The Atonement

(Part One)

"The ministry of reconciliation, to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

The Atonement will be the subject of the two remaining lectures of this course. I commence with a few remarks on the word atonement, and its use in the Scriptures. Atonement is at-one-ment, reconciliation, the bringing together, or at one, of those who have been at variance. It is a word employed but once in our translation of the New Testament; and that is in the following passage: 'If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement,' that is, the reconciliation just spoken of (Romans 5:10-11). The same Greek word occurs elsewhere, but is rendered reconciliation. It is the word so rendered in our text. The word atonement is often used in our translation of the Old Testament; but there it simply means ritual purification and can have no reference to reconciliation between God and man, since atonement is said to have been made for inanimate objects, as for the altar, and for a house infected with leprosy. The Hebrew word rendered to atone, denotes to cover, or smear over; and it no doubt came to imply purification, from the ceremonial smearing of the persons or things purified, with oil or with blood. 

Atonement, reconciliation between God and man, through Christ, through his death, is the doctrine of all Christian believers. The question at issue is, Which party did Christ reconcile to the other--God to man, or man to God? Some suppose that Christ died to reconcile God to man, to appease the divine wrath, to make God willing or able to forgive man's guilt. Others maintain that God never was, and never can be, alienated from his human family so as to need atonement, but that it is man, alienated from God by sin, that needs and receives the atonement, and that Christ lived and died to reconcile guilty man to a Father of unchangeable love. The latter is the view which you have always heard from this pulpit. The former is the theory of that branch of the Church called Calvinistic. The Calvinistic doctrine, stated more in detail, is this: God has affixed to every sin, nay, to original sin derived from Adam, the penalty of eternal torments. God's justice forbids him to forgive man's iniquity, unless this penalty be in some way satisfied. Christ interposed and took upon himself the weight of agony and torment, which those who are forgiven would otherwise have borne, and because he thus suffered in their stead, they go clear. This doctrine, with slight modifications, is held by the majority of our Christian public. One of these modifications introduces the idea of imputed righteousness, maintaining that, as men, though personally guiltless, are made sinners by the imputation of Adam's guilt, so those who are saved, though personally destitute of holiness, are made holy by the righteousness of Christ imputed to them. This is a notion so opposed to common sense, so self-contradictory in its terms, and so generally laid aside by its former advocates as to claim only the most cursory notice. Another modification of the popular doctrine is that, though Christ may not have suffered the full amount of what was due to man's guilt, yet what he suffered was accepted by the Father as a full equivalent for what man ought to have suffered. But the main idea of this doctrine, in all its modifications, is substitution, vicariousness, one's standing in another's stead and bearing what he ought to have borne. 

The first remark to be made upon this doctrine is that it is nowhere distinctly stated in the Scriptures. This its advocates admit. They maintain that it is strongly implied in several scattered texts in the apostolic epistles, and in one or two in the prophet Isaiah. But is it conceivable that a doctrine of such infinite moment should not have been explicitly stated in the Bible? It is, I think, admitted on all sides that a vicarious atonement was not distinctly taught by our Savior in any of his recorded discourses and that, when he died, his immediate followers were as ignorant of the purpose of his death, as they were at his nativity. But why was this? He often spoke of his approaching dissolution; why did he make no disclosure of its purpose? By the statements which he did make, he manifestly failed to reconcile his disciples to his departure from them; but, had he once told them that God could not pardon the penitent without his dying, they would have understood that it was expedient for them that he should go away. Nor yet does our Savior make any additional disclosure on this point after his resurrection. 

The vicarious atonement, one would suppose, must have formed, if true, an essential part of the preaching of the apostles. But, in the discourses preached by Peter and Paul to congregations that were listening to Christian instruction for the first time, we find not a word of this doctrine, now regarded by so many as the cardinal point of the gospel scheme. Yet, through these discourses, converts were made by thousands; and these, not converts of an hour, but such as ‘continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship.’ 

Equally little do we find of this doctrine in the writings of the Christian fathers of the first three centuries. The idea of substitution, or of a price paid to appease the divine justice, cannot be traced in any of their works now extant, though among these works are creeds, defenses, apologies, and avowed statements of the whole Christian system. This fact is admitted, and referred to with surprise, by Orthodox commentators upon the writings of the fathers. Flacius, a learned pupil of Luther, says that the Christian writers of the primitive age discoursed, like philosophers, of the law and its moral precepts, and of the nature of virtue and vice, but they were totally ignorant of man's natural corruption, the mysteries of the gospel, and Christ's merits. The same writer, speaking of Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian (who flourished early in the fourth century, and than whom none stood higher in the Church on the score of learning or authority), says: ‘It is a very low and imperfect description which he gives of a Christian, making him only a man, who, by the knowledge of Christ and his doctrine, is brought to the worship of the one true God and the practice of sobriety, righteousness, patience, and other virtues.’ But he has not a word about imputed righteousness. I cannot forbear quoting the well-merited and delicate irony, with which Lardner dismisses these passages from Flacius: ‘Poor, ignorant, primitive Christians, I wonder how they could find the way to heaven. They lived near the time of Christ and his apostles. They highly valued, and diligently read the Holy Scriptures, and some of them wrote commentaries upon them; but yet, it seems they knew little or nothing of their religion, though they embraced and professed it with the manifest hazard of all earthly good things; and many of them laid down their lives, rather than renounce it.’

These considerations certainly furnish a strong presumption against the doctrine under discussion, yet cannot be regarded as conclusive; for they have been admitted by its most intelligent advocates and defenders. Let us then analyze the doctrine and see on what foundation it rests. 

It assumes for its basis the position that God's law annexes eternal punishment to every sin, without reference to the repentance or reformation of the sinner. This is an idea wholly unsustained by Scripture and supported mainly by fragments of texts, which, quoted entire, would imply the opposite doctrine. It is stated as the stern, unbending law of God's revealed word, ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die.' This is indeed a part of the law as revealed through Ezekiel. But the prophet adds: 'But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?' (Ezekiel 18:20-23). Now I am utterly unable to discern the propriety or the honesty of quoting the first portion of this passage as the eternal moral law of God and omitting the latter part. All through the Old Testament, the promise of pardon to the penitent is connected with the denunciation of punishment against the sinner. ‘If they shall confess their iniquity, then will I remember my covenant,' was God's uniform declaration to the nation of Israel. The whole spirit of the Old Testament towards sinners is expressed in these words of God through Ezekiel: 'When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right; if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity: he shall surely live, he shall not die.' (Ezekiel 33:14-15). It is said that this law of pardon had reference to the intended sacrifice of Christ—to 'the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world?' This is an entirely gratuitous assumption, not only unsustained by Scripture, but opposed to certain very plain declarations of the New Testament, which represent Christ's mission as the consequence, not the cause, of God's forgiving mercy. Such are these texts which might be multiplied indefinitely: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.' (John 3:16). Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' (1 John 4:10).  ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself’ (2 Corinthians 5:19). 

But it is maintained that divine justice forbids the pardon of the penitent. Now, by justice as applied to God, we either mean some attribute, of which we have no knowledge, or else we mean the same attribute which we denominate justice between man and man. If the former, then whatever we affirm or deny with regard to the divine justice is mere haphazard assertion, and one assertion is as good as another. But to my mind nothing is more certain than this—that when God reveals himself to mankind as merciful, and holy, and just, he means that he is possessed of those attributes which all men designate, and which good men cherish and practice, as mercy, holiness, and justice. Now let me put the question to your hearts and consciences: Is it unjust to forgive the wrongdoer when he repents? If my neighbor has done me a very great injury, and now repents of it, is it unjust for me to forgive him? You would think me beside myself were I to ask the question seriously and with regard to a case actually in hand. In forgiving my penitent neighbor, I wrong no one. I give him what I take from no one else; for mercy grows by exercise. I give him what I owe him as a fellow-being and a legitimate object of sympathy and charity. If your little child has been disobedient and is now sorry for it, do you regard it as unjust for you to forgive him? Are you unrighteous because, on account of his regret for his fault and his promise of amendment, you forbear the chastisement, which the fault persisted in might seem to merit? No; for you only give to the child from that fountain of paternal love which God caused to well up within you for the child's benefit. You give the child what is rightfully his own. No more is God unjust in extending free, unpurchased mercy to his penitent child.

Still farther, I contend that divine justice not only admits, but necessarily includes and implies, the forgiveness of the penitent sinner. It would be unjust for God not to forgive the contrite. That stern, flinty, inexorable vice, not virtue, which technical theologians have been wont to call justice, is not what they term it. Such a counterfeit of justice, if it exist anywhere, is to be found with the devil and his angels. True justice is the perfection of goodness. It is a goodness, which does no wrong, which is impartial, and not a respecter of persons, which renders to all their due, and which, in every place and relation, discharges the appropriate offices of that place or relation. Now God is our Father; and the justice of a father is firm, discreet, impartial, yet munificent affection. What title to the character of a just man could be claimed, think you, by that human father who turned a deaf ear to the sincere penitence of his erring son? To be sure, the son could base no claim upon his past merits. But the father would owe it to his own nature, to the spontaneous impulses of a paternal heart, to forgive him. He would do himself the most outrageous injustice by persevering in anger and in vindictive measures. Thus it is also with our Father in heaven. Though his erring children can build no claim on the ground of past merit or obedience, he yet owes to himself to forgive them. He would be unjust, false to his own nature, were he to despise the sighing of the contrite and the desire of the penitent. He would, in that case, withhold from men that which, though they could not claim it on the score of merit, is their rightful due as his creatures, as his children. I maintain, then, that the forgiveness of the sincere penitent is an essential part of the divine justice. As such it is represented by the sacred writers. What could be more explicit on this point than St. John's declaration: 'If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins?' (1 John 1:9).

I next remark that, if it is inconsistent with the divine justice not to forgive the penitent, it is still more so to punish the innocent instead of the guilty. If justice has any signification whatever, it certainly includes and implies the rendering to each individual, and to no other in his stead or for his sake, the good or the evil that is his due. Apply the principle of the vicarious atonement to human affairs and see how much wrong it would produce, of how much iniquity it would be the parent. We will suppose a case. A man has been sentenced to the penitentiary for forgery, for a term of twenty years. At the expiration of ten years, it is represented to the chief magistrate that, at an early period of his confinement, he showed decided marks of deep contrition, that his conduct has been without exception exemplary, and that he will, undoubtedly, if pardoned, be a worthy and valuable member of society, in fine, that he is among the fittest subjects for executive clemency. The governor says: 'Yes, he surely ought to be pardoned. But the sentence must be executed. Go then, take him from his cell, and immure in his stead, for the next ten years, that good man over the way. He has never broken the law in any one point. He is the best citizen we have; and there is no other man by whose imprisonment the majesty of the law can be so well sustained.' Would you not infer that this magistrate's conscience and moral sentiment had been paralyzed? Would you not deem such a procedure the very climax of unrighteousness? Or suppose that one of my children had incurred some threatened punishment, but was now penitent for the fault, and that the other, an innocent, loving little creature, begged to be punished in her sister's stead—you would never afterwards trust my judgment in matters of right and wrong if, even at the instance of the child's own compassion, I punished the faultless one and let the guilty go. The native instinct of the human heart relucts at the very idea of a vicarious penalty and demands that punishment be either remitted, or visited upon the offender in his own person. Now it is in the highest degree unbecoming and irreverent to ascribe to God a course of conduct which we should reprehend and despise in man.

But it is said that to forgive the sin of the penitent, without laying its punishment on some other person, encourages sin. I have never been able to see the force of this objection to the doctrine of the free, unpurchased mercy of God. And, if it has any force, it belongs no less to the doctrine of vicarious atonement than to that of free pardon; for, in either case, repentance is the only condition required of the sinner. Nor can he be restrained from sin by an unwillingness to add to the sufferings of his substitute; for, according to the popular doctrine, the punishment, and that an infinite one, has been already borne and consequently cannot be increased by any additional amount of guilt. To my mind, forgiveness on the sole condition of repentance holds out a premium to goodness, not to sin. It keeps the prize of holiness within sight and reach of the sinner at every pause of his guilty career, whenever conscience wakes and passion sleeps. It opens, from every corner in his path of sin, cross paths to the road from which he has wandered. It cries at every step, 'Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die?' It seems to me to imply the strangest confusion of ideas to maintain that sin is encouraged by promises which can be of no effect till sin is repented of and forsaken.

But we are told, that the burdened conscience needs a vicarious atonement and can feel secure of forgiveness only when it can behold its punishment laid upon another's shoulders. That this feeling is a very frequent element in religious experience I have no doubt. I believe that very many burdened consciences can find relief only through a vicarious atonement. But this state of feeling is created by the very doctrine which it craves. Men feel thus, when under conviction of sin, because they have been taught to regard the Almighty as unwilling or unable to forgive sin without the substituted suffering of another—because they have never had the infinite mercy of God presented to them as a ground of trust and hope—because they have always had associations of wrath and vengeance connected with him, and thus have been constrained to look to the Son for that forgiveness, for which they have been forbidden to go to the Father. But, where the Father's forgiving love is set forth as full, large, and free, the sin-burdened conscience can cast its burden upon him, though in utter self-reproach and self-abasement, yet without a shadow of doubt or fear.

I have thus far reasoned as if the popular dogma of the atonement were consistent with the confessedly Scriptural doctrine of the remission or forgiveness of sins. But it is not so. If the one be true, the other cannot be. If you owe me a sum of money, and your neighbor pays it to me in your stead, there is no remission of the debt on my part. If you injure me, and I punish your son or brother in your stead, I exercise no forgiveness. Vicarious punishment is not pardon, but the two are at opposite poles of the moral universe. If God has taken full punishment upon Christ, if he has exacted from him the full price, he has put it forever out of his own power to forgive sin--he has blotted the very idea of pardon out of his book--he has made the remission of sin impossible. If Christ has paid my debt, I owe nothing. If Christ has borne my punishment, I am no longer liable to punishment. I therefore can no longer be the subject of pardon or of the remission of sins. But if there is any one doctrine that gives the keynote to the whole New Testament, it is that of the forgiveness of sins; and the dogma, which renders this impossible, can have no place in the counsel of God. 

We might, were it necessary, show the absurdity of the popular notion of the vicariousness of Christ's sufferings by a still farther analysis of the ideas, which it includes or implies. It is a doctrine held only by Trinitarians; and to them the question may be fairly put, How can God punish God, or be punished by God?  How can God pay a penalty to God, or cancel a debt due to God? This difficulty was felt by some of the early advocates of the doctrine under consideration; and, to obviate it, they decided (and such was the general belief of the church for several centuries) that the price or penalty paid by Christ was paid to the devil, in lieu of the souls which Christ ransomed from his power.

We might also ask how is it in the nature of things possible that Christ, an innocent, holy being, could have borne the punishment due to human guilt? For in what does that punishment consist? It consists in the forfeiture of the divine favor, and of the sympathy and companionship of the good, in the stings of an evil conscience, in the undying goadings of depraved desire and unholy passion, in a state of protracted opposition to the divine government and disobedience of the divine law. It is a burden, which, from its very nature, could have been borne by no innocent being, least of all by a being perfect, divine, and infinite. 

It is said that, in intense physical suffering, Christ bore the full equivalent of these inward torments due to the sins of the whole world? We ask, when; where? We read, indeed, of the agony of Gethsemane. But that, though intense and awful, was but for a brief season and was sustained with a spirit so full of submission and of filial piety as to make such woe, even if protracted through eternity, a heaven compared with the torment of an unreconciled and rebellious soul. Then, at the crucifixion, there was the one exclamation, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' This, there is indeed some reason to suppose, was designed simply as a citation of the psalm commencing with these words, which contains many things applicable to Jesus. But if (as seems to me more probable) this exclamation was an expression of the feeling of the moment, it cannot have implied that he deemed himself deserted by him to whom, a moment afterwards, he said in the calm confidence of a child, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit;' but it must have had reference to those outward circumstances of tribulation, which we are accustomed to call the hidings of God's countenance, so that it must be understood to mean,' My God, why hast thou, in thine inscrutable wisdom, seen fit to leave me under such a weight of torture and of contumely?'  But, with the exception of the agony in Gethsemane and the inference that might be drawn (wrongly, as I think) from that momentary exclamation on the cross, the whole scene of the betrayal and crucifixion is so far from presenting the picture of one who was enduring the eternal suffering of myriads compressed into a few hours, that it gives us, rather, the idea of a victory over suffering and death, so entirely won before the hour came as to leave our Savior's spirit with but a passing cloud, calm, free, unburdened, elastic, full of heavenly communing, and consciously in the bosom of the Father. But, supposing the popular doctrine of Christ's vicarious suffering true, could such an inconceivable weight of anguish have been laid upon him without having left, in the record of those hours, traces of an agony so unearthly, so infinitely surpassing the previous imagination of beholders, that the cry of the suffering God-man would have thrilled through the universe, and the horror and despair of the appalling scene would have seemed like the opening of the bottomless pit beneath the feet of those that stood by? What! A thousand times ten thousand, nay, uncounted millions of eternal, and therefore infinite, burdens of the most intense and hopeless torment of body and soul, and all these laid upon Christ's human nature, which is represented as finite—is there any trace, or shadowing forth of this, anywhere in the sacred history? Calvin, perceiving this difficulty, maintained that Christ spent the interval between his death and his resurrection in hell, suffering there the utmost possible measure of torment and agony; and, if the doctrine of a vicarious atonement be true, this supposition is indispensably necessary to reconcile it with the narrative of the evangelists.

We might also argue against the idea of a vicarious atonement from its manifest inconsistency with every statement of doctrine or duty, with every discourse or parable in the New Testament which is capable of being considered in connection with it.  Take, for instance, the parable of the master, whose servant owed him a thousand talents--a parable which was expressly designed to illustrate the divine forgiveness, and which we cannot suppose the great Teacher to have so framed as to exclude the essential conditions of forgiveness. Insert in this parable the vicarious atonement--suppose the master to exact full payment of some other servant--what a heartless mockery do you make of the words, 'He freely forgave him the debt!' 

To take another instance, the parable of the prodigal son was undoubtedly designed to exhibit God's mercy to the penitent. Insert in this the idea of vicarious punishment. Suppose the parable to read as follows (and such must be its actual import, if the doctrine under discussion be true): 'And when the Father saw the wanderer returning with every mark of contrite sorrow, he called the elder son, who had always served him, nor transgressed at any time his commandments, and said, My son, my first-born and best beloved, here is thy lost brother coming back again, and begging for the bread of my house; but the word has gone forth from my lips that the child, who once leaves my house, shall never return; and I know not how to remit this sentence, unless thou wilt take upon thyself the shame, and woe, and suffering due to his waywardness.' Who does not perceive that, with this gloss, the parable loses all its worth and beauty? Nay, had it been thus written, instead of being oftener read, and more attractive, than any other portion of the Bible, it would have been almost repulsive enough to have sunk into neglect and oblivion the gospel that contained it. 

I might refer you, in this connection, to the petition in our Lord's prayer, 'Forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors.' One who believes in the vicarious sufferings of Christ cannot use this petition with sincerity; for he hopes to be forgiven in a very different way from that in which he knows it to be his duty to forgive. God's forgiveness is often held forth in the New Testament as a measure and an example for man's forgiveness. Upon what an appalling career of wrong and crime should we enter, were we to make God's forgiveness on account of the substituted sufferings of the innocent the measure and example for our own!

I next remark that the doctrine of Christ's vicarious suffering represents God as a changeable being—as indisposed at first to show mercy, but made placable by the death of Christ. Take, for instance, the sentiment of one of Dr. Watts's hymns, much used in our Calvinistic churches, in which, speaking of God's throne, he emnploys the following terrific language:

'Once 'twas a seat of dreadful wrath,                                                                                             

And shot devouring flame;

Our God appear'd consuming fire,

And vengeance was his name.

'Rich were the drops of Jesus' blood,

That calm'd his frowning face,

That sprinkled o'er the burning throne,

And turned the wrath to grace.'

Oh, when I have heard these words read or sung, the image that they have brought to my mind has been the farthest possible from that of the Father God, of whom Jesus said, 'He so loved the world that he sent his Son.' They have, on the other hand, placed before me the semblance of a blood-thirsty fiend, at first ravening for his prey, and to be approached with safety only when satiated with carnage. But has he, whose words are, 'I am Jehovah, I change not,' indeed sustained such an entire revolution of disposition and character? So says the theology of the schools. So says not the New Testament, which never represents Christ's mission and death as the cause of the Father's love, but always as its fruit and pledge. Indeed, it is to my mind a conclusive argument against a vicarious atonement that, wherever, in the New Testament, God is named in connection with the mediation and death of Christ, he is spoken of, not as the object of Christ's mission and atonement, but as its author, and as having originated it in love to men, that he might draw them to himself.

But it is urged by the advocates of the popular doctrine that Christ's death is often spoken of in the Scriptures as a sacrifice. This is indeed the case; and I know of no term which could have been more naturally and properly applied to the death of Christ than this. His death was a sacrifice offered for the redemption of man. This, no Christian doubts. The question is, was it a vicarious sacrifice? That it was not would appear from the striking, yet neglected fact, that, in the Scriptures, Christ is oftener compared to a sacrifice which was not even a sin offering, namely, to the paschal lamb, than to any other part of the Jewish ritual. He is frequently called the Lamb, also our passover. The figure is drawn out in full by St. Paul in the following text: 'Christ our passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.' (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). The passover was a commemorative festival, by which the Hebrews celebrated their deliverance from Egyptian bondage; and the paschal lamb was the chief food for this anniversary supper. Christ in his death was likened to this lamb, because there clustered about his death associations of deliverance from a worse than Egyptian bondage, from the slavery of doubt, and fear, and sin; and also, because, in the Christian festival, designed to supersede the passover, bread, emblematic of the Savior's body broken on the cross, took the place of the paschal lamb.

The vicarious atonement has been professedly sustained by analogies drawn from the Old Testament; but, in point of fact, there was no such thing as vicarious suffering under the Jewish law.  Most of the Jewish offerings and sacrifices were not sin-offerings, but either thank-offerings, offerings of firstlings and first-fruits, designed chiefly for the subsistence of the priests and Levites, or offerings in acknowledgment, as those unintended omissions or transgressions of the ritual law to which no moral guilt was attached. Moreover, very many of the sacrifices were bloodless ones, offerings of fine flour, oil, wine, fruit, and grain. And in this connection, it is an important and instructive fact that the animal, made typically to bear the sins of the whole people, on the great annual day of atonement, was not slain. 'The priest shall lay both his hands upon the head of the goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat; and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.' (Leviticus 16:21-22). This is the only instance in the Old Testament in which sin is said to be laid upon any animal, or in which language seeming to imply vicariousness or substitution is used in connection with any part of the Mosaic ritual; and, in this service, the animal was not made to suffer in any form or way. But this was a part of the great annual confession-service or remission-service, in which, if anywhere, the idea of vicarious suffering must needs have been introduced. This idea, however, cannot be traced in any portion or feature of the Mosaic dispensation. 

Sacrifice was, in fact, a symbolical form of worship, which all nations have practiced in their infancy, and which, under the Mosaic law, was regulated and sanctioned, as still adapted to the imperfect culture and rude habits of the covenant people.  Under a low state of civilization, sacrifice was an obvious means of attesting the sincerity of the religious sentiment. It was symbolical prayer or praise. He, who was penitent, fined himself in a sin-offering. He, who was thankful, showed the fervor of his gratitude by setting aside from his own use and consecrating in some form, accordant with the notions of his times, a part of that wherein God had prospered him. Christ's death bore, therefore, a closer analogy to the slaying of the paschal lamb, with its glad associations of deliverance and divine guidance, than to any other part of the ancient ritual; and we can thus account for the frequency with which the passover furnishes the sacred writers with the phraseology employed with reference to the crucifixion.

Inasmuch as Christ's death was a sacrifice, whatever view we may take of its object or its efficacy, it would have been very strange if the sacred writers, who were all Jews, had not often employed with reference to it the word sacrifice and the phrases usually connected with that word. But it would have been still more strange, and certainly would have authorized the suspicion of some peculiar and mysterious signification attached to this phraseology if, employing it with reference to the death of Christ, they had used it on no other subject. But such is not the case. They have used the word sacrifice (and connected with it offer up and similar phrases) with reference to a large variety of subjects. The following are a few of the instances. 'I beseech you, therefore, brethren, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice' (Rom. 12:1).  'If I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all' (Phil. 2:17).  'I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God' (Phil. 4:18). 'Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. But to do good, and to communicate, forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased' (Heb. 13:15-16). ‘Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ' (1 Peter 2:5). From these examples we see that nothing like vicarious suffering is implied in the frequent comparison of our Savior's death to the sacrifices under the Jewish ritual.

Indeed, would we only interpret the sacred writings by the common laws and customs of speech, we should be at no loss for the origin of phraseology of the kind now under consideration. In figurative language, we constantly style beings, whether human or divine, whom we revere or love by the names of objects which we peculiarly admire or prize. How frequently are such words as gem, jewel, diamond applied to valued human friends. In like manner, Christ is called in the Scriptures the morning star, the temple, and the light of heaven, and the like. Now a devout Jew would have been more likely to have borrowed such titles for the Savior from the revered ritual under which he had been born and educated than from any other source. But the multitude and diversity of such titles, borrowed from the Jewish ritual, preclude any doctrinal inference which might be drawn from the use of any one of them. He is called not only a sacrifice, in the sense of a slain victim, but also, 'a sacrifice, for a sweet-smelling savour' (Eph. 5:2), that is, an incense-offering—then again, the mercy-seat (Rom. 3:25) (for this, all sound commentators and critics admit, is the meaning of the word rendered propitiation in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans), then, the high priest (frequently in the Epistle to the Hebrews)—then also the veil between the holy place and the holy of holies (Heb. 10:20). Now all these analogies are true, beautiful, instructive, and edifying. They all open rich veins of devotional thought and feeling and reflect back upon the Old Testament rays of gospel light, which cover it with the glory of the New, and shed around it the celestial halo that encircled our Savior's own brows. But you will see at once that, if these analogies had been designed to represent doctrinal facts, they could not all have been used. If, in a dogmatic point of view, Christ was a slain victim, he could not have been also an incense-offering--if an offering, he could not have been also the mercy-seat, on which no offering was laid--if a sacrifice, he could not have been also the high priest, who offered sacrifice. These comparisons, which, if anything more than figures, clash so harshly with each other, must then be regarded as mere images, designed to shadow forth, under various aspects, the power, the love, and the sufferings of Christ.

These figures occur chiefly in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which was written mainly to impress upon Jewish minds the spiritual majesty and beauty of Christianity. The Jewish converts missed, in Christianity, the outward beauty of holiness to which they had been accustomed, the solemn tread of the priestly train, the pompous ceremonial of the great day of expiation, the smoke of the daily sacrifice. The writer of this epistle aimed to reconcile those to whom he wrote to the simplicity of the Christian system and ritual, by showing them that, for everything beautiful and glorious in Judaism, Christianity offered something greater and more perfect of the same kind. The burden of the epistle is: 'God spake to the fathers by the prophets; to us by his Son. Judaism has its succession of dying high priests, who must perform the same service over again every year; we have an unchangeable high priest, who remains forever, and whose one service and oblation is forever sufficient. Under the old dispensation, there was a tabernacle, glorious and beautiful, made with hands; ours is a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands.' Thus also, with numerous other particulars. If you will take this idea with you in reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, it will give that epistle a harmony and consistency which you may not now, perhaps, be able to trace in it; and you will regard it as the very best form in which Jewish prejudices could have been overcome and the Christian faith of one born a Jew could have been conciliated or confirmed. This view of the epistle will account for much of the phraseology, commonly quoted in the discussion, of the atonement, and may prepare us for the consideration of particular texts upon this subject, to which I shall invite you in the next lecture. 

My hour is fully spent; and I have spent it in negations, which I dislike to do when it can be avoided. But on account of the tenacity with which many cling to the view, against which I have been contending, I have deemed it necessary to give it as thorough a discussion as possible before presenting that view of the atonement which seems to me both rational, Scriptural, and full of instruction and edification. None can attach a higher efficacy than I would to the cross and death of Christ; but I believe (as I shall attempt to show you in the next lecture) that it is, in the language of our text, 'God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself,' and not Christ reconciling God to man. As a sacrifice of love, in which God and Christ consent, may the Savior's atoning blood be applied to our hearts and consciences, so that 'we, having received the atonement, may joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.'

Read Part Two