voluit, ut de potestate dimitterat
quos tenebat. Tenebat autem nos Diabolus, cui distracti
fueramus peccatis nostris. Poposcit ergo pretium nostrum
sanguinem Christi.
Note 83. p. 157.
Great caution is required in studying this subject, be-
cause on one side there is a temptation to exaggerate the
differences of opinion among the Fathers, and to speak of
these unscriptural representations as if they affected their
whole doctrine, whilst on the other, in order to preserve
the quod semper quod ubique quod ab omnibus, the fact that
differences exist is apt to be veiled and glossed over. See
p- 169. on the agreement on the doctrine of Atonement,
among Christian writers. Gregory of Nyssa (Orat. Cat.
C. 23.) ἀλλὰ μὴν ἀμήχανον ἣν γυμνῇ προςβλέψαι τῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ
φαντασίᾳ μὴ σαρκός τινα μοῖραν ἐν αὐτῷ θεωρήσαντα, ἣν ἤδη
διὰ τῆς ἁμαρτίας κεχείρωτο. Διὰ τοῦτο περικεκάλυπται τῇ σαρκὶ
ἡ θεότης, ὡς ἂν πρὸς τὸ σύντροφόν τε καὶ συγγενὲς αὐτῷ βλέ-
πων, μὴ πτοηθείη τὸν προςεγγισμὸν τῆς ὑπερεχούσης δυνάμεως;
καὶ τὴν ἠρέμα διὰ τῶν θαυμάτων ἐπὶ τὸ μεῖζον διαλάμπουσαν
δύναμιν κατανοήσας, ἐπιθυμητὸν μᾶλλον i φοβερὸν τὸ φανὲν
εἶναι νομίσῃ. (24) ὡς ἂν εὔληπτον γένοιτο τῷ ἐπιζητοῦντι ὑπὲρ
ἡμῶν τὸ ἀντάλλαγμα, τῷ προκαλύμματι τῆς φύσεως ἡμῶν ἐνε-
κρύφθη τὸ θεῖον, ἵνα κατὰ τοὺς λίχνους τῶν ἰχθύων» τῷ δελέατι
τῆς σαρκὸς συναποσπασθῇ τὸ ἄγκιστρον τῆς θεότητος, καὶ οὕτω
τῆς ζωῆς τῷ θανάτῳ εἰςοικισθείσης, καὶ τῷ σκότει τοῦ φωτὸς
ἐμφανέντος, ἐξαφανισθήτω τῷ φωτὶ καὶ τῇ ζωῇ τὸ κατὰ τὸ ἐναν-
τίον νοούμενον. (26) ἀπατᾶται γὰρ καὶ αὐτὸς τῷ τοῦ ἀνθρώπον
LECTURE VI. 289
προβλήματι ὁ προαπατήσας τὸν ἄνθρωπον τῷ τῆς ἡδονῆς δελεάσ-
ματι. ὁ δὲ σκόπος τῶν γιγνομένων ἐπὶ τὸ κρεῖττον τὴν παραλ-
λαγὴν ἔχει. ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐπὶ διαφθορᾷ τῆς φύσεως τὴν ἀπάτην
ἐνήργησεν" ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἅμα καὶ ἀγαθὸς καὶ σοφὸς ἐπὶ σωτηρίᾳ
τοῦ καταφθαρέντος τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ τῆς ἀπάτης ἐχρήσατο, οὐ μόνον
τὸν ἀπολωλότα διὰ τούτων εὐεργετῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὸν τὸν ἀπώ-
λειαν καθ᾽ ἡμῶν ἐνεργήσαντα. Augustine (de Lib. Arbit. IIT.
31) Dei filius diabolum, quem semper sub legibus suis ha-
buit et habebit, homine indutus etiam homini subjugavit,
nihil ei extorquens violento dominatu, sed superans eum
lege justitie: ut....quoniam femina decepta et dejecto
per feminam viro, omnem prolem primi hominis tanquam
peccatricem legibus mortis, malitiosa quidem nocendi cupi-
ditate, sed tamen jure equissimo vindicabat ... tamdiu
potestas ejus valeret, donec interficeret justum, in quo
nihil dignum morte posset ostendere; non solum quia sine
crimine occisus est, sed etiam quia sine libidine natus, cui
subjugaverat ille quos ceperat, ut quidquid inde nasceretur,
tanquam sue arboris fructus, prava quidem habendi cupi-
ditate, sed tamen non iniquo possidendi jure retineret.
Justissime igitur dimittere cogitur credentes in eum quem
injustissime occidit.”. Compare de Trin. XIII. 1o—15.
Ambrose (in Luc. L. 1V.) Oportuit hance fraudem diabolo
fieri, ut susciperet corpus Dominus Jesus, et corpus hoe
corruptile, corpus infirmum, ut crucifigeretur ex infirmi-
tate. Leo the Great (Serm. XXII. 4) Illusa est securi
hostis astutia. Gregory of Nazianzus* (Orat. XX XIX.)
Ἐπειδὴ ᾧετο ἀήττητος εἷναι τῆς κακίας ὁ σοφιστὴς, θεότητος
ἐλπίδι δελεάσας ἡμᾶς, σαρκὸς προβλήματι δελεάζεται ἵν᾿ ὡς
τῷ ᾿Αδὰμ προςβαλὼν τῷ θεῷ περιπέσῃ, καὶ οὕτως ὁ νέος ᾿Αδὰμ
τὸν παλαιὸν ἀνασώφηται, καὶ λυθῇ τὸ κατάκριμα τῆς σαρκὸς,
σαρκὶ τοῦ θανάτου θανατωθέντος. Ruffinus (Expos. 21): Nam
sacramentum illud suscepte carnis hanc habet causam, ut
divina Filii Dei virtus velut hamus quidam habitu humanze
carnis obtectus ... principem mundi invitare possit ad ago-
nem: cul ipse carnem suam velut escam tradidit, ut hamo
eum divinitatis intrinsecus teneret insertum et effusione
a Often written Nazianzum by theologians; but in Suidas καὶ Ναζι-
ανζὸς, σταθμὸς Καππαδοκίας. 33906. ed. Gaisford.
U
290 NOTES.
immaculati sanguinis, qui peccati maculam nescit, omnium
peccata deleret, eorum duntaxat, qui cruore ejus postes
fidei suze significassent. Sicuti ergo hamum esca conseptum
51 piscis rapiat, non solum escam cum hamo non removet,
sed ipse de profundo esca aliis futuras educitur : ita et is,
qui habebat mortis imperium, rapuit quidem in mortem
corpus Jesu, non sentiens in eo hamum divinitatis inclu-
sum; sed ubi devoravit, hesit ipse continuo, et disruptis
inferni claustris, velut de profundo extractus traditur, ut
esca ceteris fiat. Gregory the Great (in Evang. L. 1].
Hom. 25): Per Leviathan (Job. xl. 19) . . cetus ille devo-
rator humani generis designatur .. Hune pater omnipotens
hamo cepit, quia ad mortem illius unigenitum Filium in-
carnatum misit, in quo et caro passibilis videri posset, et
divinitas impassibilis videri non posset. Cumque in eo
serpens iste per manus persequentium escam corporis mo-
mordit, divinitatis illum aculeus perforavit .. In hamo ejus
incarnationis captus est ..: ibi quippe inerat humanitas,
quee ad se devoratorem duceret; 101 divinitas, que perfo-
raret; ibi aperta infirmitas, que provocaret; ibi occulta
virtus, quee raptoris faucem transfigeret. In hamo igitur
captus est, quia inde interiit unde momordit. Et quos
jure tenebat mortales perdidit, quia eum in quo jus non
habuit, morte appetere immortalem presumsit. It cannot
be conceded to Ullmann (Gregorius, pp. 456, 457) that
Gregory Nazianzen is an exception among those who hold
that a ransom was paid to Satan, and a deceit practised
on him. Relying on one passage in the text of his work
(Orat. XLV. 22), and another in his note (Orat. XX XIX.
13), Ullmann seems to make the two contradictory: all
that may be admitted is that the latter passage is more
rhetorical, the former more logical, the one a poetical
image, the other an attempt to solve a real difficulty. See
next note. {Part of Ullmann’s work has been presented to
English readers from the careful hand of Mr. G. V. Cox,
of Oxford; the remainder, the dogmatic portion, exists in
MS., and is worthy of the same destiny.] These repre-
sentations, 1 must repeat, are to be regarded in their con-
nection with the entire views of each writer. It would
LECTURE VI. 291
have been better, no doubt, that such bold rhetorical
images should not have been used in connexion with this
momentous subject; but the use of them ought not to in-
validate the testimony of these writers, a testimony which
their whole life and intellectual progress utter with erying
voice, to the truth that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. The contradictions into which such state-
ments would lead, if employed soberly as dogmas, appeared
on reflection to Gregory Nazianzen (see next note) and to
Anselm (see note 86). Even Abelard, whose views of the
Atonement were fundamentally erroneous, was right in
maintaining that the notion of a ransom to Satan could
not stand. Ego vero dico et ratione irrefragabili probo,
quod diabolus in hominem nullum jus habuerit. Neque
enim qui eum decipiendo a subjectione domini sui alienavit
aliquam potestatem super eum debuit accipere, potius si
quam prius haberet, debuit amittere. Abelardi Epitome,
¢. 23. Compare Bernard De Erroribus Abelardi, v.
Note 84. p. 159.
” r a 4
ἔστι τοίνυν ἐξετάσαι πρᾶγμα καὶ δόγμα, τοῖς μὲν πολλοῖς
παρορώμενον, ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ λίαν ἐξεταζόμενον. τίνι γὰρ τὸ ὑπὲρ
ε lal @ fal
ἡμῶν αἷμα, καὶ περὶ τίνος ἐχέθη, TO μέγα καὶ περιβόητον τοῦ
θεοῦ καὶ ἀρχιερέως καὶ θύματος ; κατειχόμεθα μὲν γὰρ ὑπὸ τοῦ
πονηροῦ πεπραμένοι ὑπὸ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, καὶ ἀντιλαβόντες τῆς
κακίας τὴν ἡδονήν. εἰ δὲ τὸ λύτρον οὐκ ἄλλου τινὸς ἢ τοῦ κατέ-
χοντος γίνεται, ζητῶ τίνι τοῦτο eisnvéxOn, καὶ bv ἥντινα τὴν
> “ “ an lal Lal fal
αἰτίαν. εἰ μὲν τῷ πονηρῷ, φεῦ τῆς ὕβρεως" εἰ μὴ Tapa τοῦ θεοῦ
/,
μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν θεὸν αὐτὸν λύτρον ὁ λῃστὴς λαμβάνει, καὶ
Χ o ε lo “ ε a 7 Ver. AS Se las
μισθὸν οὕτως ὑπερφυῆ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ τυραννίδος, δι ὃν Kal ἡμῶν
φείδεσθαι δίκαιον ἣν. εἰ δὲ τῷ Πατρί, πρῶτον μὲν TOs; οὐχ
Γ᾿ 5) la Ν 3 re 4 Ν ! ε ,
im ἐκείνου yap ἐκρατούμεθα. δεύτερον δὲ, Tis ὁ λόγος μονογε-
an Ὁ 7 iB aA XOX Ν 3 Ν 35 / Ν n
νοῦς αἷμα τέρπειν Πατέρα, ὃς οὐδὲ τὸν ᾿Ισαὰκ ἐδέξατο παρὰ τοῦ
πατρὸς προςφερόμενον, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντηλλάξατο τὴν θυσίαν, κριὸν ἀν-
τιδοὺς τοῦ λογικοῦ θύματος ; 7) δῆλον ὅτι λαμβάνει μὲν ὁ Πατὴρ,
3 “
οὐκ αἰτήσας οὐδὲ δεηθείς" ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν οἰκονομίαν καὶ τὸ χρῆ-
“- “ a 7 ᾽ \
ναι ἁγιασθῆναι TO ἀνθρωπίνῳ τοῦ θεοῦ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἵν᾽ αὐτὸς
& “ \ Sow
ἡμᾶς ἐξέληται, τοῦ τυράννου Bia κρατήσας, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν
vu 2
292 NOTES.
ἐπαναγάγῃ διὰ τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ μεσιτεύσαντος. Gregory Nazianzen,
Orat. XLV. (olim XLII.) vol. I. p. 862. Paris, 1840.
Note 85. p. 161.
“Non tento, Domine, penetrare altitudinem tuam; quia
nullatenus comparo illi intellectum meum: sed desidero
aliquatenus intelligere veritatem tuam, quam credit et
amat cor meum. Neque enim quero intelligere, ut credam,
sed credo ut intelligam.” Anselm (Proslog. I. p. 43. ed.
Gerberon).
Note 86. p. 165.
Anticipations of the judicial view of the Atonement are
found by Seisen in Nicholas of Methone [see Hagenbach,
Dogmengeschichte], who lived either in the 11th or 12th
century, it is uncertain which. His Refutation of Proclus
was published 1825 by J.T. Vémel. The treatise of An-
selm, with the title Cur Deus Homo, has been printed sepa-
rately at Erlangen in 1834, and may be easily procured in
that form. Here some passages are added by way of
showing how Anselm expresses the positions in the text.
Sicut rectus ordo exigit, ut profunda Christiane fidei cre-
damus, priusquam ea preesumamus ratione discutere; ita
negligentia mihi videtur si, postquam confirmati sumus in
fide, non studemus, quod credimus intelligere (1. 2). Obji-
ciunt nobis deridentes simplicitatem nostram infideles, quia
Deo facimus injuriam et contumeliam, cum eum asserimus
in uterum mulieris descendisse, natum esse de foemina,
lacte et alimentis humanis nutritum crevisse, et ut multa
alia taceam, quee Deo non videntur convenire, lassitudinem
famem sitim verbera et inter latrones crucem mortemque
subiisse (I. 3). Cum dicimus: redemit nos a peccatis, et
ab ira sua, et de inferno, et de potestate diaboli, quem,
quia nos non poteramus, ipse pro nobis venit expugnare, et
redemit nobis regnum ecelorum; et quia hec omnia hoe
modo fecit, ostendit, quantum nos diligeret; respondent :
Si dicitis, quia Deus hee omnia facere non poterat solo
jussu, quem euncta jubendo creasse dicitis, repugnatis vo-
bismetipsis, quia impotentem illum facitis. Aut si fate-
LECTURE VI. 293
mini, quia potuit, sed non voluit nisi hoe modo: quomodo
sapientem illum ostendere potestis, quem sine ulla ratione
tam indecentia velle pati asseritis? Omnia enim heec, que
obtenditis, in ejus voluntate consistunt; ira namque Dei
non est aliud quam voluntas puniendi. ... Queecunque timetis
aut desideratis, ejus voluntati subjacent, cui nihil resistere
potest (I. 6). Sed et illud, quod dicere solemus, Deum
scilicet debuisse prius per justitiam contra diabolum agere,
ut liberaret hominem, quam per fortitudinem, ut cum dia-
bolus eum, in quo nulla mortis erat causa, et qui Deus
erat, occideret, juste potestatem, quam super peccatores
habebat, amitteret, alioquin injustam violentiam fecisset
illi, quoniam juste possidebat hominem, quem non ipse vio-
lenter attraxerat, sed idem homo se sponte ad illum contu-
lerat: non video, quam vim habebat. Nam si diabolus aut
homo suus esset aut alterius, quam Dei, aut in alia, quam
in Dei potestate maneret, forsitan hoc recte diceretur;
cum autem diabolus aut homo non sit nisi Dei, et extra
potestatem Dei neuter consistat: quam causam debuit
Deus agere cum suo, de suo, in suo, nisi ut servum suum
puniret, qui suo conservo communem dominum deserere et
ad se persuasisset transire, ac traditor fugitivum, fur furem
cum furto domini sui suscepisset? Uterque namque fur
erat, cum alter altero persuadente seipsum domino suo
furabatur (I. 7). Divinam enim naturam absque dubio
asserimus impassibilem, nee ullatenus posse a sua celsitu-
dine humiliari, nec in eo, quod vult facere, laborare. Sed
Dominum Jesum Christum dicimus Deum verum et verum
hominem, unam personam in duabus naturis, et duas natu-
ras in una persona. Quapropter cum dicimus Deum aliquid
humile aut infirmum pati, non hoe intelligimus secundum
sublimitatem impassibilis nature, sed secundum infirmita-
tem humane substantize, quam gerebat; et sic nostree fidei
nulla ratio obviare cognoscitur. Sic enim nullam divine
substantiz significamus humilitatem, sed unam Dei et ho-
minis monstramus esse personam. Non ergo in inearna-
tione Dei humilitas ejus ulla intelligitur facta; sed natura
hominis creditur exaltata (I. 8). [Sed] si aliter peccatores
non potuit salvare, quam justum damnando, ubi est ejus
294 NOTES.
omnipotentia! Si vero potuit, sed noluit: quomodo defen-
demus sapientiam ejus atque justitiam (1. 8). Omnis vo-
luntas rationalis creaturze subjecta debet esse voluntati
Dei... Hune honorem debitum, qui Deo non reddit, aufert
Deo, quod suum est, et Deum exhonorat; et hoc est pec-
care. Quamdiu autem non solvit quod rapuit, manet in
culpa; nec sufficit solummodo reddere quod ablatum est,
sed pro contumelia illata plus debet reddere quam abstulit
(1.11). Nihil minus tolerandum est in rerum ordine, quam
ut creatura creatori debitum honorem anferat et non sol-
vat quod aufert (1.13). Si Deo nihil majus aut melius:
nihil justius, quam honorem illus servare in rerum dispo-
sitione summa justitia, que non est aliud quam ipse Deus
(I. 13.) Deum impossibile est honorem suum perdere ;
aut enim peccator sponte solvit, quod debet, aut Deus ab
invito accipit (1.14). Dei honori nequit aliquid, quantum
ad illum pertinet, addi vel minui. Verum cum unaquzeque
creatura suum et quasi sibi preeceptum ordinem sive natu-
raliter sive rationaliter servat: Deum honorat, non quod
illi aliquid affert, sed quod sponte se ejus dispositioni subdit
et in rerum uniyersitate ordinem suum et ejusdem univer-
sitatis pulchritudinem, quantum in ipsa est, servat. Cum
vero non vult quod Deus, Deum, quantum ad illum perti-
net, inhonorat, et universitatis ordinem et pulchritudinem,
quantum in se est, perturbat (1.15). Dic ergo, quod solves
Deo pro peceato tuo? Cor contritum et humiliatum, absti-
nentias et multimodos labores corporis, misericordiam dandi
et remittendi, et obedientiam. Quid in his omnibus das
Deo? Cum reddis aliquid, quod debes Deo, etiamsi non
peccasti, non debes hoe computare pro debito, quod debes
pro peceato. Totum quod es, quod habes et quod potes,
debes. Quid ergo solves Deo pro peccato? Quid ergo erit
de te? (I. 20). Ponamus omnia illa, te non debere, et
videamus, utrum possint sufficere ad satisfactionem unius
tam parvi peccati, sicut est unus adspectus contra volunta-
tem Dei‘ Si videres te in conspectu Dei, et aliquis tibi
diceret : adspice illue! et Deus econtra: nullatenus volo ut
adspicias : queere tu ipse in corde tuo, quid sit in omnibus,
quae sunt, per quod deberes contra yoluntatem Dei illum
LECTURE VI. 295
adspectum facere? Sic graviter peccamus, quotiescunque
seienter aliquid quantumlibet parvum contra voluntatem
Dei facimus, quia semper sumus in conspectu ejus, et sem-
per ipse preecipit nobis, ne peccemus. Secundum quanti-
tatem peccati exigit Deus satisfactionem. Non ergo satis-
facis, si non reddis aliquid majus, quam sit id, per quod
peccatum facere non debueras (I. 21). Si nihil pretiosius
agnoscitur Deus fecisse quam rationalem naturam ad gau-
dendum de se: valde alienum est ab eo, ut ullam rationa-
lem naturam penitus perire sinat (II. 4). Necesse est, ut
bonitas Dei propter immutabilitatem suam perficiat de ho-
mine, quod incepit, quamvis totum sit gratia bonum quod
facit (II. 5). Hoe autem fieri nequit, nisi sit qui solvat
Deo pro peceato hominis aliquid majus, quam omne quod
preter Deum est. Illum quoque qui de suo poterit Deo
dare aliquid quod superet omne, quod sub Deo est, majo-
rem necesse est esse, quam omne, quod non est Deus. Nihil
autem est super omne, quod Deus non est, nisi Deus. Non
ergo potest hance satisfactionem facere nisi Deus. Sed nee
facere illam debet nisi homo, alioquin non satisfacit homo.
Si ergo necesse est ut de hominibus perficiatur superna
civitas, nec hoe esse valet, nisi fiat preedicta satisfactio,
quam non potest facere nisi Deus, nec debet nisi homo:
necesse est, ut eam faciat Deus homo (If. 6). Si dicimus,
quod dabit seipsum ad obediendum Deo: non erit hoc dare,
quod Deus ab illo non exigat ex debito, omnis enim ratio-
nalis creatura debet hane obedientiam Deo. Alio itaque
modo oportet, ut det seipsum aut aliquod de se. Videa-
mus, si forte sit tradere se ipsum morti ad honorem Dei?
Hoe enim ex debito Deus non exiget ab illo. Video homi-
nem illum plane quem querimus, talem esse oportere, qui
nec ex necessitate moriatur, quoniam erit omnipotens, nec
ex debito, quia nunquam peccator erit, et mori possit ex
libera voluntate (II.11). Vita ista tantum amabilis, quan-
tum est bona. Unde sequitur, quia vita heec plus est ama-
bilis, quam sint peccata odibilia. Putasne tantum bonum
tam amabile posse sufficere ad solvendum quod debetur
pro peceatis totius mundi? Immo potest plus in infinitum
(II. 14). Eum autem qui tantum bonum sponte dat Deo,
296 NOTES.
sine retributione debere esse non judicabis. Qui retribuit
alicui, aut dat quod ille non habet, aut dimittit, quod ab
illo potest exigi. Prius autem quam tantam rem Filius
faceret, omnia, que Patris erant, sua erant, nee unquam
debuit, quod illi dimitti possit. Si tanta et tam debita
merces nec illi nee alii redditur, in vanum Filius rem tan-
tam fecisse videbitur. Necesse est ergo ut alicui alii red-
datur, quia illi non potest. Si voluerit Filius, quod sibi
debetur, alii dare: poteritne Pater jure illum prohibere,
aut ill, cui dabit, negare? Quibus convenientius fructum
suz mortis attribuet, quam illis, propter quos salvandos
hominem se fecit et quibus moriendo exemplum moriendi
propter justitiam dedit? Frustra quippe imitatores ejus
erunt, si meriti ejus participes non erunt. Aut quos justius
faciet heeredes debiti, quo ipse non eget, quam parentes
suos et fratres, quos adspicit tot et tantis debitis obligatos
tabescere in profundo miseriarum (11. 19). Misericordiam
vero Dei, que perire videbatur, cum justitiam Dei et pec-
catum hominis considerabamus, tam magnam tamque con-
cordem invenimus justitiz, ut nec major nec justior cogi-
tari possit. Nempe quid misericordius intelligi valet, quam
cum peccatori, tormentis zeternis damnato et unde se redi-
mat non habenti, Deus Pater dicit: Accipe unigenitum
meum et da pro te! Et ipse Filius: Tolle me et redime
te! (II. 20).
Note 87. p. 166.
We must beware however of exaggerating this state-
ment, as Baur does in maintaining that the idea of a vica-
rious satisfaction by punishment is altogether strange to the
theory of Anselm. It is true that A. distinguishes be-
tween satisfaction and punishment (necesse est ut omne
peceatum satisfactio aut pcena sequatur I. 15), and makes
the former to consist in obedience ; but then the obedience
in his system is inseparably connected with the sufferings
and the death.
Note 88. p. 166.
See the Summa, P. II]. Queest. 48. foll.
LECTURE VI. 297
Note 89. p. 168.
Baur, p. 183. Neander, Church History, vill. p. 204
(Bohn).
Note 90. p. 169.
See his de Incarnatione Verbi, cap. 6 seqq. The resem-
blance between his views and those of Anselm cannot
escape us. God must punish transgressors, for he has pro-
mised it; yet his goodness will not allow men to be lost.
Christ the Logos was made man in order to offer his
human nature a sacrifice for all, and to redeem men from
the power of Satan.
Note 91. p. 170.
That the Fathers bring into prominence different attri-
butes of the divine Nature, in connexion with the Atone-
ment, is no proof of a dissonance of opinion. Divine Love
is sometimes put forward as the ground of this great trans-
action, as by Athanasius (de Incarn. p. 41), Augustine
(de Civ. Dei, x. 9), and others. Divine Justice is most
conspicuous in it to the eyes of others, from Irenzeus to
Anselm, in passages cited already. Divine Wisdom is
brought out by it, in the words of Gregory Nazianzen (Or.
39). Sometimes again the great Power of God is to be
admired in the work of redemption, so that it seems even
a greater work than that of creating the world (Augustine,
Ep. 5). But this diversity of statement chiefly shows that
the mystery is too great for the eye of the soul to take in
at one view; and there was a substantial unity of view, as
stated in the text, in all the great Christian writers.
NOD ΕΘ:
LECTURE VII.
Note 92. p. 179.
SEE his Summa, P. III. Queest. 46. fol.
Note 93. p. 179.
Baur (Lehre von der Versohnung, p. 15) divides the history
of the doctrine of the Atonement into three periods; the
first, to the Reformation, in which the objective tendency
prevailed, and was realised in the “ Theory of Satisfaction”
by Anselm; the second, from the Reformation to the phi-
losophy of Kant, marked by a growing subjective tendency ;
and the third, from Kant to the present day, is marked
according to his view by the recall of the subjective to the
objective tendency. For Baur’s view of the tendency of
the Reformation, see the same work, p. 285. fol.
Note 94. p. 179.
See Luther’s Table Talk, ch. 30.
Note 95. p. 182.
In holy Seripture the reconciliation between God and
man appears as proceeding from the love of God (Rom. viii.
32; 1 John iv. 9), and as a change in man’s position to-
wards God (2 Cor. v. 18—20). But as the sinner is under
God’s wrath (Eph. ii. 3), which is removed by the Atone-
ment (Rom. v. g; 1 Thess. i. 10), the relation of God to
man alters likewise. How is it that we, the same sinners,
are the objects of God’s constant love, as it shows itself in
the plan of redemption, and of his wrath and indignation
LECTURE VIL. 299
because of our disobedience? This two-fold view of God’s
mind towards us is one result of the great paradox to
finite apprehensions, the existence of evil in a world di-
vinely ruled.
Note 96. p. 185.
As Christ was anointed with the Holy Ghost (Acts x.
38.) and bears the name of “ Anointed,” early writers
inquired what were the offices to which such an inaugura-
tion belonged. Ambrose and others thought that the
‘“‘ Anointed” was a King and Priest ; Clement of Alexandria
and others believed that the unction constituted him a
Prophet. Eusebius appears to have been the first to com-
bine these offices, and to regard the work of the Mediator
under the three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King. This
division ‘“‘ may have been originally derived by the Christ-
ians from the Jews. For the Rabbins and Cabalists ascribe
to the Messiah a threefold dignity, viz. the crown of the
law, of the priesthood, and of the kingdom. (See Schottgen,
Messiah, 107. 298.) But among Christians it was never
the general rule of faith, but only employed as a figurative
mode of representing the doctrine. Anciently it was most
common in the Greek Church. Chrysostom, Theodoret and
others, show traces of it. It was therefore seen in the
Confession of Faith of the modern Greek Church in the
17th century, and it is still common in the Russian Church.
Anciently in the Latin Church it was sometimes, though
seldom used. But the schoolmen never used it in their
acroamatical instructions ; for which reason the theologians
of the Romish Church in after-times used it but seldom,
although Bellarmin and others do not discard it. For the
same reason, Luther and Melancthon, and other early
Lutheran theologians who separated from the Romish
Church, do not make use of this method in treating of
the doctrine of the mediatorial work of Christ. But after
the 17th century, it was gradually introduced into the
systems. It appears to have been first introduced by John
Gerhard in his “ Loci theologici ;” at least it was not found
in Chemnitz. It was afterwards employed in popular re-
ligious instruction, and was admitted by Spener into his
300 NOTES.
Catechism ; until at last it became universal to treat of the
doctrine respecting the mediatorial work of Christ accord-
ing to this division and under these heads. In the Re-
formed Church it was adopted by Calvin, who was followed
by many others. It is also adopted by many Arminian
and Socinian writers.” Knapp, Lectures, ὃ 107.
Note 97. p. 185.
The Nicene Creed connects the Incarnation, as well as
the other acts of Christ, with the reconciliation between
God and man. Tov δι’ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν
ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα, καὶ σαρκωθέντα, καὶ ἐνανθρωπή-
σαντα παθόντα, καὶ ἀναστάντα τῇ τριτῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἀνελθόντα εἰς
τοὺς οὐράνους" καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον κρίναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς.
It behoved Christ in all things to be made like unto
his brethren (Heb. 11. 17,) that we might have a high
Priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities,
and who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without
sin (Heb. iv.15.) The Son of man came to seek and to
save that which was lost, (Luke xix. 10) and for that pur-
pose he, the Word, was made flesh and dwelt among us....
full of grace and truth (John i. 14) and “the bread of God
is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto
the world” (John vi. 33. 35. 48. 50, 51. 58; x. 10). And
thus we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that
though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that
we through his poverty might be rich, (II Cor. vii. 9)
and might have the same humility of mind as he had (Phil.
ii. 4, 5.) Thus is the Incarnation represented in Scripture
as part of the work of redemption, whilst yet the death of
our blessed Lord is connected with it more frequently and
emphatically.
With early Christian writers, Christ is especially the
Mediator, the intermediate Person who from His position
ean reconcile man to God, having relationship to both. So
Irenzeus, Il]. 19. The man to whom the Divine Word
was united could alone perform the perfect obedience and
exhibit the perfect righteousness, required to redeem man
from the power of the devil. Irenzeus says again: Ἔν τοῖς
LECTURE VII. 301
πρόσθεν χρόνοις ἐλέγετο μὲν κατ᾽ εἰκόνα Θεοῦ γεγονέναι τὸν
ἄνθρωπον, οὐκ ἐδείκνυτο δέ. ἔτι γὰρ ἀόρατος ἢν ὁ Λόγος, οὗ
κατ᾽ εἰκόνα 6 ἄνθρωπος ἐγεγόνει. διὰ τοῦτο δὴ καὶ τὴν ὁμοίωσιν
ῥαδίως ἀπέβαλεν, ὁπότε δὲ σὰρξ ἐγένετο ὁ Λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ, τὰ
ἀμφότερα ἐπεκύρωσε: καὶ γὰρ τὴν εἰκόνα ἔδειξεν ἀληθῶς, αὐτὸς
τοῦτο γενόμενος, ὅπερ ἦν ἡ εἰκὼν αὐτοῦ. καὶ τὴν ὁμοίωσιν
βεβαίως κατέστησε, συνεξομοιώσας τὸν ἄνθρωπον τῷ ἀοράτῳ
Πατρί. (Cont. Her. V. 16.) Profound and noble words.
He considers that Christ passed through all the stages of
human life, in order to connect them all with himself—
‘“‘quamobrem per omnem venit zetatem, omnibus restituens
eam, que est ad Deum, communionem. (III. 20.) As
according to this great writer, the divinity of Christ made
possible his perfect humanity, so did the latter make his
redeeming work possible ; hence his strong protest against
the Gnostie Docetism, which denied the reality of the life
and the death of Jesus. With Tertullian again, the Me-
diator, μεσίτης, is called sequester. ‘* Hic sequester Dei
atque hominum appellatus, ex utriusque partis deposito
commisso sibi, carnis quoque depositum servat in semet-
ipso, arrabonem summee totius.” (de Res. Carnis, 51. see
Cont. Prax. 27.) Here the union in Christ of the divine
and human natures is the ground of salvation. Clement
of Alexandria, (Admon. 6 seq.) Ὃ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ἄνθρωπος
γενόμενος, ἵνα δὴ καὶ σὺ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου μάθῃς, πῆ ποτ᾽ ἄρα
ἄνθρωπος γένηται θεός. Origen says that with Christ began
the union of the divine and human natures, (ἤρξατο cvvudal-
νεσθαι) which was to be extended from him to all who with
faith embraced the life which he taught: (Cont. Cels. IIT.
28.end.) Thus Athanasius—adiros ἐνηνθρώπησεν ἵνα ἡμεῖς
θεοποιηθῶμεν. (de Incarn. 54.) The same thought occurs
often in Athanasius, ea. gr. Or. c. Ar. I. 39. Compare II.
68. and de Incarn. 44. Ἢ ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ φθορὰ κατὰ τῶν
ἀνθρώπων οὐκέτι χώραν ἔχει, διὰ τὸν ἐνοικήσαντα λόγον ἐν
τούτοις διὰ τοῦ ἑνὸς σώματος. (Ibid. 9. See also his Orat. e.
Arian. 11. 69.) Basil the Great insists that Christ is by
his nature, because the true and perfect divine natures are
really his, the Mediator between God and man (Cont. Eu-
nom. lib. 1.) So Gregory Nyssen, (Or. Catech. 16.) and
302 NOTES.
Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. 36). Chrysostom says that a
Mediator must have something in common with each of the
parties he would reconcile; therefore is Christ become man.
(Hom. VII. in τ Tim.) And again μέσον ἑαυτὸν ἐμβαλὼν 6
Χριστὸς Exdrepay φύσιν εἰς φιλίαν συνήγαγε. Augustine
says that the Son—* demonstravit carnalibus et non va-
lentibus intueri mente veritatem corporeisque sensibus de-
ditis, quam excelsum locum inter creaturas habeat humana
natura, quod non solum visibiliter, sed hominibus in vero
homine apparuit, ipsa enim natura suscipienda erat, que
hberanda.” (de Ver. Rel. 6. 30.) On the union of all hu-
man nature with Christ, as the condition of its union with
the Father, many places are collected by Dorner (p. 958),
others are found in Petavius. See also Mansi, Coll. Cone.
4.1186. Not to multiply passages, it may be remarked, i.
that as the early Fathers did not enter very fully into the
manner by which salvation was wrought, but dwelt upon
the fact, they naturally connected it with the Incarnation,
as the first step and condition of all that Jesus did and
suffered. ii. that they treat the Incarnation, for the most
part very explicitly, as the cause of the restoration of a
lost relation between God and the human race. iii. that
they are agreed that the Redeemer of the human race
must be one in whom God and man become one. For fur-
ther data consult the works of the Fathers: also Petavius.
(Theol. Dogm. vol. IV. B. ii. chs. 4 foll.) Ritter (Geschichte
d. Christ. Phil. vols. 1. 17. 111.) Dorner (Person Christi.)
Baur (Verséhnung, pp. 23—118.) Marheineke (Dogmen-
geschichte Part II. § 3.)
Note 98. p. 187.
That freedom of action does not require that actions
should be indifferent, with an equilibrium of the motives
for and against them; that it is consistent with the exist-
ence of determining motives (‘astra inclinant, non necessi-
tant,”) is maintained by Leibniz, Théodieée I. 34 foll.
Where determining motives are strong and numerous,
there may be practical compulsion, though formally the
action is free. Not inconsistently with his low view of the
LECTURE VII. 303
work of Christ, De Wette (see Note 57.) seeks for motives
that determined the death of Christ in surrounding cir-
cumstances, thus depriving it of its perfectly free cha-
racter.
Note 99. p. 188.
By Augustine. That all which is not of faith is sin, is a
position discussed by this Father. Cont. Jul. Pel. IV. ch.
IIL. ὃ τό foll.
Note 100. p. rgo.
“In eo vera summa Dei bonitas et clementia maximis
laudibus et gratiarum actionibus preedicanda est, qui hu-
mane imbecillitati hoe condonavit, ut unus ponet pro altero
satisfacere.” Catechismus Roman. II. v. 61.
Note 101. p. 192.
“ Kor as by one man’s disobedience many were made
sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made
righteous.” Rom. v.19. (Here οἱ πολλοὶξε πάντες ; as ap-
pears by comparing Rom. v. 15. with v. 12: so OvD7 in
Isa. iti. 12.). ‘¢ Beeause we thus judge, that if one died
for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that
they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves,
but unto him which died for them, and rose again.” 2 Cor.
vi. 14,15. ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto
himself.” v.19. ‘* Who gave himself a ransom for all.”
1Tim.u.6. ‘And he is the propitiation for our sins, and
not for our’s only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
1 John ii. 2.
Note 102. p. 193.
We believe, not merely that Christ our Saviour died, but
that he died to rise again and overcome death. The death
and resurrection are inseparably connected. But St.Paul,
in Rom. iv. 25. represents them as distinct, in order to
bring out our Lord’s connexion with two states of human
nature. “He died that our past sins might be forgiven ;
he rose again that we should be brought into the condition
of the just.” But on comparing Rom. ν. 9. 2 Cor. y. 21.
1 Cor. xv. 17. we find that the Resurrection is connected
304 NOTES:
with our sins, and the Death with our justification, so that
no separation of the two can be intended in this place,
only an exhibition of two sides of one single fact.
Note 103. p. 196.
Socinian view of the Atonement. “ Que causa erat, eas-
dem afilictiones et mortem Servatori perferendi, quibus
eredentes sunt obnoxii? Duz extitere cause, quemadmo-
dum duplici ratione Christus suos servat. Primum enim
exemplo suo, est in salutis via, quam sunt ingressi, persis-
tant, suos movet. Deinde iisdem in omni tentationum, et
periculorum certamine adest. Verum qua ratione Christus
suo ipsius exemplo credentes ad persistendum in illa singu-
lari pietate, sine qua servari nequeunt, movere potuisset,
nisi atrocem mortem, que pietatem facile comitari solet,
gustasset ? Aut qui curam suorum in tentationibus et peri-
culis tantam gerere potuisset, nisi, quantopere graves et
naturze humanze per se intolerabiles essent, ipse expertus
esset...... Morte et resurrectione Christi certi sumus
facti de nostra resurrectione ad eum modum, quod in ex-
emplo Christi propositum id nobis spectemus, eos qui Deo
obtemperent, e quovis mortis genere liberari. Deinde,
quod jam nobis constet, Christum eum consecutum esse
potestatem, qua possit suis i.e. qui ipsi parent, vitam eter-
nam donare...... Cur vero ita crebro omnia hee morti
Christi adseribit Scriptura? Propterea quod mors via ad
resurrectionem et exaltationem Christi fuerit. Deinde quod
ex omnibus, quee Deus et Christus nostre salutis causa
fecerunt, mors Christi potissimum nobis Dei et Christi
charitatem ante oculos ponat. Nonne est etiam aliqua
alia mortis Christi causa nulla prorsus. Etsi nune vulgo
Christiani sentiunt, Christum morte sua nobis salutem me-
ruisse, et pro peccatis nostris satisfecisse, que sententia
fallax est et admodum perniciosa..... Scripturee repug-
nat ad eum modum, quod scripture passim Deum-peccata
gratuito remittere testentur. Rationi repugnat, quod se-
queretur, Christum eternam mortem subiisse, si Deo pro
peccatis satisfecisset, cum constet, poenam, quam homines
peccato meruerant, zternam mortem esse. Perniciosa est
LECTURE VII. 305
ad eum modum, quod hominibus fenestram ad peceandi
licentiam aperiat, aut certe ad socordiam in pietate co-
lenda eos invitet.” Catechism. Racov. Qus. 380—393. The
literature of the Socinian controversy in this country is
very copious ; enough here to refer to the work of Whitby
(de vera Christi deitate, &c., Oxon. 1691), Veysie’s Bamp-
ton Lectures (see note 1), and Horsley’s Tracts against
Priestley. The works of Bull and Waterland will always
remain as bulwarks of the faith in the blessed Trinity.
Note 104. p. 197.
See Wegscheider, Instit. Theol. ὃ 140—142.
Note 105. p. 200.
This is the system of Schleiermacher. See his Glaubens-
ichre, vol. I. § 36 foll. vol. II. § 93 foll. A popular account
of this writer is found in the British Quarterly Review,
vol. IX. p. 323. Such a system, as might be expected,
has been assailed from every side. Strauss in his Leben
Jesu and Dogmatik proclaims that it does not meet the
objections of scepticism ; whilst those who accept the holy
Scriptures complain that the author has abandoned histo-
rical Christianity, although he himself would indignantly
repudiate such a charge. See Amand-Saintes, Rationa-
lisme en Allemagne (ch. xv), and Staudenmaier (Idee, p. 773
foll.) The position of any German theologian can be best
appreciated by a glance at his predecessors and contempo-
raries. In English, besides many review-articles, we have
German Protestantism by the Rev. H. J. Rose, which ean-
not be called satisfactory in point of information. Although
Mr. Rose published the second edition of his work in 1829,
about nineteen years after Schleiermacher was made Pro-
fessor of Theology at Berlin, and (I think) nine after the
publication of his “ Account of the Christian Faith,” (i. e.
the first edition of the Glaubenslehre,) he omits that au-
thor’s name from his list of German theologians, at the end
of that edition, though he finds room for such names as
Dinter, Kaiser, and Zerrenner. Dr. Pusey’s tract on the
Theology of Germany will be read with more satisfaction.
Χ
306 NOTES.
A more recent work on the same subject by Mr. E. H.
Dewar, 1844, I have not seen. On German Philosophy,
see Sir W. Hamilton’s Discussions. ‘ In his views concern-
ing the work of Christ, Schleiermacher leans towards that
aspect of it which partakes most largely of the character
of mysticism. Here all is resolved into the mystical union
of Christ with his members. The Redeemer draws the
soul of the believer to himself, receives his life into his
own, and communicates his own life to him. In the Church
of Christ, we have visible proof that the Lord ‘is not dead,
but risen.’ In his members, his earthly life is yet perpetu-
ated. The Christ of the true believer is a Christ within
him. Only through union with Christ can we appropriate
the blessings he came to bestow. Schleiermacher is averse
to that isolation of the sufferings and death of Christ which
would centre in them alone the work of our salvation. The
whole life of the Redeemer was a redeeming act. His
death was the necessary consummation of a complete obe-
dience. The peculiar constitution of his nature rendered
it unavoidable; it periected the manifestation of his one-
ness with God. The entireness of that self-surrender on
our behalf which could become obedient even unto death,
constituted the sufficiency of his sacrifice. That conception
of our Lord’s mission which regards him merely as a
teacher and a pattern, is most repugnant of all to the
theology of Schleiermacher. He difiers from the ortho-
dox opinion concerning the vicarious satisfaction made by
Christ. In his view, Christ is our substitute as the head
and representative of his people; God beholds them in
him ; and in this way, his fulfilment of the Divine will even
unto death was an obedience on their behalf. He made
satisfaction inasmuch as he brought in an eternal redemp-
tion. But this satisfaction was not a substitution. The
death of Christ was vicarious, inasmuch as suffering could
be endured by the sinless only when he stood in the place
of the sinful. But this substitution was not a satisfaction.
Schleiermacher inverts the theological formula; for vica-
rious satisfaction, he would employ the terms satisfactory
substitution.” British Quarterly Review, vol. LX. p. 333.
LECTURE VII. 307
Note 106. p. 202.
Hegel, Philosophie der Religion. The objections to the
theory are found in Staudenmaier (Encyclopedia of Theol.
Typ. 69.3);
Note 107. p. 202.
Andrew Osiander, a presbyter at Nuremberg at the
time of the Reformation, took exception to the Lutheran
statement that justification is the being accounted righteous
before God, on the ground that God will not account a
thing to be what it 7s not. He attributed man’s righteous-
ness before God to the indwelling of the divine nature in
him ; and thus the divine nature in Christ, and not the hu-
man, is the means of our reconcilement with God. “ Diserte
et clare respondeo, quod secundum divinam suam natura sit
nostra justitia et non secundum humanam naturam, quam-
vis hane divinam justitiam extra ejus humanam naturam
non possumus invenire, consequi aut apprehendere, verum
cum ipse per fidem in nobis habitat, tum affert suam justi-
tiam, que est ejus divina natura, secum in nos, quee deinde
nobis etiam imputatur, ac si esset nostra propria, immo et
donatur nobis, manatque ex ipsius humana natura, tanquam
ex capite, etiam in nos, tanquam ipsius membra.” This
extract from Osiander’s principal work, with many others,
is found in Baur; the works themselves are rare. The
key to his theology lies in the statement that man’s right-
eousness consists in the real righteousness (justitia essenti-
alis) of God himself. See Planck, Prot. Theol. I. 272. The
Romish doctrine is the direct antithesis of the opinion
that Christ is the Mediator by his divine nature. Bellar-
min asserted that whilst the Mediator is both God and
man, his mediation was effected by his human nature only.
Gerhard Loci. XVII. 2. ὃ 54.
John Piscator distinguished between the obedience of
Christ in his life, and the obedience in his death; by the
latter alone was he the meritorious cause of our justifica-
tion. “ Quippe ad obedientiam vitee obligatus fuit Christus
jure nature sive creationis tanquam verus homo et filius
Adz, quantum ad legem moralem, nee non jure foederis a
x 2%
308 NOTES.
Deo pacti cum posteris Abrahami et Israelis. Ad obedien-
tiam vero mortis nullo jure fuit obligatus, sed jure diverso,
nempe voluntariz sponsionis.” (Gerhard Loci. XVII. 2.
§ 58 5644.)
Hugo Grotius adopted a view of satisfaction intended to
meet the Socinian objections, in his ‘ Defensio fidei Cathol.
de Satisfactione Christi,’ which departs from the truth in
proportion as it attempts to level this great mystery with
human forms of thought. The end of the death of Christ
was political ; it was to exhibit a striking example of God’s
anger against sin, in order to vindicate the sanctity of his
laws. At the same time that he thus deters us from sin
he also reveals his great love and good-will towards us, in
sending his Son to afford this example, instead of punish-
ing us the actual offenders. To the Socinian objection
that the notion of satisfaction excludes that of remission,
the one denoting payment and the other forgiveness of
what remains unpaid, Grotius answers that Christ indeed
made satisfaction, by suffering punishment, but the effect
of it is perceived when man by true repentance turns to
God. ‘“ Non obstat hie ergo satisfactio, quominus sequi
posset remissio. Satisfactio enim non jam sustulerat debi-
tum, sed hoc egerat, ut propter ipsum debitum aliquando
tolleretur.” Not to dwell on other objections to this theory,
it does not appear from it that the sacrifice of one who is
both God and man was needed to effect our redemption.
“ Grotius,” observes Baur, “as well as Socinus, attached
principal importance to the moral impression which the
death of Christ is calculated to produce, with this differ-
ence only, that Grotius takes this moral principle nega-
tively, Socinus positively; for in the opinion of Grotius, the
moral effect of Christ’s death consists in the punishment
due to sin; according to Socinus in the moral courage
which Christ manifested in his death.” (Compare Hagen-
bach.)
Other theories are to be found in historical books on
theology. The elaborate work of Baur should be consulted,
but with caution, for the later views.
ΘΠ) δὰ
LECTURE VIII.
Note 108. p. 205.
THE writer first became an ear-witness of this custom,
whilst studying the subject of the present work; these
opening sentences are but a transcript of his thoughts at
the time.
Note 109. p. 206.
Compare note 2. On the relation of faith and reason
see Anselm in notes 85 and 86. Qui non crediderit, non
experietur, et qui expertus non fuerit, non intelliget. De
Fide Trinitatis, 1. p.61. [Gerberon.] Nulla itaque aucto-
ritas te terreat, ab his que rectz contemplationis rationa-
bilis suasio edocet. Vera enim auctoritas recte rationi
non obsistit, neque recta ratio vere auctoritati. Ambo
siquidem ex uno fonte, divina videlicet sapientia, manare
non dubium est. J.Scotus Erigena, De Div. Nat.1.68. In
logicis ratio creat fidem, in theologicis fides creat ratio-
nem; fides est lumen animarum: quo quanto magis quis
illustratur, tanto magis est perspicax ad inveniendam ra-
tionem. Alexander Halensis. Principiorum autem natu-
raliter notorum cognitio nobis divinitus est indita, cum
ipse Deus sit auctor nostre nature. Hee ergo principia
etiam divina sapientia continet. Quicquid igitur principiis
hujusmodi contrarium est, est divine sapientize contrarium :
non igitur a Deo esse potest. Ea igitur, que ex revelatione
divina per fidem tenentur, non possunt naturali cognitione
esse contraria. Thomas Aquinas.
Note 110. p. 210.
On the question whether the Incarnation of the Son of
God was brought about solely on account of the sins of
310 NOTES.
men see Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, (vol. ii. p. 47.
Eng. Trans.) The feliz culpa is an expression of Richard
of St. Victor.
Note 111. p. 213.
Even the Socinians preserved at least so much of the
truth. Caput igitur et tanquam fundamentum totius fidei
et salutis nostrze in Christi persona est ipsius Jesu Christi
resurrectio. Quod vel ex eo manifeste apparet, quod Apo-
stoli, post Jesum Christum in hoe preecipue et potissimum
sunt constituti, ut testes essent resurrectionis ejus: quam
ipse non ab omnibus conspici nec palam esse voluerat, sicut
doctrinam, miracula, mortem et vitze exemplum: ut fidei
nostre exercendee locus esset et rebelles Judzei in sua ceeci-
tate, quemadmodum illis futurum seepe preedixerat, merito
perirent. Vix enim fieri posse videtur, ut quis Jesum ex
mortuis excitatum aut videat aut eredat et ejus verbis
fidem non adhibeat et proinde a sceleribus suis ad servien-
dum Deo viventi, immortalitatis spe plenus, totum se non
convertat, unde peccatorum veniam et zternam salutem
consequatur. FF. Socinus, De Christo Servatore, Opera,
vol. II. p. 131. See note 105 above. There is a criticism
of Schleiermacher’s view in Amand-Saintes Histoire du
Rationalisme en Allemagne, chs. 14,15; and another in
the British Quarterly Review, vol. LX. p. 336 foll. Those of
Strauss have been already referred to.
Note 112. p. 217.
“ Filius Dei hominem assumsit et in illo humana per-
pessus est. Hzee medicina hominum tanta est, quanta non
potest cogitari: nam que superbia potest sanari, si humi-
litate Filii Dei non sanatur? que avaritia sanari potest, si
paupertate Filii Dei non sanatur? que iracundia sanari
potest, si patientia Filii Dei non sanatur. Que impietas
sanari potest, si charitate Fil Dei non sanatur? postremo
que timiditas sanari potest, si resurrectione Domini non
sanatur?”’ Augustine, De Agone, τι.
Note 113. p. 223.
To yap ὁρῶν πρὸς TO ὁρώμενον συγγενὲς καὶ ὁμοῖον ποιησά-
Ὁ," / Lad / > ~ / AD € ᾽
μενον, δεῖ ἐπιβάλλειν τῇ θέᾳ. οὐ γὰρ ἂν πώποτε εἶδεν ὁ ὀφθαλ-
LECTURE VIII. 311
Mos ἥλιον, ἡλιοειδὴς μὴ γεγενημένος" οὐδὲ TO καλὸν ἂν ἴδῃ
ψυχὴ, μὴ καλὴ γενομένη. γενέσθω δὴ πρῶτον θεοειδὴς πᾶς, καὶ
καλὸς πᾶς, εἰ μέλλει θεάσασθαι θεόν τε καὶ καλόν. Plotinus,
Ennead. I. vi. 9.
Note 114. p. 228.
Articles of the Church of England, XXVIII. X XIX.
The latter is almost in the words of St. Augustine (Tract.
in Jo. Ev. 26). See Bp. Beveridge on Art. XXIX and
Dr. Macbride (Lectures on the Articles, 1853) on the same.
Differently the Lutherans. ‘‘ De Sacramento altaris senti-
mus, panem et vinum in coena esse verwm corpus et sangui-
nem Christi, et non tantum dari et sumi a piis, sed etiam
ab impiis Christianis. Artic. Smalcald. VI. (p. 32. Francke)
“ Quamquam nebulo perditissimus sacramentum aliis mi-
nistret aut ipse sumat, tamen nihilominus sacramentum
illum sumere, hoe est, Christi corpus et sanguinem, non
secus atque is, qui omnium reverentissime et dignissime
sumpserit aut tractaverit. _Neque enim humana sanctimo-
nia, sed verbo Dei nititur ilud. Et quemadmodum nullus
sanctorum in terris, adde etiam nullus Angelorum in ceelis
panem et vinum in Christi corpus et sanguinem vertere
potest : ita quoque nemo aliter facere aut immutare potest,
etsi hoc sacramento indignissime abutatur, ὅσο. Catechism.
Major. Pars V. 14. (p. 232. Francke.) For the Romanist
views, Concil. Trident. Sess. VII. Can. 6 and 7. (p. 39 in
Streitwolf and Klener’s ed.)
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
AN OUTLINE OF THE NECESSARY LAWS OF THOUGHT;
a Treatise on Pure and Applied Logic. Third Edition. Foolscap
8vo. 7s. 6d.
SCRIPTURAL TEACHING THE SAFEGUARD AGAINST
CRIME. An Assize Sermon preached in Carlisle Cathedral, in
1843. 8vo. Is.
THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. A Sermon preached at Oxford,
before the Judges and the University of Oxford, at the Lent Assize,
1849. 8vo. Is.
THE TRANSFIGURATION. A Sermon preached before the Uni-
versity of Oxford on the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity, 1850.
Foolscap 8vo. Is.
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