CHAPTER XXI.

Objections to Prevalent Theory—Venerable for its Age and Prevalence— Miniature of its Outlines—Derogates from Simplicity and Fulness of Atonement—Not founded on Scripture—Imparts to Bible Figurative Meaning—Lowers affection from Godhead of Christ to Manhood—-Strengthens Unitarian Error.

WE have now reached the point where it becomes necessary, in the progress of our argument, to attempt a more detailed examination of the prevalent theory than we have hitherto done. This is a delicate branch of our subject. We would not willingly aid in the demolition of a material edifice, venerable for its age, and consecrated as the scene of memorable events, however much we might complain of its architectural proportions. With how much propounder regret do we enter, with hostile purpose, that spiritual structure, which has exten “ ded over continents its vast dimensions, and grown gray under the frosts of almost fifteen hundred years ! Ever since its erection, it has been the abode of the chief portion of the piety of Christendom. In its many chambers devotion has for ages uttered her dying prayers, and breathed forth her last faltering accents. From its lofty turrets, for near fifteen centuries, have triumphantly ascended joyous groups of “the spirits of just men made perfect.”

That the corner-stone of this stupendous structure has been laid in error, is engraved on the tablet of our heart, as it were, by a pen of iron on tablets of marble. With the absorbing belief resting on our soul that the second person of the Trinity suffered and died, in his ethereal essence, for the redemption of our race, we cannot withhold from this sublimest of truths the aid of our feeble voice, even were we to stand alone with a world opposed. Religious misconception is not changed into truth by its prevalence or age. If errors of faith could be consecrated by their universality or antiquity, then might the paganism of China interpose against the missionaries of the Cross a rampart more impregnable than her celebrated wall interposed to Tartar incursions.

The following is a miniature representation of the prevalent theory: It affirms that the second person of the Trinity, the incarnate Redeemer of the world, suffered and died, not in h]is divine nature, which is impassible, but in his human nature only: that by virtue of the union of his divine and human natures, called the hypostatic union, there was imparted to his human sufferings and death a value and dignity which made them, in the estimation of infinite justice, and in pursuance of the covenant of grace between the Father and the Son, an adequate atonement for the sins of the redeemed. This, though a brief, is believed to be a faithful sketch of the prevalent theory.

To this theory are opposed serious objections, some of which have already been intimated.

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First. The theory derogates from the simplicity and fulness of the atonement, and imparts to it an illusive character. It subtracts from the atonement its vital principle. It robs it of its suffering, dying God. It substitutes the sufferings and decath of the creature for the sufferings and death of the Creator. That the human son of the Virgin was a creature—-as really so as Peter or John —-the advocates of the prevalent theory will not deny. Nor will they affirm that mere creature sufferings could have atoned for the sins of man. For then Gabriel, il”nistead of the eternal Son, might have been the incarnate redeemer of the world. But the prevalent theory would seek to imbue the sufferings of the creature with a borrowed value, reflected from the Creator dwelling within. How the indwelling God could impart atoning value to creature sufferings, in which he did not himself participate, but from which he stood dissevered by the immutable laws of his being, none of the faculties of man, save his imagination, can shadow forth. Sufferings, valueless as an atoning offering in themselves, could not have derived atoning merits from the mere juxtaposition of indwelling divinity.

The intrinsic worth of a habitation would not be enhanced by the rank of its occupant. Human vanity might, indeed, attach to an edifice, proffered in satisfaction of a debt, a fictitious value, from its having been tenanted by a prince; but the calculations of human vanity would not have affected Him, who must have weighed earth’ws supposed of

********offering for sin in the balance of the sanctuary, in the face of the intelligent universe. The Holder of the everlasting scales would, we suppose, have fixed the value of the offered tabernacle of clay from the intrinsic worth of its terrestrial materials, little moved by the consideration that the “Prince of life” was its tenant, and the poor oblation for a ruined world must have had written over against it the superscription so astounding to the aspiring Oriental despot, “Thou art weighed in the bal,17. ances, and art found wanting.”

The supposition that the chief office of the second person of the Trinity in the work of redemption was to impart, by his holy incarnation, dignity and value to creature suffiterings, is the imagination of the prevalent theory. Had the communication of dignity and value to creature sufferings been the chief object of the incarnation, it must have been somewhere intimated in the Word of God. It would have formed too important -a featu0are in the . scheme of salvation to have escaped special notice. The silence of the Bible is a speaking silence. But the object of the holy incarnation is not left to be deduced by inference. The Bible everywhere indicates, in terms seemingly unequivocal, that the mission of the redeeming God was a suffering mission, and that its chief Actor was himself the princ. (-,ipal Sufferer.

The human son of the Virgin was doubtless immeasurably exalted by his union with the Godhead. Even the ordinary Christian derives from his relationship to God a dignity far surpassing all that earth can confer. The humblest saint who drives his “team afield” may look down, as from a celestial height, on the diminished glories of a Solon or a Caæoosar ; for he is,, “the temple of the Holy Ghost.” How much greater was the exaltation of the human son of Mary! Yet was hbe but a creature. His elevation to the throne of the Highest added not a fourth person to the Godhead. His sufferings were but creature sufferings. Nothing, save an infinite atonement, could have satisfied the requisitions of an infinite law, trampled under foot in the face of the universe. The vicarious suffeiaring of an insect of the field, and the vicarious sufferings of legions of angels would have been alike inefficadcious. To impart infinitude to creature sufferings, infinite duration is necessary. They can be swelled into infinity only by the ceaseless tide of eternal ages. Christ himself always assigned to his manhood a finite and inferior rank, notwithstanding its union with the Godhead. Evidence of this truth abounds in his declarations. We need here cite no particular texts to prove it. Some of them appear elsewhere in these pages. His manhood had no attribute of infinity. If, then, the manhood of Christ held only a finite rank, notwithstanding its union with the Godhead, how can the prevalent theory venture to assign an infinite rank to the exclusive sufferings of that manhood? The sufferings of his mere manhood could not rank higher than the manhood itself. If his manhood derived not infinity from union with the God, such union could not impart infinity to the sufferings of that manhood. If the union of the God took not away from Christ’s”s humanity its creature character, neither could it have taken away from the sufferings of that humanityv their creature character. As, then, the indwelling God infused nothing of infinitude into the manhood of Christ, so he infused nothing of infinitude into his sufferings. The imputation of infinite value to finite sufferings, because of the indwelling of an infinit” e Being, to whom the sufferings, however, were not communicated or communicable, should, to gain credence, be sustained by clear scriptural proofs.

The prevalent theory subtracts from the atonement of the Bible, not only its infinitude, but also its ineffable dignity. This thought has been partially developed in an early part of our argument; but its importance seemed to require its farther expansion in this connexion.

Meeting full in the face the very numerous passages of Scripture ascribing sufferings to the divinity of Christ in terms not to be parried, the prevalent theory, to avoid too palpable a collision with Holy Writ, was obliged to allege that, by the hby postatic union of the divine and human natures in one person, the sufferings of the man became, in scriptural estimation, the sufferings of the God, not by actual endurance, but by adoption or construction. These are the views expressed, as we have seen, by Bishops Pearson and Beveridge; and without some such aliment, the hypostatic theory could not have subsisted. The redeeming God, then, is to be taken as the principal redeeming sufferer, constructively, according to the prevalent theory, actually, according to ours. As it regards its bearing on this particular point of our argument, it is not material whether his suffering was actual or constructive. It is enough for the present point, that in scriptural estimation the God suffered ; that the suffering is predicated of him who hath “weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.”—-Isaiah, 40xl. 12.

Suffering consists in the reduction of what would otherwise have been the happiness of the sufferer. The amount of the reduction tells the amount of the suffering. The happiness of the incarnate God, but for his suffering, would have been infinite. He imbodied the fulness of the beatitude of the Godhead. According to the prevalent theory, hiMs suffering was finite. It reached his humanity alone. It was only the suffering of the finite man. It touched but the outer garment of the indwelling God. Subtract finite suffering from infinite beati tude, and the reduction must be too small for creature perception. It would elude, by its minuteness, the arithmetic of earth, and, as we suppose, the arithmetic of angels.

If you take a drop from the bucket and a drop from the ocean, the loss of the bucket will be incomparably greater than the loss of the illimitable sea; for its capacity to lose ”with impunity is proportionally less than the capacity of the ocean. Christ, if his divinity tasted not “ the cup of trembling,” was happier even in the garden and on the cross than any created intelligence to be found in this lower world or in the heavens above. His was the ocean of divine blessedness. The subtraction of the drop of human wo caused a less diminution than would be caused to an ocean of earth by the subtraction of a single drop of its “multitudinous” waters; for the oceans of earth have their shores; the ocean of divine blessedness is shoreless. Thus the prevalent theory would sink those expiatory sufferings, which satisfied the divine law and redeemed the world, from their scriptural infinitude down to a point less, taken in reference to the illimitable beatitude of the sufferer, than a single particle of the dust of the balance. “Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ascalon,” lest the spiritually uncircumcised should rejoice.

Secondly. The prevalent theory with its hypostatic subordinate, has not its foundation in the Word of God. According to the scriptural representation, the redeeming sufferer appeared, not as a secondary planet, borrowing light and lustre from a central sun; he was himself the central Sun of his own system of grace, shining in his own brightness. He was not the outer man, deriving dignity from the impassible God within; he was the suffering God, wearing the form of the outer man, but as the sinless representative of the fallen nature he came to save. The Bible everywhere gives to the redeeming sufferer the primary, and not the secondary place. On the scriptural canvass, the redeeming God is always depicted as the principal Sufferer. It was the “Prince of life” who was “killed;” it was the “Lord of glory” who was “crucified;” it was the Son of man “that came down from heaven” who gave “his life a ransom for many;” it was the shepherd God who laid down his “life for the sheep;” it was God's “only-begotten Son” whom he “sent into the world” “to be the propitiation for our sins;” it was the uncreated Son by whose “death” we were reconciled to God; it was the Father's “own Son” whom he “spared not;” it was “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,” who “purged our sins;” it was God who “laid down his life for us;” it was with the blood of God that he purchased his Church; it was to smite his “Fellow” that the Lord of Hosts awakened his slumbering sword; it was He that “thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” who “emptied himself,” and “became obedient unto death;” it was the “Alpha and Omega,” who “was dead and is alive again,” and behold, he liveth forevermore. From Genesis to Revelation, both inclusive, there is no text, within our recollection, intimating that “the Word was made flesh” merely to impart dignity and value to creature sufferings. The hypostatic scheme is too complicated, too involved, too artificial for gospel simplicity and directness. It bears the marks of the chisel of art. It has been formed in the laboratories of earth.

Was strength for the endurance of creature sufferings needed? That strength might have been imparted to the human son of the Virgin by the mere mandate of the God. The mandate of almighty God is wide-reaching and resistless. He commanded, and there was light. He spake, and from the opening east appeared the king of day, rejoicing in his might. He commanded, and straightway began the ceaseless dance of the harmonious spheres. His mandate was the chariot of fire in which the translated Elijah ascended to heaven. It was his mandate which closed the mouths of the famished lions, so that they harmed not the faithful prophet. His mandate opened the fountain of waters above, and the depths below, so that a mighty deluge overflowed the mountains of the earth. His mandate will one day melt with fervent heat the elements of the material universe. His mandate, without his becoming incarnate, might, doubtless, have imparted all needful strength to the human son of the Virgin.

If, then, God was made “manifest in the flesh,” not to strengthen his terrestrial adjunct, or merely to impart dignity and value to creature sufferings, what could have been the object of his incarnation? Scripture has intimated no other object—imagination can conceive no other—than the redemption of the world and the manifestation of infinite justice by suffering in his own divine essence. This is the grand central point in the system of salvation, to which we are drawn from all our wanderings by the centripetal attraction of almighty truth.

An infinite object, of a twofold aspect, was presented to the conclave of the Godhead. A world was to be saved. Divine justice was to be vindicated. That arch enemy, who had once threatened the throne of the Highest, and was waving his triumphant banner over one of the fairest provinces of the universal empire created by the eternal Son, was to be consigned to chains of everlasting darkness. The eternal Son, who had once baffled that enemy in heaven, was to complete his conquest on earth. A new, and “strange,” and glorious development of infinite love was to be displayed. A new, and “strange,” and awful demonstration of infinite justice was to astound the universe—to be reverberated through eternity. The second person of the Trinity, in the fulness of time, descended from heaven, and shrouded his divinity in the vestment of flesh. It was the descent of a God; and his movements on earth were to be the footsteps of a God. His absence from the celestial court was not merely that he might pass through the ceremony of incarnation, and thence return, untouched by pain, to his native heavens, wearing on his triumphant brow the cheap—gained trophies of an enemy subdued and a world redeemed. The trophies which he earned on earth were earned by the bloody sweat, the viewless, nameless agonies of a suffering, dying God. It was not for the purpose of a ceremonious incarnation; it was that, with divine throes and spasms unimaginable by men or angels, he might save a perishing race, and fix on adamantine foundations the everlasting column of infinite justice, that he left vacant—if we may so say—for more than thirty years of what we call time, the right-hand seat of the celestial throne.

Thirdly. The prevalent theory imparts a figurative signification, not merely to a few inspired passages, but to all that mighty mass of scriptural truths which, having for their basis the sufferings of Christ, constitute the sinews, and arteries, and very heart of the Bible. By figurative signification we mean every departure from the literal and obvious import of the words interpreted, by whatever name the authors of such departure may choose to characterize it. That the vital elements of the Bible consist in the expiatory agonies of the incarnate God, no Christian will doubt. It is the merit of those sufferings which renders it the book of hope, the star of comfort, the rock of confidence. What would have been the Bible without the atoning pangs of Christ? It would have been a desert of burning sands, with no spot of recreating green, no cooling spring to cheer the mournful journey from the cradle to an unquiet grave.

If the abounding scriptural passages declarative of Christ's sufferings are to be received in their literal and obvious import, then the conclusion that his divinity participated in his expiatory agonies is just as certain as the conclusion that his Godhead became incarnate. The great central truth, that the whole Christ of the Bible suffered, has received the seal of each august person of the Trinity. The Holy Ghost promulged it often in the Old Testament, and unceasingly in the New. The blessed Son proclaimed it from the time he began to preach glad tidings on earth until his stupendous reappearance at Patmos. The infinite Father confirmed it when he summoned his sleeping sword to awake and smite his Fellow. This great central truth has passed into scriptural demonstration, if the asseverations of the Bible are not to be lost in allegory. The Bible and the prevalent theory stand in direct collision. To escape the dilemma, then theory invokes its transmuting powers. The scriptural truths must be made to evaporate in metaphor, or the theory of fifteen centuries cannot be sustained.

There is nothing on the face of the scriptural passages indicating a figurative meaning. Their conversion into figures of speech is not required or justified by any other portions of Holy Writ. The subject matter of the passages would seem to interdict figurative interpretation. The Holy Ghost is recounting the sufferings and death of his fellow God. Pathos, when profound, is wont to select, for the outpourings of the heart, the plainest and most simple terms to be found in speech. “Jesus wept” and “It is finished” are akin in expressive brevity and grandeur, to that most concise, yet most sublime of sentences, “God said, Let there be light, and there was light.”

Theological science has no authority delegated from above to veil the simplicity of scriptural truth beneath drapery woven in the looms of earth. On this theme we would, if in our power, give such compass to the voice of our feeble remonstrance as to make it heard and felt in every school of sacred lore. Even a human record is held sacred. It carries on its face incontrovertible verity. It speaks for itself; and its responses are unalterable as the imagined decrees of classic fate. It cannot be impeached from without. Should the attempt be made, the mandatory voice of the law would exclaim, “Travel not out of the record.” An effort to turn into figures of speech its plain and simple language would indicate aberration of intellect. The Bible is a heavenly record. It was indited by the third of the Sacred Three, and sealed with the blood of the second. Of this Inspired Record, the Holy Ghost is the interpreter. God is the expounder of the words of God.

Theological lore may evolve the latent meaning of Scripture, by comparing sacred texts with sacred texts, for that still leaves it to God to explain himself. It may borrow elucidations from scriptural history, and scriptural geography, for they are constituent, though inferior parts of the Sacred Volume. It may treat particular passages as figurative, if necessary to preserve the symmetry of Scripture. It may, for instance, teach us to believe that the scriptural delineations of the corporeal lineaments of the disembodied Deity are figurative, because we are elsewhere taught in the Bible that “God is a Spirit.” But where the scriptural terms themselves indicate no departure from directness of meaning, and come not into collision with other parts of Holy Writ, academic science has no right to plant in the sacred soil metaphors of human growth. A still, small voice ever whispers from above, “Travel not out of the record of God.” The conversion of plain language into figurative language may shake the foundations of our faith. It may fearfully “add unto,” or “take away from the book” of life, which closed with the last chapter of Revelation. The imputation of metaphorical signification to the sacred and clear passages declarative of Christ's agonies subtracts from the atonement of the Bible its suffering God, and sinks the great expiatory sacrifice from its scriptural infinitude down to a finite atom.

The boldest development of reasoning pride is the right which it often claims and exercises to construe Scripture by its own microscopic views of what is “fitting to God.” This dangerous error formed, as we have seen, the major proposition of the Athanasian syllogism. Without it, the prevalent theory might not have held Christendom in its fetters for fifteen successive centuries. Stand forth, reasoning pride, and let us commune together You say that it is not “fitting to God” to suffer, even from his own free volition and sovereign choice. And what think you, then, of the holy incarnation? Declare. Is it “fitting to God,” the infinite Spirit, to have “been made flesh, and dwelt among us?” Is it “fitting to God,” the great God, to have been born in a manger, and wrapped in its straw? Is it “fitting to God,” the Architect of the universe, to have been a laborious journeyman in the workshop of Joseph? Is it “fitting to God,” accustomed to the ministration of angels, to have washed the feet of his betraying and deserting disciples? Is it “fitting to God,” the object of heaven's hallelujahs, to have submitted in meekness to the scoffings, and scourgings, and spittings of the blaspheming mob? When you have responded to all these interrogatories you may be the better able to appreciate the soundness of your favourite dogma, that it is not “fitting to God” to suffer.

Fourthly. The prevalent theory tends to lower the eye of devotion from the Godhead of Christ to his manhood. To worship the created humanity of Mary's son alone, would be idolatrous worship. To love the glorified man more than the indwelling God, would be impiously loving the creature more than the Creator. We should love the whole united being of Christ. We should love the finite much; the infinite unspeakably more. The instinct of our nature leads us to regard, with peculiar favour, him who has bestowed on us signal benefits, especially if the tomb has closed over our benefactor. Affection preserves in fond remembrance the gift of a departed friend. A grateful country bedews, with overflowing tears, the grave of the patriot who has suffered and died for its sake. And if we are taught to consider the pathetic story of Christ’s agonies and death as but the biography of the human son of the Virgin, and to regard the indwelling God, through all his incarnation, as standing aloof from pains, wrapped in the mantle of impassibility, our warm affections may be drawn too much from the impassible God, and placed too fondly on the suffering man. In blotting out from the scriptural picture the soul-absorbing and soul-expanding agonies of the incarnate Deity, and fixing the mental vision on the suffering manhood of Christ, the prevalent theory gives the human figure too attractive a place on the canvass. It tends to impair the spirituality and sublimity of worship, and to sink devotion, as it were, from heaven down to earth.

Fifthly. The prevalent theory unwittingly strengthens the Unitarian error. The startling syllogism of Arius stood thus: The divine essence is impassible: Christ suffered in both his celestial and human natures; therefore, his celestial nature was not divine. Had the Council of Nice made but a single thrust at the major proposition of this syllogism, the heresy of Arius would scarcely have outlived its author. But, unfortunately, the fathers of the Nicene Council assented to its major proposition: they conceded the hypothesis of God's impassibility. They had then nothing left but to declare against its minor proposition—the suffering of Christ in his united natures—a dubious war. Modern Unitarianism, except in its very lowest grade, rests on the same identical syllogism.

We regard the Unitarian heresy as the most formidable foe of our holy religion. The polar region of wintry Atheism is bound in its own eternal frosts. Professed Infidelity can never be perennial where the warm pulsations of the human heart are felt. The creative spirit of a Hume or a Gibbon may, ever and anon, breathe into it the breath of precarious life: but, whenever the strong stimulant of sustaining genius is withdrawn, it sinks down, like Thomas Paine, a lifeless, offensive, and forgotten corse. But Unitarianism, decked in the beautiful habiliments of the social virtues, is a brilliant and dangerous meteor. Under its ever-changing phases and varying names it has, like a portentous comet, threatened the system of Christian faith for more than fifteen centuries.

The inquirer after truth, while dwelling on the atonement of the prevalent theory, finds that the view of its creature sufferings leaves an aching void in his heart. This unsatisfied vacuity ever invites the intrusion of seductive, and often fatal errors. If Christendom would extirpate the Unitarian heresy, let a concentrated blow be aimed at the major proposition of its upholding syllogism. Wrest from it its earth-woven mantle of the divine impassibility. Strip it of its armour of proof. That Christ suffered in his united natures is a position deeply bedded in the everlasting truth of Sacred Writ. The hypothesis of God's impassibility has no foundation in his Holy Word. Divine impassibility is the chief corner-stone of the Unitarian faith. Remove that corner-stone, and the whole structure will totter to its foundation.