LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A VIEW OF THE ATONEMENT.
(To THE EDITOR OP TED `. SPECTATOR:1 SID,—Will you kindly allow me to express through your ,columns a thought suggested by- a sentence in your excellent notice of Mr. Erskine's poslumous fragments, in the hope that it may elicit from seine more able correspondent an exposure of its -unsoundness, if not a confirmation of its being in harmony with apostolic doctrine.
If it be true that " with the endlessness of penal suffering we have too much lost the sense of the evil of sin," there must be a =reason for it. If the passing away of the dark thought of the -everlastingness of penal torment in the case of every poor wretch who dies before one ray of the light of the saving knowledge of • God has reached him carries with it our sense of the evil of sin, Aloes it not seem probable that we have been basing our judg- ment of its enormity too much on the severity of the „penalty to be paid by the sinner ? "That God shrinks from inflicting no extremity of pain" is a tremendous fact. When-the en- ,largement of our conception of divine mercy and love tends to lower our estimate of the evil of having been at enmity with him, there must be a grievous mistake somewhere. If we regard sin 'as an infinite evil meriting an infinite penalty, which in the case of man can be paid only by an everlasting endurance of it,—a necessity of justice which, on behalf of the saved, has been met by the infliction of an equivalent penalty on a substitute who be- --came a curse for them, " a vessel of wrath " on which " the -clouds of God's anger, which had gathered thick on the whole human race, discharged themselves,"*—or, if we think of the -atonement as the payment of a debt either of obedience or of suffering, due from us to God, a merito, obedience to divine law, A vicarious satisfaction to divine justice, entitling the sub- stitute to a reward which he graciously takes out in -the salvation of all those who believe and obey him,— then any deduction from the severity of the penalty, and shorten- ing of the term of endurance, must tend to lighten the burden of sin, and negative the need of such an infinite satisfaction for it as only the God-man could render. • But here arises the question : Is it the doctrine of the Bible that the injustice of saving sinners was the grand obstacle to be overcome ? Did our Redeemer by his s:neritorious obedience and sacrificial death appease the wrath of 'God when, " because of our disobedience it fell in the shape of -affliction on him who alone had so acted as to please him "?* Is it true that only thus did he become legally entitled to be the .Saviour of all believers ?
My thought is this: Sin is not truly damned by what it brings 'either on the sinner himself or on his substitute, but by what it is .seen to be to God. Natural evil, with all the righteous judgments of God upon transgressors of lss laws and ordinances, are, in one view of them, contributions towards the revelation of his abhorrence of sin ; but that it " grieved himself to the heart," that " Jeans wept," that "leis soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," that ho died of a broken heart, "he in whom dwelt all the full- ness of the Godhead bodily," " the brightness of the Father's * Dr. Thomson lu Atda N Ff4ftii glory,"----that, the crushing grief of divine love seen in Christ, is the realest condemnation of the abominable thing which he hates. In the deadly sorrowfulness of the Holy One of God, when, " being in an agony, he prayed, 0 my Father! if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,'" do we recognize merely the shrinking of a timid man from the shameful death of the cross, or from any possi- ble penalty that, ab extra, could be laid upon him? We see a man, the son of man ; but only a man, a sin-bearing man ? Rather was he not, in all that he thought, felt, did, and suffered, the moral God made manifest in and through manhood, so that it was then, is now, and ever shall be, most true that " he that bath seen him hath seen the Father "? Did not every emotion which heaved his breaking heart identify him with the ever-loving, compassionate, and merciful Jehovah, whose tender mercies are over all his works ?
What, then, becomes of the doctrine of substitution ? It is established ; for the sufferings and death of Jesus, inasmuch as they were the truest possible revelation of what sin is to God, condemned it in the flesh ; and this condemnation was accom- plished in the form of roan, for QS and for our redemption from sin and all its pains. With Gethsemane and Calvary in view, mindful of these mysterious utterances, which still reverberate in heaven and on earth, and may reach even to hell, we dare not say the Almighty Framer of the Universe could have " put away sin" without these tears, and the bloody sweat, and the broken heart of the Son of his love.
Will this satisfy justice ? For what ? If the Spirit of God, making use of this revelation of the sin-consuming fire of divine righteousness and love, bring any sinner to realize the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, so that by faith in him he shall die to sin and be inserted in his righteousness and love, will justice, ou any conceivable ground, step in and demand that he shall nevertheless abide in death ? Can any surmise arise injurious to the name or the government of the Lord, when thus " the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth " the believer " from all sin" ?
But was all this necessary ? Was such an atonement demanded? It was demanded by man as welt as by God. For if, without it, it had been possible to deliver man from the consequences of his sin, and restore moral health to his soul, his reason and conscience would still have demanded to see in God just that revulsion from his sin, that painful abhorrence of it, which, from the constitution of his nature, he must feel with increasing intensity as he advances in holiness and purity of life ; and without that he could no more be reconciled to God than God be reconciled to him in his sin. Just what we could not, in reason and conscience, fail to demand as the only possible basis of fellowship with God, we receive in the sin-cursed agony and death of Jesus, on the supposition that he is very God of very God, the bright effulgence of the Father's
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