CHAPTER XV.

Humanity of Christ had not Physical Capacities to endure all his Sufferings—-B13ody and Hum-uaan Soul of Christ differ,,ed in nothing but Holiness from those of ordinary Men—-Body can suffer only to limited Extent—-So of Human Soul—-Sufferings of ris a Chris “ t Infinite, or., at lea st, beyond Mortal Endurance—-Christ’@s Physical Capacities not expanded at last Passion—-If so, he would not have Suffered in our Nature—-@”Shifts to which Prevalent Theory is put to reconcile Extent of Christ’s”s Sufferings with limited Capacities of Humanity to suffer.

HAVING thus completed our review of the dismay with which Christ beheld his coming sufferings, -and the perturbation which their endurance caused him, we may confidently deduce from the premises the sure conclusion that his sufferings were infinite ; or, if not infinite, that they inexpressibly surpassed any sufferings which mortal man ever bore, or which the highest angel in heaven, united to humanity, could have endured. We may now, therefore, return to the farther development of the principle which we laid down in a preceding page,* that the body and human soul of Christ ;i-had not physical capabilities to become the recipient of the amount of sufferings demonstrated by his unparalleled dismay at their approach, and his extraordinary perturbation in their endurance.

* See Page 201.

******* 218 CHRIST”13 MANHOOD NOT PECULIAR.

As a preliminary to this branch of our argument, we would remind the reader that the body and human soul of Christ differed in nothing from the bodies and souls of ordinary men, except in being sinless. This important fact rests on the firm basis of the Bible. The leading feature in the revealed plan of redemption is, that the second person of the Trinity should suffer in our nature. He would not have suffered in our nature had his manhood, except in its sinless character, been either more or less than the nature of ordinary men. Had he suffered in an angelic nature, or in a superhuman nature, he would not have suffered. in our nature; and thus the scriptural delineation of the atonement itself would have lost its characteristic feature. The suggestion so often made and repeated by” theorists, that the body and human soul of Christ had peculiar susceptibilities for suffering, finds no support in the Oracles of God. The Bible informs us that , “Jesus increased in wisdom andii stature” like ordinary youths.—-Luke, 2ii. 52. But on the great fact of the identityv of his body and human soul, save in their exemption from sin, with the bodies and souls common to our race, the Bible is still more explicit. The Holy Ghost, in language not to be frittered away by interpretation, has declared, “,Wherefore in all things it behooved hi@rmn to be made like unto his brethren.”—-Hebrews, 2ii. 17.

CAPACITY OF BODY AND MIND LIMITED. 219

The identity between the manhood of Christ and our common nature being thus established, we may now avail ourselves of this interesting fact for the purpose of showing that his humanity had not physical capabilities to endure the weight of corporeal and spiritual sufferings manifestly devolved on him as the substitute for the sins of the world.

It is a principle of our nature, that the human body can, for the time, become the receptacle of only a given amount of suffering. Its capabilities of suffering are finite and limited. Those best schooled in the management of the rack, doubtless the most formidable instrument of cruelty, learned, from long experience, that there was a point at which even fiendish malice required them to stop in the infliction of pain. If, in their infatuated zeal, they were indiscreetly led beyond this point, their victim was sure to find respite in temporary insensibility. The laws of his physical nature would kindly step in to his relief. Hence the professors in the art of extorting human sighs and human groans were taught to resort to the more tedious, but sure process of lingering torments. Thus they were enabled to effect, by the duration of the suffering, what they had failed to accomplish by its indiscreet intenseness.

So of mental suffering. The capacity of the human mind to suffer is, like its other faculties, limited. It is limited by those original and inflexible principles which form the constitution of the mind. If the cup of affliction is full, any new streams of bitterness will but make it overflow. When Rachel wept for her children, and refused to be comforted because they were not, the annihilation of half a continent, by some great convulsion of nature, would not have been likely, for the time, to augment her griefs. Mental suffering, like that of the body, may be indefinitely increased by its protraction, not by its intensity.

***** 220 MANHOOD COULD NOT SO SUFFER.

The question now directly arises wWhether, with powers limited to the ordinary standard of humanity, Christ’s”s body and human soul had physical capacities to become the recipient of that unutterable weight of agony which it is manifest he endured. It is true that we cannot determine this question by the application of any rule deduced from the exact sciences. We have no balance for accurately weighing the powers of humanity to suffer; nor could we, if we dared, apply any process of human calculation to measure the precise length, and breadth, and height, and depth of the boundless sufferings of our Lord; but appearances are sometimes as demonstrative as mathematics; and when, with our vision expanded and sublimated by the stupendous scenes of Gethsemane and of Calvary, we direct it inward, to view, as through a microscope, the diminutive lineaments of our own material and immaterial natures, we are driven to the conclusion that the manhood of Christ (“,made like unto his brethren”) could not have been the recipient of all his illimitable sufferings with a force of demonstration almost as resistless as that which compels our assent to a proposition of Euclid.

MANHOOD COULD NO”I” “,O SITFFTltl. 221

All must concede the propriety of the conclusion just stated, if they believe that the sufferings of Christ were infinite. A finite being cannot be made the recipient of infinite anguish in a space less than eternity. The infinitude of the pains of the lost children of our race, in the abodes of despair, will be diluted by the current of ceaseless ages. Should Omnipotence concentrate infinite suffering within the compass of even a few brief years, humanity could no more endure it, than it could carry the world on its shoulders.

I 1

If the sufferings of Christ were less than infinite, did they not still exceed the limits of his humanity ? In answering this question in the, affirmative, we appeal to the scriptural intimations, scattered through the Old and New Testaments, evincing the extremity of our Saviour’s”s sufferings; we appeal to the indications on the cross, and especially to those of the garden; we invoke the bloody sweat of Gethsemane, “ falling down to the ground” —-to be understood, not as a delusive metaphor, but as a stupendous truth; not as applicable to a person incapacitated by disease to retain in his veins and arteries the circulating and vital fluid, but as applicable to a person in perfect health.

Bring the case to the test of experiment. Fill a human soul brimful, to the utmost limit of its physical powers, with sufferings the most concentrated and intense that imagination can conceive, and it could never force through the pores of its clay tenement a bloody perspiration. For the truth of this we appeal to universal history, profane and sacred. At Gethsemane, and there alone, has the anguish of the spirit ever made the sympathizing and healthful body sweat as it were, great drops of blood. The occurrence of this awful exhibition there, and there only, proves of itself that the agonies of the garden were the throes and spasms of a nature lifted, in its suffering capacity, infinitely above the human soul of Christ. Go one step farther; make the body a fellow in suffering; after filling the human soul full of the keenest anguish to overflowing, load its clay sister also with the most exquisite pains, to the utmost limits of its physical powers; and the aggregate sufferings of the doubly—-laden man will probably bear a less proportion to the awful totality of Christ’s”s sufferings than the drop of the bucket bears to the “ multitudinous sea.” No imaginable concentration of human anguish, corporeal and mental, could ever have produced the appalling phenomenon which crimsoned the soil of Gethsemane.*

* See Appendix, No. II, p. 352.

We may, indeed, suppose that Omnipotence, at the time of the last passion, might have expanded the capacity of the manhood of Christ to suffersufrer to an almost unlimited extent; but then he would not -have suffered in our nature. Had the might of Gabriel been miraculously infused into the humanity of Christ, it would no longer have been our humanity. The created nature of Christ would have ceased to be human nature; it would have become a compound of the human and the angelic. The characteristic feature of the atonement of the Bible would thus have been maniarred. Christ would no longer have been “,in all things like unto his brethren.” Had Christ suffered in this mingled nature, how could he have been what his apostle Peter represents him to have been when he says, “ Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example ?”—-1 I Peter, 2ii. 21. How could he have left us an example, with any expectation of our following it, unless he had actually suffered in our common nature ? The supposition that he also suffered in his divine nature does not impair the efficacy of his human example. The supposition presents to us a suffering man to imitate ; a suffering God to adore.

See Appendix, No. “, p. 352.

MANHOOD NOT EXPANDED. 223

According to this aspect of the prevalent theory, Christ suffered in neither his divine nor human nature, but in a compound nature specially wrought out for the occasion, and nowhere intimated in the Bible. An angel appeared in the garden of Gethsemane. But angel visits, while they impart consolation and strengthen faith, do not change the nature of the being visited. The faithful Abraham and the wrestling Jacob remained unaltered at the departure of their celestial visitant, except in increase of holiness.- We do not infer that the “ strengthening” envoy of the garden added anything to the physical capabilities of the sufferer for the endurance of pain. To impart to an ordinary man the strength of Samson, by miraculous interposition, to prepare him for some great bodily feat, would be to effect a change of his corporeal nature. To have imparted to the human soul of Christ, by miraculous interposition, the strength and fortitude of an archangel, to prepare him for the endurance of his last passion, would have been to effect a change in the elements of the incorporeal portion of his humanity. He would then rather have taken on him “ the nature of angels,” than have remained of the unmixed “ seed of Abraham.”—-

Hebrews, 2ii. 16.

True, the manhood of Christ was made for suffering. Nevertheless it was endowed with no supernatural capabilities of endurance; it was cast in the common mould of humanity. Its physical ability to suffer was no greater than pertains to ordinary men. Had it exceeded the common standard of humanity, Inspiration would not have affirmed of him, “,Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren.” He was not like unto his brethren, if his human nature differed from theirs in the paramount article of its suffering capacity. And if he was “ made like unto his brethren,” he continued “ like unto his brethren” until his mediatorial sufferings were “ finished.” Increase of physical capacity for the exigencygency of of his last passion, is not intimated in Scripture. It is a gratuitous assumption of the prevalent theory. The contrary, indeed, is to be justly inferred from the Inspired Volume.

The Bible would not have exhibited the patience of Christ in endurance from the cradle to the grave as a pattern to be successfully imitated by mortals, unless he had at all times remained, not only the Lord of glory, but also a frail man, “ like unto his brethren”, in the suffering elements of his humanity. The incarnation constituted him very man in all his weakness, as well as very God in all his might, by an in@@,dissolr,,soluble union of his two changeless natures. We believe that any subsequent and supernatural modification of his manhood before death would have been opposed to the laws of the holy union. If the humanity of Christ was the humanity of our common nature in the workshop of Joseph, it doubtless continued such in the garden of Gethsemane,. and on the cross of Calvary. The sweat of labou”r and the sweat of blood flowed alike from the same feeble mortality. The infant wailings of the manger, and the expiring wailings which shook the firm-seated earth, proceeded from the self-same being, unaltered save in physical and natural growth.

To reconcile the magnitude of Christ’s”s sufferings with the limited capabilities of humanity to suffer, has ever been one of the most trying shifts of the prevalent theory. One class of its advocates, as has already appeared, have imagined that the manhood of Christ was mysteriously endowed with superhuman susceptibilities and powers of sufferance; but this airy phantom has not a scriptural intimation on which to perch itself. Another class of its adherents have sought to solve the phenomenon by depreciating the magnitude of the mediatorial sufferings. Whitby, the commentator, with a reckless hand, has undertaken to cut the Gordian knot, which he could not untie, by sinking to-corporeal pains the expiatory agonies of the Son of f

God. Even the learned, eloquent, and devout

Dwight felt himself constrained to declare that

****** 226 CHRIST”S SUFFERINGS EXPLAINED.

“The degree of suffering which Christ underwent in making the atonement was far inferior to that which will be experienced@ by an individual sufferer beyond the grave.”

17

So the Herculean intellect of the profound author of the “ Freedom of the Will” " was obliged to seek refuge from the anomalies of the prevalent theory, in the same hypothesis.*

*Whitby’s Comments on Matthew, 26. 38; Dwight’s Theology, vol.

2. p. 217; Edwards’s Works, vol. 8. pp. 176, 177 New York, 1830.

Such depreciation of the price of redemption is without scriptural authority. The Bible nowhere intimates such a paucity of mediatorial sufferings; nor can reason evince the sufficiency of such limited sufferings to redeem a world by any process of human arithmetic. The debts of the redeemed to the exchequer of heaven were infinite, or, rather they consisted of a countless number of infinitudes; for each of the redeemed owed, for his single self, an infinite debt. Suffering was the only coin in which satisfaction could be, received. The second person of the Trinity, clothed in flesh, became the Substitute for the redeemed. For their suff@erings he mercifully interposed his own. If divine justice exacted full payment in kind to the uttermost far-thing, then he must have suffered as much as all the redeemed, but for him, would have suffered collectively, pang for pang, spasm for spasm, sigh for sigh, groan for groan; he must have suffered not only infinitely, but the infinitude of his suffering must have been multiplied by the number of the countless -countless redeemed.

* Whitby@s Comments on Matthew, xxvi, 38; Dwight”s Theology, vol. ii. p. 217; Edwards”s Works, vol. viii. pp. 176, 177 New York, 1830.

BY PARTICIPATION OF DIVINITY. 227

But it is, perhaps, the more general faith of Christendom, that Christ did not specifically pay the debts of the redeemed in kind and in full, as such payment might have enabled them to demand from eternal justice the remission of their sins as matter of right, and not of” mere grace. We eschew all debateable ground not directly connected with the main-.i position of our argument. Yet without departing from the line of neutrality on collateral points, we may be permitted to remind those who have adopted the last-named opinion, that their belief requires for its vital aliminent the supposition that such deficiency as existed in the quantity of Christ's sufferings, compared with what would have been the aggregate sufferings of the redeemed, wasg made up by the transcendent superiority of its quality. For it cannot be imagined that the infinite Father, in accepting the substituted sufferingc, of the Mediator, could have intended, by an act of flexible grace, to lower the awful dignity of his own violated justice.

Were we permitted to believe that the divinity of Christ actually participated in his sufferings, then, indeed, any difficulty connected with their numerical quantity might be mitigated, and perhaps removed. The participation of his divinity in his sufferings might have supplied their deficiency in quantity, compared with what the redeemed must have endured, by imparting to them an infinitely enhanced value. But the advocates of the prevalent theory, through all their classes, utterly deny that the divinity of Christ actually participated in his expiatory sufferings. To exclude the belief that his divinity actually suffered has.-, been their object for fifteen centuries. To this object they have clung with a tenacity which time has not been able to loosen.

****** 228 CIIRIST”S SUFFERINGS EXPLAINED

Yet does the prevalent theory require, for its vital principle, that there should have been an infusion of divinity into the mediatorial sufferings. This infusion we give in the awful fact that the divinity of Christ actually participated in all he underwent. The prevalent theory seeks to impart the divine infusion by supposing that the redeeming man suffered actually, and the redeeming God constructively. A preliminary objection to this supposition is, that it lacks scriptural support. The Bible, from its first verse to its last, gives no such intimation. It rests on human authority alone. The persons of the glorious Trinity are not wont to act constructively. Whatever they do, they do actually. It was not constructively that the Son of God created the worlds. It is not constructively that he will, one day, judge the quick and the dead. His heaven and his hell are not constructive. Nor was it merely constructively that his ethereal essence tasted “of death for every man.”

The prevalent theory has a navigation embarrassed with more real obstacles than those imagined to inhibit the passage of the Sicilian strait when haunted by the fabled terrors of early mythology. When it raises to their proper altitude its conceptions of the infinite magnitude of the mediatorial agonies, it encounters the insuperable difficulties arising from the limited@- ,c@apacities of humanity to suffer. If it lowers its views to the standard of humanity’s”s limited powers, its meager estimate of the atoning sufferings affords but scanty aliment for the redemption of a world. The theory has its Scylla on the one side, and its Charybdis on the other. Nothing but the unequalled, though noiseless skill of its navigators has hitherto saved it from shipwreck.

Whichever way we wander, we are thus drawn back to the great central truth that the second person of the Trinity, clothed in manhood, suffered and died, as well in hiWs ethereal essence as in hiMs human nature, for the salvation of man. This august truth cannot, indeed, fully unravel the “ mystery of godliness.” That still remains, as it was beheld by the apostle and the angels, shrouded in its own ineffable majesty, “ high and lifted up” above the ken of mortal scrutiny ; but it clears the spiritual horizon of the vapours and clouds which human theories have congregated there. If it were believed that a God, made sin for sinners, was just about to meet the “ fierceness and wrath”if” of an avenging God, the scene at Gethsemane, though towering to the third heaven in interest and grandeur, would lose some of its marvels. The bloody perspiration forcing itself through the corporeal substance of the incarnate, self-devoted Deity; the shaking, almost to annihilation, of “,the temple of his body;” the momuientary, eager, soultouching supplication that, if possible, the cup might pass from him; the appearance of the “ strengthening” envoy from the celestial court, are what even the finite imagination might shadow forth as the appropriate preludes of an exhibition, from which the dismayed sun fled away.

The explanation unfolded by this august central truth, though it may not, durst not, cannot draw fully aside the veil of the inner sanctuary, where “ the chastisement of our peace was upon Him@” who created the worlds, yet indicates to our adoring vision the viewless, hidden cause, from whose mighty workings came that wondrous contrast between the penitent, joyous, exulting malefactor, and the suffering, writhing, sinking Deity by his side; extorting from his bursting spirit the piercing cry sent up to the Ancient of Days, “,My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?”

If the redeeming God suffered in his divine essence, he must have suffered to a degree surpassing the apprehension of mortal man; probably surpassing the comprehension of the brightest archan. gel. He would not have healed “ slightly the hurt of the daughter of his people.”—-Jeremiah, 6vi. 14. He would not, by the paucity of the expiatory sufferings, have sunk, in the estimation of created intelligences, the dignity of his own divine law. Such sufferings must have been felt by the redeeming God as only a God has capacity to feel. If they did not pierce the very core of his divine heart, they might have lacked full atoning merit. They might have detracted from the grandeur of the Godhead; they might not have surpassed in magnificence the glory of the created worlds; they might have failed to I form the brightest crown of Him who “ wears on his head many crowns.” And if, indeed, the God thus suffered, we might have expected that the near approach of his infinite agonies would have caused anticipations new and “ strange” in the flight of eternal ages. We need not be surprised that their actual occurrence rent asunder the solid rocks, and convulsed to its centre the firm-seated, yet shuddering earth.

The precise mode in which the uncreated Son suffered in his ethereal essence to atone for the sins of our world we know not, nor dare we irreverently inquire. The stupendous fact of his own vicarious suffering is, of itself, the all-sufficient rock of Christian hope and Christian confidence. Its mode, if communicable to mortal apprehension, infinite wisdom has not seen fit to reveal. Systems of theism, manufactured in the laboratories of earth, ever abound in minute details, designed to lure the imagination and to gratify the longing inquisitiveness of our fallen race, to probe the secrets of the “ world unknown.” Such was the mythology of classic antiquity, with its poetic gods, its poetic heaven, and its poetic hell. Such is the Koran of Mohammed, with its voluptuous paradise.

Such is not the Bible of the true God. Its revelations, like the supplies of miraculous food to the wayfaring Israelites, are just sufficient for our spiritual wants. There is no lack, no redundancy.

****** 232 BIBLE FEEDS NOT CURIOSITY.

The Bible contains ample nutriment for the immortal soul ; not a jot of aliment for idle curiosity.

Any surplus of revealed communications might be but a receptacle for the worms of polemic speculation.—-Exodus, 16xvi. 20. This exact economy of its revelations is a distinguishing characteristic of Scripture, strongly indicative of its celestial parentage. The Scripture is its own best witness. The stars of the firmament and the Bible of our closets bear upon their faces the like inherent demonstration that their Architect is divine.

BAPTISM TO BE BAPTIZED WITTI. 233