venial and mortal, of all generations of mankind have been to Him, who is not a Saint but the Living Source of Sanctity? The extremity of His suffering is attested, but not explained, by the cry of dereliction and the Sweat of Blood. We can but adore in silence the inscrutable secret of those 'unknown agonies,' the interior martyrdom sealed at last in death. The controversies of the Reformation threw a fresh light on the subjective and moral aspects of the doctrine, and exhibited with peculiar distinctness the error of supposing that the Atonement wrought by Christ was to be understood as superseding our own satisfactions or obedience, instead of sanctifying and transforming them. This was in fact the question that lay at the root of the long disputes originated by Luther's teaching on justification, and the nature of justifying faith, while the other great school of Reformers brought into prominent notice the universality of redemption, as opposed to their own cherished theory of a deliverance wrought only for the elected few. The criticism of Socinus helped to expose the hollow. ness of all merely forensic schemes of satisfaction, and to remind Christian believers of the indissoluble connection between the Sacrifice and the Divinity of their Lord. Another idea elicited in the course of discussion was, that in all probability the Son of God, 'the Firstborn of every creature,' would have assumed our nature, and sanctified it by personal indwelling, though we had needed no redemption. We could not have argued à priori that He would come at all, or that, when we had fallen, He would come to die. We could not have told that the Incarnation of Jesus was to be the means of our union with the Godhead, or that our atonement, if atonement was needed, would be wrought out through His death. Nor can we tell with any certainty or completeness why it has been so now. The reasons lie deep in the counsels of Eternal Wisdom. We can but gaze, as it were, at the outer fringe of the curtains of His tabernacle, and from what we know of His dealings with us surmise something of that vaster mystery of the Divine Government which as yet is unrevealed. But looking back on what has actually occurred, with the light which revelation throws upon it, we may discern something, if not of the original causes of the Atonement, at least of its adaptation to our needs and the lessons it is designed to teach us. There is a fitness in the belief, that He, who is "the Brightness of the everlasting Light, the unspotted Mirror of God's majesty, and Image of His goodness," would have come to make His delights with the children of men, even if they had persevered in their primal innocence. Still more does it seem natural to us that, when we had sinned, He should come, not only as our Brother, but our Redeemer, to make reparation for our sins, and consecrate afresh our fallen humanity in the baptism of sorrow and blood. Let us gather up some of the reflections which this view of the fitness of His atoning Passion suggests to us. 1. Pain, as has been already said, is the deepest and truest thing in our nature since the Fall. We feel instinctively that it is so, even before we can tell why. Pain is what binds us most closely to one another and to God. It appeals most directly to our sympathies, as the very structure of language indicates. To go no further than our own, we have English words, such as condolence, to express sympathy with grief; we have no one word to express sympathy with joy. So, again, it is a common remark that, if a funeral and wedding procession were to meet, something of the shadow of death would be cast over the bridal train, but no reflection of bridal happiness would pass into the mourners' hearts. Scripture itself has been not inaptly called "a record of human sorrow." The same name might be given to history. "Man is born to trouble, as sparks fly upward." Friendship is scarcely sure till it has been proved in suffering, but the chains of an affection riveted in that fiery furnace are not easily broken. So much then at least is clear, that the Passion of Jesus was the greatest revelation of His sympathy; "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." "It was fitting that God should make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings." And hence Fathers and Schoolmen alike conspire to teach, that one reason why He chose the road of suffering was to knit us more closely to Himself. For this He exalted His head, not on a throne of earthly glory, but on the Cross of death. It is, indeed, no accident of the few, but a law of our present being, which the poet's words express: "That to the Cross the mourner's eye should turn, 2 For all, in their several ways and degrees, are mourners. The dark threads are woven more thickly than the bright ones into the tangled skein of human life, and as time passes on, the conviction that it is so is brought home to us with increasing force. We begin to discern "the trail of the serpent" over all the flowers of our earthly Paradise. There was a saying among the Greeks that "whom the gods love die young," and the translation of Enoch, if it does not explain the origin of the proverb, attests its truth, which has received under the Gospel its final and fullest consecration. Our Lord left a special blessing for those children of the first resurrection, who, being perfected in a short time, have fulfilled many times, and are taken in the unsullied freshness of their early bloom, by the wasting of sickness or the baptism of blood, to behold the King in His beauty, and the land that is far away. They are His dearest tokens "from that earth, where He was once a Child." But sooner or later a crisis comes in the lives of the rest of us who linger here, when we are constrained to walk-it may be with backward step and averted eye-up the road that leads to Calvary, and the sun goes down at noon, 1 Christian Year. Good Friday. 2 The recorded age of Enoch is, indeed, immense, according to our reckoning, but it does not reach half that of the shortest-lived of his contemporaries, and herein lay his blessing: "he was not, for God took him." and the stars withdraw their shining, and the Cross stands bare and cold under the darkened heavens, and we must be stretched thereon, whether we will or no. It is well for all in that hour of solitary trial who can patiently, nay, thankfully, embrace their cross, as knowing that indeed they are not alone who are crucified with Jesus. And thus, as St. Paul reminds us, the Cross is a manifestation, not only of His love, but of His power. power. He He was lifted up thereon, not only as the great High-priest and true Melchisedec of a better covenant, not only as the Prophet, who could preach most persuasively from that uneasy death-bed of the bleeding tree, but in vindication of the regal office, to which also He was anointed by the Eternal Spirit in Mary's womb. The Cross was an altar of Sacrifice, and a chair of Truth, but it was also, strange as it may sound to say so, the throne of an everlasting kingdom. It was there the Redeemer asserted His double royalty, over the intellects and the hearts of men. It is the fact, as has been justly observed, of His manifesting His love at so great a cost to Himself, and not by a mere act of clemency, that gives to the Atonement its persuasive power. Because he died for our sakes, the love of Christ constraineth us.2 When is it that we most deeply realise the presence of our King? Not when the angel brightness shines on the fields of Bethlehem, and the Gloria in Excelsis of angel voices rings clear and sweet through the still I Campbell's Nature of the Atonement, pp. 24 sqq. Cf. also supr. p. 184. 2 2 Cor. v. 15. |