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ON THE ATONEMENT
ANNIE BESANT.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,'
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
��ON THE ATONEMENT.
HE Atonement may be regarded as the central doc
T trine of Christianity, the very raison d'etre of the
Christian faith. Take this away, and there would
remain indeed a faith and a morality, but both would
have lost their distinctive features : it would be a faith
without its centre, and a morality without its founda
tion. Christianity would be unrecognisable without its
angry God, its dying Saviour, its covenant signed with
“ the blood of the Lamb •” the blotting out of the
atonement would deprive millions of all hope towards
God, and would cast them from satisfaction into
anxiety, from comfort into despair. The warmest
feelings of Christendom cluster round the Crucifix, and
he, the crucified one, is adored with passionate devo
tion, not as martyr for truth, not as witness for God,
not as faithful to death, but as the substitute for his
worshippers, as he who bears in their stead the wrath
of God, and the punishment due to sin. The Christian
is taught to see in the bleeding Christ the victim slain
in his own place ; he himself should be hanging on
that cross, agonised and dying ; those nail-pierced
hands ought to be his; the anguish on that face should
be furrowed on his own; the weight of suffering
resting on that bowed head should be crushing himself
into the dust. In the simplest meaning of the words,
Christ is the sinner’s substitute, and on him the sin of
the world is laid: as Luther expressed it, he “ is the
greatest and only sinner j” literally “ made sin ” for
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On the Atonement.
mankind, and expiating the guilt which, in very deed,
was transferred from man to him.
I wish at the outset, for. the sake of justice and can
dour, to acknowledge frankly the good which has been
drawn forth by the preaching of the Cross. This good
has been, however, the indirect rather than the direct
result of a belief in the Atonement. The doctrine, in
itself, has nothing elevating about it, but the teaching
closely connected with the doctrine has its ennobling
and purifying side. All the enthusiasm aroused in the
human breast by the thought of one who sacrificed
himself to save his brethren, all the consequent longing
to emulate that love by sacrificing all for Jesus and for
those for whom he died, all the moral gain caused by
the contemplation of a sublime self devotion, all these
are the fruits of the nobler side of the Atonement.
That the sinless should stoop to the sinful, that holi
ness should embrace the guilty in order to raise them
to its own level, has struck a chord in men’s bosoms
which has responded to the touch by a harmonious
melody of gratitude to the divine and sinless sufferer, and
loving labour for suffering and sinful man. The Cross
has been at once the apotheosis and the source of self
sacrificing love. “ Love ye one another as I have
loved you : not in word but in deed, with a deep self
sacrificing lovesuch is the lesson which, according to
one of the most orthodox Anglican divines, 11 Christ
preaches to us from His Cross.” In believing in the
Atonement, man’s heart has, as usual, been better than
his head; he has passed over the dark side of the idea,
and has seized on the divine truth that the strong
should gladly devote themselves to shield the weak,
that labour, even unto death, is the right of humanity
from every son of man. It is often said that no doc
trine long retains its hold on men’s hearts which is not
founded on some great truth; this divine idea of self
sacrifice has been the truth contained in the doctrine
of the Atonement, which has made it so dear to many
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7
loving and noble souls, and which, has hidden its
“ multitude of sins ”—sins against love and against
justice, against God and against man. Love and self
sacrifice have floated the great error over the storms of
centuries, and these cords still bind to it many hearts
of which love and self-sacrifice are the glory and the
crown.
This said, in candid homage to the good which has
drawn its inspiration from Jesus crucified, we turn to
the examination of the doctrine itself: if we find that
it is as dishonouring to God as it is injurious to man, a
crime against justice, a blasphemy against love, we
must forget all the sentiments which cluster round it,
and reject it utterly. It is well to speak respectfully
of that which is dear to any religious soul, and to
avoid jarring harshly on the strings of religious feeling,
even though the soul be misled and the feeling be mis
directed ; but a time comes when false charity is cruelty,
and tenderness to error is treason to truth. For long
men who know its emptiness pass by in silence the
shrine consecrated by human hopes and fears, by love
and worship, and the “ times of this ignorance God (in
the bold figure of Paul) also winks atbut when
11 the fulness of the time is come,” God sends forth
some true son of his to dash the idol to the ground,
and to trample it into dust. We need not be afraid
that the good wrought by the lessons derived from the
Atonement in time past will disappear with the doctrine
itself; the mark of the Cross is too deeply ploughed
into humanity ever to be erased, and those who no
longer call themselves by the name of Christ are not
the most backward scholars in the school of love and
sacrifice.
The history of this doctrine has been a curious one.
In the New Testament the atonement is, as its name
implies, a simply making at one God and man : how
this is done is but vaguely hinted at, and in order to
deduce the modern doctrine from the bible, we must
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On the Atonement.
import into the books of the New Testament all the
ideas derived from theological disputations. Words
used in all simplicity by the ancient writers must have
attached to them the definite polemical meaning they
hold in the quarrels of theologians, before they can be
strained into supporting a substitutionary atonement.
The idea, however, of “ ransom ” is connected with the
work of Jesus, and the question arose, “to whom is
this ransom paid ? ” They who lived in those first
centuries of Christianity were still too much within the
illumination of the tender halo thrown by Jesus round
the Father’-s name, to dream for a moment that their
redeemer had ransomed them from the beloved hands
of God. No, the ransom was paid to the devil, whose
thrall they believed mankind to be, and Jesus, by
sacrificing himself, had purchased them from the devil
and made them sons of God. It is not worth while to
enter on the quaint details of this scheme, how the
devil thought he had conquered and could hold Jesus
captive, and was tricked by finding that his imagined
gain could not be retained by him, and so on.
Those who wish to become acquainted with this
ingenious device can study it in the pages of the Chris
tian fathers : it has at least one advantage over the
modern plan, namely, that we are not so shocked at
hearing of pain and suffering as acceptable to the
supposed incarnate evil, as at hearing of them being
offered as a sacrifice to the supreme good. As the
teaching of Jesus lost its power, and became more and
more polluted hy the cruel thoughts of savage and
bigoted men, the doctrine of the atonement gradually
changed its character. Men thought the Almighty to
he such a one as themselves, and being fierce and
unforgiving and revengeful, they projected their own
shadows on to the clouds which surrounded the Deity,
and then, like the shepherd who meets his own form
reflected and magnified on the mountain mist, they
recoiled before the image they themselves had made.
�On the Atonement.
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The loving Father who sent his son to rescue his
perishing children by sacrificing himself, fades away
from the hearts of the Christian world, and there
looms darkly in his place an awful form, the inexor
able judge who exacts a debt man is too poor to pay,
and who, in default of payment, casts the debtor into
a hopeless prison, hopeless unless another pays to the
uttermost farthing the fine demanded by the law. So,
in this strange transformation-scene God actually takes
the place of the devil, and the ransom once paid to
redeem men from Satan, becomes the ransom paid to
redeem men from God. It reminds one of the quarrels
over the text which bids us “ fear him who is able to
destroy both body and soul in hell,” when we remain
in doubt whom he is we are to fear, since half the Chris
tian commentators assure us that it refers to our Father
in heaven, while the other half asseverate that the
devil is the individual we are to dread. The seal was
set on the “redemption scheme” by Anselm in his
great work, “ Cur Deus Homo," and the doctrine which
had been slowly growing into the theology of Christen
dom was thenceforward stamped with the signet of the
church. Roman Catholics and Protestants, at the
time of the Reformation, alike believed in the vicarious
and substitutionary character of the atonement wrought
by Christ. There is no dispute between them on this
point. I prefer to allow the Christian divines to speak
for themselves as to the character of the atonement:
no one can accuse me of exaggerating their views if
their views are given in their own words. Luther
teaches that “ Christ did truly and effectually feel
for all mankind, the wrath of God, malediction and
death.” Flavet says that “to wrath, to the wrath of
an infinite God without mixture, to the very torments
of hell, was Christ delivered, and that by the hand of
his own father.” The Anglican homily preaches that
“ sin did pluck God out of heaven to make him feel the
horrors and pains of death,” and that man being a fire-
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On the Atonement.
"brand of hell and a bondsman of the devd, “ *vvas
ransomed by the death of his own only and well-beloved
son ; ” the “ heat of his wrath,” 11 his burning wrath”
could only be “ pacified ” by Jesus, “ so pleasant was
this sacrifice and oblation of his son’s death.” Edwards
"being logical, saw that there was a gross injustice
in sin being twice punished, and in the pains of hell,
the penalty of sin, being twice inflicted, first on Christ,
the substitute of mankind, and then on the lost, a
portion of mankind. So he, in common with most
Calvinists, finds himself compelled to restrict the atone
ment to the elect, and declared that Christ bore the
sins, not of the world, but of the chosen out of the
world; he suffers “ not for the world, but for them
whom Thou hast given me.”. But Edwards adheres
firmly to the belief in substitution, and rejects the
universal atonement for the very reason that “to
believe Christ died for all is the surest way of proving
that he died for none in the sense Christians
have hitherto believed.” He declares that “Christ
suffered the wrath of God for men’s sins : ” that “ God
imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the
pains of hell for ” sin. Owen regards Christ’s suffer
ings as “a full valuable compensation to the justice of
God for all the sins” of the elect, and says that he
underwent “ that same punishment which.......... they
themselves were bound to undergo.”
The doctrine of the Christian Church—in the widest
sense of that much fought-over term—was then as
follows, and I will state it in language which is
studiously moderate, as compared with the orthodox
teaching of the great Christian divines : if any one
doubts this assertion let him study their writings for
himself. I really dare not transfer some of their ex
pressions to my own pages. God the Father having
cursed .mankind and condemned them to eternal
damnation, because of Adam’s disobedience in eating
an apple—or some other fruit, for the species is only
�On the Atonement.
11
preserved by tradition, and is not definitely settled by
the inspired writings—and having further cursed each
man for his bwn individual transgressions, man lay
under the fierce wrath of God, unable to escape, and
unable to pacify it, for he could not even atone for his
own private sins, much less for his share of the guilt
incurred by his forefather in paradise. Man’s debt
was hopelessly large, and he had “ nothing to pay; ”
so all that remained to him was to suffer an eternity
of torture, which sad fate he had merited by the crime
of being born into an accursed world. The second
person of the Trinity, moved to pity by the helpless
and miserable state of mankind, interposed between
the first person of the Trinity and the wretched
sinners; he received into his own breast the fire
tipped arrows of divine wrath, and by suffering incon
ceivable tortures, equal in amount to an eternity of
the torments of hell, he wrung from God’s hands the
pardon of mankind, or of a portion thereof. God,
pacified by witnessing this awful agony of one who
had from all eternity been “ lying in his bosom ”
co-equal sharer of his Majesty and glory, and the
object of his tenderest love, relents from his fierce
wrath, and consents to accept the pain of Jesus as a
substitute for the pain of mankind. In plain terms,
then, God is represented as a Being so awfully cruel,
so implacably revengeful, that pain as pain, and death
as death, are what he demands as a propitiatory
sacrifice, and with nothing less than extremest agony
can his fierce claims on mankind be bought off. The
due weight of suffering he must have, but it is a matter
of indifference, whether it is undergone by Jesus or by
mankind. Did not the old Fathers do well in making
the awful ransom a matter between Jesus and the devil ?
When this point is pressed on Christians, and one
urges the dishonour done to God by painting him in
colours from which heart and soul recoil in shuddering
horror, by ascribing to him a revengefulness and
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On the Atonement.
pitiless cruelty in comparison with which the worst
efforts of human malignity appear but childish mis
chief, they are quick to retort that we are caricatur
ing Christian doctrine j they will allow, when over
whelmed with evidence, that “strong language” has
been used in past centuries, but will say that such
views are not now held, and that they do not ascribe
such harsh dealing to God the Father. Theists are
therefore compelled to prove each step of their
accusation, and to quote from Christian writers the
words which embody the views they assail. Were
I simply to state that Christians in these days ascribe
to Almighty God a fierce wrath against the whole
human race, that this wrath can only be soothed by
suffering and death, that he vents this wrath on an
innocent head, and that he is well pleased by the
sight of the agony of his beloved Son, a shout of
indignation would rise from a thousand lips, and I
should. be accused of exaggeration, of false witness,
of blasphemy. So once more I write down the
doctrine from Christian dictation, and, be it remem
bered, the sentences I quote are from published works,
and are therefore the outcome of serious deliberation ■
they are not overdrawn pictures taken from the fervid
eloquence of excited oratory, when the speaker may
perhaps be carried further than he would, in cold
blood, consent to.
Stroud makes Christ drink “ the cup of the wrath of
God.” Jenkyn says, “he suffered as one disowned
and reprobated and forsaken of God.”
Dwight
considers that he endured God’s “hatred and con
tempt.” Bishop Jeune tells us that “ after man had
done his worst, worse remained for Christ to bear.
He had fallen into his father’s hands.” Archbishop
Thomson preaches that “the clouds of God’s wrath
gathered thick over the whole human race : they
discharged themselves on Jesus only ; ” he “becomes a
curse for us, and a vessel of wrath.” Liddon echoes
�On the Atonement.
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the same sentiment : “ the apostles teach that mankind
are slaves, and that Christ on the Cross is paying their
ransom. Christ crucified is voluntarily devoted and
accursed
he even speaks of “the precise amount of
ignominy and pain needed for the redemption,” and
says that the “ divine victim ” paid more than was
absolutely necessary.
These quotations seem sufficient to prove that the
Christians of the present day are worthy followers
of the elder believers. The theologians first quoted
are indeed coarser in their expressions, and are less
afraid of speaking out exactly what they believe, but
there is no real difference of creed between the awful
doctrine of Flavel and the polished dogma of Canon
Liddon. The older and the modern Christians alike
believe in the bitter wrath of God against “ the whole
human race.” Both alike regard the atonement as so
much pain tendered by Jesus to the Almighty Father
in payment of a debt of pain owed to God by humanity.
They alike represent God as only to be pacified by the
sight of suffering. Man has insulted and injured God,
and God must be revenged by inflicting suffering on
the sinner in return. The “ hatred and contempt ”
God launched at Jesus were due to the fact that Jesus
was the sinner’s substitute, and are therefore the feel
ings which animate the divine heart towards the sinner
himself. God hates and despises the world. He
would have “ consumed it in a moment ” in the fire
of his burning wrath, had not Jesus, “his chosen,
stood before him in the gap to turn away his wrathful
indignation.”
Mow how far is all this consistent with justice ? Is
the wrath of God against humanity justified by
the circumstances of the case so that we may be
obliged to own that some sacrifice was due from sinful
man to his Creator, to propitiate a justly incensed and
holy God ? I trow not. On this first count, the
atonement is a fearful injustice. For God has allowed
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On the Atonement.
men to be brought into the world with sinful inclina
tions, and to be surrounded with many temptations
and much evil. He has made man imperfect, and the
child is born into the world with an imperfect nature. It
is radically unjust then that God should curse the work
of His hands for being what He made them, and con
demn them to endless misery for failing to do the
impossible. Allowing that Christians are right in
believing that Adam was sinless when he came from
his Maker’s hands, these remarks apply to every other
living soul since born into the world; the Genesis
myth will not extricate Christians from the difficulty.
Christians are quite right and are justified by facts
when they say that man is born into the world frail,
imperfect, prone to sin and error; but who, we ask
them, made men so ? Does not their own Bible tell
them that the “ potter hath power over the clay,” and,
further, that “ we are the clay and thou art the potter?”
To curse men for being men, i.e., imperfect moral
beings, is the height of cruelty and injustice ; to con
demn the morally weak to hell for sin, i.e., for failing
in moral strength, is about as fair as sentencing a sick
man to death because he cannot stand upright.
Christians try and avoid the force of this by saying
that men should rely on God’s grace to uphold them,
but they fail to see that this very want of reliance is part
of man’s natural weakness. The sick man might be
blamed for falling because he did not lean on a
stronger arm, but suppose he was too weak to grasp
it 1 Further, few Christians believe that it is possible
in practice, however possible in theory, to lead a
perfect life ; and as to “ offend in one point is to be
guilty of all,” one failure is sufficient to send the
generally righteous man to hell. Besides, they forget
that infants are included under the curse, although
necessarily incapable of grasping the idea either of sin
or of God; all babies born into the world and dying
before becoming capable of acting for themselves
�On the Atonement.
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would, we- are taught, have been inevitably consigned
to hell, had it not been for the atonement of Jesus.
Some Christians actually believe that unbaptized
babies are not admitted into heaven, and in a Roman
Catholic book descriptive of hell, a poor-little baby
writhes and screams in a red-hot oven.
This side of the atonement, this unjust demand on
men for a righteousness they could not render, neces
sitating a sacrifice to propitiate God for non-compliance
with his exaction, has had its due effect on men’s
minds, and has alienated their hearts from God. No
wonder that men turned away from a God who, like a
passionate but unskilful workman, dashes to pieces the
instrument he has made because it fails in its purpose,
and, instead of blaming his own want of skill, vents
his anger on the helpless thing that is only what he
made it. Most naturally, also, have men shrunk from
the God who “ avengeth and is furious ” to the tender,
pitiful, human Jesus, who loved sinners so deeply as to
choose to suffer for their sakes. They could owe no grati
tude to an Almighty Being who created them and cursed
them, and only consented to allow them to be happy
on condition that another paid for them the misery he
demanded as his due ; but what gratitude could be
enough for him who rescued them from the fearful
hands of the living God, at the cost of almost intoler
able suffering to himself? Let us remember that
Christ is said to suffer the very torments of hell, and
that his worst sufferings were when “ fallen into his
father’s hands,” out of which he has rescued us, and
then can we wonder that the crucified is adored with a
very ecstasy of gratitude ? Imagine what it is to be
saved from the hands of him who inflicted an agony
admitted to be unlimited, and who took advantage of
an infinite capacity in order to inflict an infinite pain.
It is well for the men before whose eyes this awful
spectre has flitted that the fair humanity of Jesus gives
them a refuge to fly to, else what but despair and
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On the Atonement.
madness could have been the doom of those who, with
out Jesus, would have seen enthroned above the wail
ing universe naught but an infinite cruelty and an
Almighty foe.
We see, then, that the necessity for an atonement
makes the Eternal Father both unjust in his demands
on men and cruel in his punishment of inevitable
failure; but there is another injustice which is of the
very essence of the atonement itself. This consists in
the vicarious character of the sacrifice: a new element
of injustice is introduced when we consider that the
person sacrificed is not even the guilty party. If a
man offends against law, justice requires that he should
be punished : the punishment becomes unjust if it is
excessive, as in the case we have been considering
above; but it is equally unjust to allow him to go free
without punishment. Christians are right in affirming
that moral government would be at an end were man
allowed to sin with impunity, and did an easy forgive
ness succeed to each offence. They appeal to our in
stinctive sense of justice to approve the sentiment that
punishment should follow sin: we acquiesce, and hope
that we have now reached a firm standing-ground from
which to proceed further in our investigation. But,
no; they promptly outrage that same sense of justice
which they have called as a witness on their side, by
asking us to believe that its ends are attained provided
that somebody or other is punished. When we reply
that this is not justice, we are promptly bidden not to be
presumptuous .and .argue from our human ideas of justice
as to the course that ought to be pursued by the absolute
justice of God. “Then'why appeal to it at all?” we
urge; “why talk of -justice in the matter if we are
totally unable to judge as to the rights and wrongs of
the case?” At -this point we are commonly over
whelmed with Paul’s notable argument—“Nay, but,
0 man, who art thou that repliest agaipst God ? ”
But if Christians value the simplicity and straight
�On the Atonement.
J7
forwardness of their own minds, they should not use
words which convey a certain accepted meaning in this
shuffling, double sense. When we speak of “justice,”
we speak of a certain well-understood quality, and we
do not speak of a mysterious divine attribute, which
has not only nothing in common with human justice,
but which is in direct opposition to that which we
understand by that name. Suppose a man condemned
to death for murder: the judge is about to sentence him,
when a bystander—as it chances, the judge’s own son
interposes: “My Lord, the prisoner is guilty and
deserves to be hanged; but if you will let him go, I
will die in his place.” The offer is accepted, the
prisoner is set free, the judge’s son is hanged in his .
stead. "What is all this ? Self-sacrifice (however mis
directed), love, enthusiasm—what you will; but cer
tainly not justice—nay, the grossest injustice, a second
murder, an ineffaceable stain on the ermine of the out
raged law. I imagine that, in this supposed case; no
Christian will.be found to assert that justice was done;
yet call the judge God, the prisoner mankind, the sub
stitute Jesus, and the trial scene is exactly reproduced.
Then, in the name of candour and common sense, why
call that just in God which we see would be so unjust
and immoral in man ? This vicarious nature of the
atonement also degrades the divine name, by making
him utterly careless in the matter of punishment:
all he is anxious for, according to this detestable
theory, is that he should strike a blow somewhere.
Like a child in a passion, he only feels the desire to
hurt somebody, and strikes out vaguely and at random.
There is no discrimination Used; the thunderbolt is
launched into a crowd; it falls on the head of the
sinless son,” and crushes the innocent, while the
sinner goes free. What matter? .It has fallen some
where, and the “ burning '■fire of his wrath” is cooled.
This is what men call the vindication of the justice of
the Moral Governor of the universe: this is “the act of
�On the Atonement.
God’s awful holiness,” which marks his hatred of sin,
and his immovable determination to punish it. But
when we reflect that this justice is consistent with
letting off the guilty and punishing an innocent per
son, we feel dread misgivings steal into our minds.
The justice of our Moral Governor has nothing in
common with our justice—indeed, it violates all our
notions of right and wrong. What if, as Mr Vance
Smith suggests, this strange justice be consistent also
with a double punishment of sin; and what if the
Moral Governor should bethink himself that, having
confused morality by an unjust—humanly speaking, of
course—punishment, it would be well to set things
straight again by punishing the guilty after all 1 We
can never dare to feel safe in the hands of this unjust
—humanly speaking—Moral Governor, or predicate
from our instinctive notions of right and wrong what
his requirements may be. One is lost in astonishment
that men should believe such things of God, and not
have manhood enough to rise up rebellious against
such injustice—should, instead, crouch at his feet, and
while trying to hide themselves from his wrath should
force their trembling lips to murmur some incoherent
acknowledgment of his mercy. Ah 1 they do not be
lieve it; they assert it in words, but, thank God, it
makes no impression on their hearts; and they would
die a thousand deaths rather than imitate, in their
dealings with their fellow-men, the fearful cruelty
which the Church has taught them to call the justice
of the Judge of all the earth.
The Atonement is not only doubly unjust, but it is
perfectly futile. We are told that Christ took away
the sin of the world ; we have a right to ask, “ how ? ”
So far as we can judge, we bear our sins in our own
bodies still, and the Atonement helps us not at all.
Has he borne the physical consequences of sin, such as
the loss of health caused by intemperance of all kinds ?
Not at all, this penalty remains, and, from the nature
�On the Atonement.
of things, cannot be transferred. Has he borne the
social consequences, shame, loss of credit, and so on. ?
They remain still to hinder us as we strive to rise after
our fall. Has he at least borne the pangs of remorse
for us, the stings of conscience 1 By no means; the
tears of sorrow are no less bitter, the prickings of
repentance no less keen. Perhaps he has struck at the
root of evil, and has put away sin itself out of a
redeemed world ? Alas ! the wailing that goes up to
heaven from a world oppressed with sin weeps out a
sorrowfully emphatic, “ no, this he has not done.”
What has he then borne for us ? Nothing, save the
phantom wrath of a phantom tyrant; all that is real
exists the same as before. We turn away, then, from
the offered Atonement with a feeling that would be
impatience at such trifling, were it not all too sorrow
ful, and leave the Christians to impose on their
imagined sacrifice, the imagined burden of the guilt of
an accursed race.
Further, the Atonement is, from the nature of things,
entirely impossible : we have seen how Christ fails to
hear our sins in any intelligible sense, but can he, in
any way, bear the “punishment” of sin ? The idea that
the punishment of sin can be transferred from one
person to another is radically false, and arises from
a wrong conception of - the punishment consequent on
sin, and from the ecclesiastical guilt, so to speak,
thought to be incurred thereby. ' The only true pun
ishment of sin is the injury caused hy it to our moral
nature: all the indirect punishments, we have seen,
Christ has not taken away, and the true punishment
can fall only on ourselves. For sin is nothing more
than the transgression of law. All law, when broken,
entails of necessity an appropriate penalty, and recoils,
as it were, on the transgressor. A natural law, when
broken, avenges itself by consequent suffering, and so
does a spiritual law : the injury wrought by the latter
is not less real, although less obvious. Physical sin
�20
On the Atonement.
brings physical suffering; spiritual, moral, mental sin
brings each its own appropriate punishment. “ Sin ”
has become such a cant term that we lose sight, in
using it, of its real simple meaning, a breaking of law.
Imagine any sane man coming and saying, “ My dear
friend, if you like to put your hand into the fire I will
bear the punishment of being burnt, and you shall not
suffer.” It is quite as absurd to imagine that if I sin
Jesus can bear my consequent suffering. If a man
lies habitually, for instance, he grows thoroughly
untrue : let him repent ever so vigorously, he must
bear the consequences of his past deeds, and fight his
way back slowly to truthfulness of word and thought:
no atonement, nothing in heaven or earth save his own
labour, will restore to him the forfeited jewel of in
stinctive candour. Thus the “ punishment ” of untruth
fulness is the loss of the power of being true, just as
the punishment of putting the hand into the fire is the
loss of the power of grasping. But in addition to this
simple and most just and natural “ retribution,” theolo
gians have invented certain arbitrary penalties as a
punishment of sin, the wrath of God and hell fire.
These imaginary penalties are discharged by an equally
imaginary atonement, the natural punishment remain
ing as before; so after all we only reject the two sets
of inventions which balance each other, and find our
selves just in the same position as they are, having
gained infinitely in simplicity and naturalness. The
punishment of sin is not an arbitrary penalty, but an
inevitable sequence : Jesus may bear, if his worshippers
will have it so, the theological fiction of the “ guilt of
sin,” an idea derived from the ceremonial uncleanness
of the Levitical law, but let him leave alone the
solemn realities connected with the sacred and immutable laws of God.
Doubly unjust, useless, and impossible, it might be
deemed a work of supererogation to argue yet further
against the Atonement; but its hold on men’s minds
�On the Atonement.
2I
is too firm to allow ns to lay down a single weapon
which can he turned against it. So, in addition to
these defects, I remark that, viewed as a propitiatory
sacrifice to Almighty God, it is thoroughly inadequate.
If God, being righteous, as we believe Him to be, re
garded man with anger because of man’s sinfulness,
what is obviously the required propitiation? Surely
the removal of the cause of anger, i.e., of sin itself, and
the seeking by man of righteousness. The old Hebrew
prophet saw this plainly, and his idea of atonement is
the true one: “ lolierewitli shall I come before the
Lord,” he is asked, with burnt-offerings or—choicer
still—parental anguish over a first-born’s corpse?
“ What doth the Lord require of thee,” is the reprov
ing answer, “but to do justly and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with thy God?” But what is the
propitiatory element in the Christian Atonement ? let
Canon Liddon answer : “ the ignominy and pain needed
for the redemption.” Ignominy, agony, blood, death,
these are what Christians offer up as an acceptable
sacrifice to the Spirit of Love. But what have all
these in common with the demands of the Eternal
Righteousness, and how can pain atone for sin ? they
have no relation to each other; there is no appropriate
ness in the offered exchange. These terrible offerings
are in keeping with the barbarous ideas of uncivilized
nations, and we understand the feelings which prompt
the savage to immolate tortured victims on the altars
of his gloomy gods; they are appropriate sacrifices to
the foes of mankind, who are to be bought off from
injuring us by our offering them an equivalent pain to
that they desire to inflict, but they are offensive when
given to Him who is the Friend and Lover of Hu
manity. An Atonement which offers suffering as a
propitiation can have nothing in common with God’s
will for man, and must be utterly beside the mark,
perfectly inadequate. If we must have Atonement, let
it at least consist of something which will suit the
�22
On the Atonement.
Righteousness and Love of God, and be in keeping
with his perfection; let it not borrow the language of
ancient savagery, and breathe of blood and dying
victims, and tortured human frames, racked with pain.
Lastly, I impeach the Atonement as injurious in
several ways to human morality. It has been extolled
as “ meeting the needs of the awakened sinner ” by
soothing his fears of punishment with the gift of a
substitute who has already suffered his sentence for
him; but nothing can be more pernicious than to con
sole a sinner with the promise that he shall escape the
punishment he has justly deserved. The atonement
may meet the first superficial feelings of a man startled
into the consciousness of his sinfulness, it may soothe
the first vague fears and act as an opiate to the
awakened conscience ; but it does not fulfil the cravings
of a heart deeply yearning after righteousness ; it offers
a legal justification to a soul which is longing for
purity, it offers freedom from punishment to a soul
longing for freedom from sin. The true penitent does
not seek to be shielded from the consequences of his
past errors: he accepts them meekly, bravely, humbly,
learning through pain the lesson of future purity. An
atonement which steps in between us and this fatherly
discipline ordained by God, would be a curse and not
a blessing; it would rob us of our education and
deprive us • of a priceless instruction. The force of
temptation is fearfully added to by the idea that
repentance lays the righteous penalty of transgression
on another head ; this doctrine gives a direct encourage
ment to sin, as even Paul perceived when he said,
“ shall we continue in sin that grace may abound 1 ”
Some one has remarked, I think, that though Paul
ejaculates, “ God forbid,” his fears were well founded
and have been widely realised. To the atonement we
owe the morbid sentiment which believes in the holy
death of a ruffianly murderer, because, goaded by
ungovernable terror, he has snatched at the offered
�On the Atonement.
23
safety and been “ washed in the blood of the lamb.”
To it we owe the unwholesome glorying in the pious
sentiments of such an one, who ought to go out of this
life sadly and silently, without a sickening parade of
feelings of love towards the God whose laws, as long
as he could, he has broken and despised. But the Chris
tian teachers will extol the “ saving grace ” which has
made the felon die with words of joyful assurance,
meet only for the lips of one who crowns a saintly life
with a peaceful death. The atonement has weakened
that stern condemnation of sin which is the safe-guard
of purity ; it has softened down moral differences and
placed the penitent above the saint; it has dulled the
feeling of responsibility in the soul; it has taken
away the help, such as it is, of fear of punishment for
sin; it has confused man’s sense of justice, outraged
his feeling of right, blunted his conscience, and mis
directed his repentance. It has chilled his love to
God by representing the universal father as a cruel
tyrant and a remorseless and unjust judge. It lias
been the fruitful parent of all asceticism, for, since God
was pacified by suffering once, he would of course be
pleased with suffering at all times, and so men have
logically ruined their bodies to save their souls, and
crushed their feelings and lacerated their hearts to
propitiate the awful form frowning behind the cross of
Christ. To the atonement we owe it that God is
served by fear instead of by love, that monasticism
holds its head above the sweet sanctities of love and
home, that religion is crowned with thorns and not
with roses, that the miserere and not the gloria is the
strain from earth to heaven. The atonement teaches
men to crouch at the feet of God, instead of raising
loving joyful faces to meet his radiant smile ; it shuts
out his sunshine from us and veils us in the night of
an impenetrable dread. What is the sentiment with
which Canon Liddon closes a sermon on the death of
Christ; I quote it to show the slavish feeling
�24
On the Atonement.
engendered by this doctrine in a very noble human
soul : “ In ourselves, indeed, there is nothing that
should stay his (God’s) arm or invite his mercy. But
may he have respect to the acts and the sufferings of
his sinless son ? Only while contemplating the
inestimable merits of the Redeemer can we dare to
hope that our heavenly Father will overlook the count
less provocations which he receives at the hands of the
redeemed.” Is this a wholesome sentiment either as
regards our feelings towards God or our efforts towards
holiness? Is it well to look to the purity of another as
a makeweight for our personal shortcomings ? All
these injuries to morality done by the atonement are
completed by the crowning one, that it offers to the
sinner a veil of “ imputed righteousness.” Not only
does it take from him his saving punishment, but it
nullifies his strivings after holiness by offering him a
righteousness which is not his own. It introduces into
the solemn region of duty to God the legal fiction of a
gift of holiness, which is imputed, not won. We are
taught to believe that we can blind the eyes of God
and satisfy him with a pretended purity. But that
very one whose purity we seek to claim as ours, that
fair blossom of humanity, Jesus of Nazareth, whose
mission we so misconstrue, launched his anathema
at whited sepulchres, pure without and foul within.
What would he have said of the whitewash of
“imputed righteousness?” Stern and sharp would
have been his rebuke, methinks, to a device so untrue,
and well-deserved would have been his thundered
“ woe ” on a hypocrisy that would fain deceive God as
well as man.
These considerations have carried so great a wreight
with the most enlightened and progressive minds
among Christians themselves, that there has grown up
a party in the Church, whose repudiation of an atone
ment of agony and death is as complete as even we
could wish. They denounce with the utmost fervour
�On the Atonement.
25
the. hideous notion of a “bloody sacrifice,” and are
urgent in their representations of the dishonour done
to God by ascribing to him “ pleasure in the death of
him that dieth,” or satisfaction in the sight of pain.
They point out that there is no virtue in blood to
wash away sin, not even “ in the blood of a God.”
Maurice eloquently pleads against the idea that the
suffering of the “well-beloved Son” was in itself an
acceptable sacrifice to the Almighty Father, and he
sees the atoning element in the “holiness and gracious
ness of the Son.” Writers of this school perceive that
a moral and not a physical sacrifice can be the only
acceptable offering to the Father of spirits, but the
great objection lies against their theory also, that the
atonement is still vicarious. Christ still suffers for
man, in order to make men acceptable to God. It is
perhaps scarcely fair to say this of the school as a
whole, since the opinions of Broad Church divines
differ widely from each other, ranging from the
orthodox to the Socinian standing-point. Yet, roughly
speaking, we may say that while they have given up
the error of thinking that the death of Christ reconciles
God to us, they yet believe that his death, in some
mysterious manner, reconciles us to God. It is a
matter of deep thankfulness that they give up the
old cruel idea of propitiating God, and so prepare the
way for a higher creed. Their more humane teaching
reaches hearts which are as yet sealed against us, and
they are the John Baptist of the Theistic Christ. We
must still urge on them that an atonement at all is
superfluous, that all the parade of reconciliation by
means of a mediator is perfectly unnecessary as
between God and his child, man ; that the notion put
forward that Christ realised the ideal of humanity and
propitiated God by showing what a man could be, is
objectionable in that it represents God as needing to
be taught what were the capacities of his creatures,
and is further untrue, because the powers of God in
�26
On the Atonement.
man are not really the equivalent of the capabilities of
a simple man. Broad Churchmen are still hampered
by the difficulties surrounding a divine Christ, and are
puzzled to find for him a place in their theology which
is at once suitable to his dignity, and consistent with
a reasonable belief. They feel obliged to acknowledge
that some unusual benefit to the race must result from
the incarnation and death of a God, and are swayed
alternately by their reason, which places the cruci
fixion of Jesus in the roll of martyrs’ deaths, and by
their prejudices, which assign to it a position unique
and unrivalled in the history of the race. There are,
however, many signs that the deity of Jesus is, as an
article of faith, tottering from its pedestal in the
Broad Church school. The hold on it by such men as
the Rev. J. S. Brooke is very slight, and his inter
pretation of the incarnation is regarded by orthodox
divines with unmingled horror. Their moral atone
ment, in turn, is as the dawn before the sunrise, and
we may hope that it will soon develop into the real
truth : namely, that the dealings of Jesus with the
Father were a purely private matter between his own
soul and God, and that his value to mankind consists
in his being one of the teachers of the race, one “with
a genius for religion,” one of the schoolmasters
appointed to lead humanity to God.
The theory of M‘Leod Campbell stands alone,
and is highly interesting and ingenious—it is the
more valuable and hopeful as coming from Scotland,
the home of the dreariest belief as to the relations
existing between man and God. He rejects the penal
character of the atonement, and makes it consist, so to
speak, in leading God and man to understand one
another. He considers that Christ witnessed to men
on behalf of God, and vindicated the father’s heart by
showing what he could be to the son who trusted in
him. He witnessed to God on behalf of men—and
this is the weakest point in the book, verging, as it
�On the Atonement.
does, on substitution—showing in humanity a perfect
sympathy with God’s feelings towards sin, and offering
to God for man a perfect repentance for human trans
gression. I purposely say “ verging,” because Camp
bell does not intend substitution; he represents this
sorrow of Jesus as what he must inevitably feel at see
ing his brother-men unconscious of their sin and
danger, so no fiction is supposed as between God and
Christ. But he considers that God, having seen the
perfection of repentance in Jesus, accepts the repen
tance of man, imperfect as it is, because it is in kind
the same as that of Jesus, and is the germ of that feel
ing of which his is the perfect flow’er; in this sense,
and only in this sense, is the repentance of man
accepted “for Christ’s sake.” He considers that men
must share in the mind of Christ as towards God and
towards sin in order to be benefited by the work of
Christ, and that each man must thus actually take part
in the work of atonement. The sufferings of Jesus he
regards as necessary in order to test the reality of the
life of sonship towards God, and brotherhood towards
men, which he came to earth to exemplify. I trust I
have done no injustice in this short summary to a very
able and thoughtful book, which presents, perhaps, the
only view of the atonement compatible with the love
and the justice of God, and this only, of course, if the
idea of any atonement can fairly be said to be consis
tent with justice. The merits of this view are practi
cally that this work of Jesus is not an “ atonement ” in
the theological sense at all. The defects of Campbell’s
book are inseparable from his creed, as he argues from
a belief in the deity of Jesus, from an unconscious
limitation of God’s knowledge (as though God did not
understand man till he was revealed to him by Jesus)
and from a wrong conception of the punishment due
to sin.
I said, at starting, that the atonement was the raison
d'etre of Christianity, and, in conclusion, I would
�On the Atonement.
challenge all thoughtful men and women to say
whether good cause has or has not been shown for
rejecting this pillar “ of the faith.” The atonement
has but to be studied in order to be rejected. The
difficulty is to persuade people to think about their
creed. Yet the question of this doctrine must be
faced and answered. “ I have too much faith in the
common sense and justice of Englishmen when once
awakened to face any question fairly, to doubt what
that answer will be.”
Annie Besant.
TURNBULL AND SPEAKS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH
�
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On the atonement
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Besant, Annie Wood
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 28 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Date of publication from British Library catalogue.
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[1874]
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Atonement
Conway Tracts
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
ATONEMENT.
BY 0. BRADLAUGH.
“Quel est done ce Dieu qui fait mourir Dieu pour apaiser Dieu?’
J
The chief feature of the Christian Religion is that Jesus, A;
the Son of God, sacrificed himself, or was sacrificed by God
the father, to atone for Adam’s transgression against the
divine command. It is declared in the New Testament, in A
clear and emphatic language, that in consequence of the one I
man, Adam’s sin, death entered into the world, and judg- '
ment and condemnation came upon all men. It is also
declared that a Christ died for the ungodly
“ that he died
for our sins,” and “ was delivered for our offences.” On
the one hand it is urged that Adam, the sole source of the
human family, offended Deity, and that the consequence of
this offence was the condemnation to death, after a life of
sorrow, of the entire race of mankind. On the other side of
the picture is pourtrayed the love of God, who sent his only
beloved son to die, and by his death, procuring for all
eternal life, to save the remnant of humanity from the
further vengeance of their all-merciful heavenly father. The
religion of Christ finds its source in the yet undiscovered
garden watered by a four-armed river.
Adam’s sin is the corner-stone of Christianity ; the key< I j
stone'd? the arch. Without the fall there is no redeemer, / I
for there isjio fallen one to be redeemed. It is then to the ’ [
fiistory of Adam that the examinant of the Atonement
theory should first direct his attention. To try the
doctrine of the Atonement by the aid of science would
be fatal to religion. As for the one man Adam, 6,000 years
�9
THI ATOKEiaWT.
ago the first of the human race, his existence is not
only unvouched for by science, but is actually ques
tioned by the timid, and challenged by the bolder expo
nents of modem ethnology. The human race is traced back
far beyond the period fixed for Adam’s sin. Egypt and
India speak for humanity busy with wars, cities, and
monuments, prior to the date given for the garden scene in.
Eden.
The fall of Adam could not have brought sin upon man
kind, and death by sin, if hosts of men and women had lived
and died ages before the words “thou shalt surely die,” were
spoken by God to man.
Nor could alL men inherit Adam’s misfortune, if it be true
that it is not to one, but to many centres of origin that we
ought to trace back the various races of mankind.
The theologian who finds no evidence of death at all
prior to the offence shared by Adam and Eve, is laughed to
scorn by the geologist who points to the innumerable
petrifactions on the earth’s bosom, which with a million
tongues declare more potently than loudest speech, that
organic life in myriads of myriads was destroyed incalculable
ages before man’s era on our world.
Science, however, has so little to offer in support of any
religious doctrine, and so much to advance against all purely
theologic tenets, that we turn to a point giving the Christian
greater vantage ground ; and accepting for the moment his
premises, we deny that he can maintain the possibility of
Adam’s sin, and yet consistently affirm the existence of an
All-wise, All-powerful, and All-good God. Did Adam sin?
We will take the Christians’ Bible in our hands to answer
the question, first defining the word sin. What is sin ?
Samuel-TayLor Coleridge^says, “ A sin is an evil which has
its ground or origin in the agent and not in the compulsion
of circumstances. Circumstances are compulsory from the
absence of a power to resist or control them, and if this
absence be likewise the effect of circumstances (that is, if
it have been neither directly nor indirectly caused by the
agent himself) the evil derived from the circumstance, and
therefore such evil is not sin, and the person who suffers it,
�THE ATONEMENT.
3
or is the compelled actor, or instrument of its infliction on
others, may feel regret but not remorse. Let us generalise
the word circumstance so as to understand by it all and
everything not connected with the will. . . . Even
though it were the warm blood circulating in the chambers
of the heart, or man’s own inmost sensations, we regard
them as circumstantial, extrinsic, or from without. . . .
9 An act to be sin must be original, and a state or act that has
not its origin in the will, may be calamity, deformity, or dis
ease, but sin it cannot be. It is not enough that the act
.1 aPPeara s0 voluntary, or that it has the most hateful passions, 5
or debasing appetite for its proximate cause and accompani
ment. All these may be found in a madhouse, where
neither law nor~humanity permit us to condemn the actor of I
Bin. The reason of law declared the maniac not a free
agent, and the verdict follows of course, not guilty.” Did 1
Adam sin?
The Bible story is that a Deity created one man and on©
woman ; that he placed them in a garden wherein he had
also placed a tree, which was good for food, pleasant to the
eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. That
although he had expressly given the fruit of every tree
bearing seed for food, he, nevertheless, commanded them not
to eat of the fruit of this attractive tree under penalty of
death. Supposing Adam to have at once disobeyed this in
junction, would it have been sin? The fact that God had
made the tree good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree
to be desired to make one wise, would have surely been
sufficient circumstance of justification on the God-created
(inducement to partake of its fruit. The inhibition lost its. a
f value as against the enticement. If the All-wise had in- 1
i Tendedthe tree to be avoided, would he have made its allure- /
. ments so overpowering to the senses? But the case does not I
rest here. In addition to aJ I the attractions of the tree, and I
as though there were not enough, there is a subtle serpent
gifted with suasive speech, who either wiser or more truthifiil than the All-perfect Deity, says that although God has
threatened immediate death as the consequence of dis- '
obedience to his command, yet they“shall not die ; for God
�TSE ATONEMENT.
doth know that in the .day ye eat thereof, your eyes shall
be opened, and ye shall be as gods knowing good and
evil.” The tempter is stronger than the tempted, the
witchery of the serpent is too great for ihe spell-bound
woman, the decoy tree is too potent in its temptations ;
overpersuaded herself by the honey-tongued voice of the
seducer, she plucks the fruit and gives to her husband
also. And for tbis^their offspring are to suffer ! The /
>
unbonrScbildren^ are. to be the victims of GocTs
j i vengeance ontheir parents’ weakness—though he had Hi
I made them weak. Though indeed he had created the If J
tempter sufficiently strong to practise upon this weakness,
and had arranged the causes, predisposing man and woman
to commit the offence—if indeed it be an offence to pluck
the fruit of a tree which gives knowledge to the eater. It
ss for this fall that Jesus is to atone. He is sacrificed to
redeem the world’s inhabitants from the penalties for a weak
ness (for sin it was not) they had no share in. It was not sin ;
for the man was influenced by circumstances pre-arranged
by Deity, and which man was powerless to resist or control.
But if the man was so influenced by such circumstances, '
then it was God who influenced the man—God who punished
the human race for an action to the commission of which he
impelled their progenitor.
Adam did not sim He ate of the fruit of a tree which
God had made good to be eaten. He was induced to this
through the indirect persuasion of a serpent God had
made for the very purpose to persuade him. But even if
4 Adam did sin, and even if he and Eve, his wife, were the
(first parents of the whole human family, what have we^to do
withjtheir sin ? We unborn when the act was committed,
and without choice as to coming into the world. Does
Jesus atone for Adam’s sin? Adam suffered for his own
offence ; he, according to the curse, was to eat in sorrow of
the fruit of the earth all his life as punishment for his
offence. Atonement, after punishment, is surely a super
fluity. Did the sacrifice of Jesus serve as atonement for
the whole world, and, if yes, for all sin, or for Adam’s sin
only ? If the atonement is for the whole world, does ii
�THE ATONEMENT.
0
extend to unbelievers as well as to believers in the efficacy ?
. If it only includes believers, then what has become of those 1
1 generations who, according to the Bible, for 4,000 years I
succeeded each other in the world without faith in Christ J
j because without knowledge of his mission? Should not Jesus have come 4000 years earlier, or, at least, should he
’ not have come when the Ark on Ararat served as monu’ ment of God’s merciless vengeance, which had made the
whole earth a battle field, whereon the omnipotent had
crushed the feeble, and had marked his prowess by the in- 1
numerable myriads of decaying dead? If it be declared
that, though the atonement by Jesus only applies to be
lievers in his mission so far as regards human beings born
since his coming, yet that it is wider in its retrospective
effect; then the answer is that it is unfair to be born after
Jesus to make faith the condition precedent to the saving
efficacy of atonement, especially if belief be required from
all mankind posterior to the Christian era, whether they have
heard of Jesus or not. Japanese, Chinese, savage Indians,
Kaffirs, and others have surely a right to complain of this
atonement scheme, which ensures them eternal damnation
by making it requisite to believe in a Gospel of which they
have no knowledge. If it be contended that belief shall \
only be required from those to whom the Gospel of Jesus \
has been preached, and who have had afforded to them the
opportunity of its acceptance, then how great a cause of
complaint against Christian Missionaries have those peoples
who, without such missions, might have escaped damnation
for unbelief. The gates of hell are opened to them by the I
/ earnest propagandist, who professes to show the road to ;
heaven.
’
But does this atonement serve only to redeem the human
family from the curse inflicted by Deity in Eden’s garden
for Adam’s sin, or does it operate as satisfaction for all sin ?
If the salvation is from the punishment for Adam’s sin
alone, and if belief and baptism are, as Jesus himself affirms,
to be the sole conditions precedent to any saving efficacy in
the much-lauded atonement by the sin of God, then what
becomes of a child that only lives a few hours, is never bap-
�e
1
I
•
1
|;
THE ATONEMENT.
tised, and never having any mind, consequently never has
any belief ? Or what becomes of one idiot born who, through
out his dreary life, never has mental capacity for the accept
ance or examination of, or credence in any religious dogmas
whatever? Is the idiot saved who cannot believe? Is the
infant saved ThaFcailnot believe? I, with some mental
faculties tolerably developed, cannot believe. Must I be
damned ? If so, fortunate short-lived babe 1 lucky idiot 1
That the atonement should not be effective until the person
to be saved has been baptised, is at least worthy of com
ment ; that the sprinkling a few drops of water should [Z
quench the flames of hell, is a remarkable feature in the $■
Christian’s creed.
“ One can’t but think it somewhat droll
Pump-water thus should cleanse a soul.”
K
How many fierce quarrels have raged on the formula of
baptism amongst those loving brothers in Christ who believe
he died for them I How strange an idea that, though G-od j I
I has been crucified to redeem mankind, it yet needs the font 11
■ of water to wash away the lingering stain of Adam’s crime. 1I
One minister of the Church of England, occupying the
presidential chair of a well-known training college for
Church clergymen in the North of England, seriously de
clared, in the presence of a large auditory and of several
church dignitaries, that the sin of Adam was so potent in
its effect, that if a man had never been born, he would yet
have been damned for sin. That is, he declared that man
existed before birth, and that he committed sin before he
was born ; and if never born, would notwithstanding deserve
to suffer eternal torment for that sin.
It is almost impossible to discuss seriously a doctrine so
monstrously absurd, and yet it is not one whit more ridi
culous than the ordinary orthodox and terrible doctrine, 1
that God the undying, in his infinite love, killed himself i r
under the form of his son to appease the cruel vengeance'J
ofjfiod, the just and merciful, who, without this, would
have been ever vengeful, unjust, and merciless.
I
The atonement theory, as presented to us by th*
Bible, is in effect as follows ;—God creates man surrounded
I
�the atonement.
7
by euch circumstance as the divine mind chose, in the selec
tion of which man had no voice, and the effects of which
on man were all forek nown and predestmed"hy "Deity,
’ldie result is’"man’s fall on the_very first temptation,
so frail the nature with which he was endowed, or so
powerful 'the temptation to which he was subjected.
For this fall not only does the All-merciful punish Adam,
but also his posterity; and this punishing went on for
many centuries, until God, the immutable, changed his pur
pose of continual condemnation of men for sins they had no
share in, and was wearied with his long series of unjust
judgments on those whom he created, in order that he
might judge them. That, then, God sent his son, who was
himaelf and was also his own father, and who was immortal,
to die upon the cross, and, by this sacrifice, to atone for the
sin which God himself had caused Adam to commit, and
thus to appease the merciless vengeance of the All-merciful,
which would otherwise have~been continued against men
yet unborn for an offence they could not have been con
cerned in or accessory to. Whether those who had died
before Christ’s coming are redeemed, the Bible does not
clearly tell us. Those born after are redeemed only on
condition of their faith in the efficacy of the sacrifice
offered, and in the truth of the history of Jesus’s life. The
doctrine of salvation by sacrifice of human life is the doe^
trihe~oFa barbarous and superstitious age; the outgrowth
of a brutal and depraved era. TheGod who accepts thj£
bloody offering of an innocent victim in lieu of punishing
tifF^fiilty culprit, shows no mercy in sparing the offender:
fie has already satiated his lust for vengeance on the first
object presented to him.
Yet sacrifice is an early and prominent, and with slight
exception an abiding feature in the Hebrew Record— sacri
fice of life finds appreciative acceptance from the Jewish
Deity. Cain’s offering of fruits is ineffective, but Abel’s
altar bearing the firstlings of his flock, and the fat thereof,
finds respect in the sight of the Lord. While the face of
the earth was disfigured by the rotting dead after God in.
his infinite mercy had deluged the world, then it was that
�8
THE ATONEMENT.
. the ascending smoke from Noah’s burnt sacrifice of bird
and beast produced pleasure in heaven, and God himself
smelled a sweet savour from the roasted meatsT^fo reach
atonement for the past by sacrifice is worse than folly—it
is crime. The past can never be recalled, and the only re
ference to it should be that, by marking its events we may
avoid its evil deeds and improve upon its good ones. For
Jesus himself—can man believe in him ? In his Listory.
contained in anonymous pamphEEs”uncorroborated by con
temporary testimony ? This history, in which, in order to
fulfil a prophecy which does not relate to him, his descent
from David is demonstrated by tracing through two self
contradictory genealogies the descent of Joseph who was
j^ot his father. This history, in which the infinite God
grows from babyhood and his cradle through childhood to
manhood, as though he were not God at all. This history
full of absurd wonders, devils, magicians, and eviFspirits,
rather fit for an Arabian Night’s legend, than the word
Qi God to his people. This history, with its miraculous
raisings of the dead to life, disbelieved and contradicted by
the people amongst whom they are alleged to have been
performed; but, nevertheless, to be accepted by us to-day
with all humility?'' This history of the Man-God subject to
human passions and infirmities, who comes to die, and who
prays to his heavenly father—that is, to himself, thathe
will spare him the bitter cup of death. Who is betrayed,
having himself, ere he laid the foundations of the world,
predestined Judas to betray him, and who dies being God
immortal crying with his almost dying breath—“ My God !
my God! why hast thou forsaken me ?”
Printed and Published by Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant,
at 28, Stonecutter Street, London, E.C.
�
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The atonement
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Bradlaugh, Charles [1833-1891]
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THE COLLAPSE OF THE FAITH:
OB,
THE DEITY OF CHRIST AS NOW TAUGHT
BY THE ORTHODOX.
EDITED BY
REV. W. G. CARROL, A.M.,
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, RAMSGATE,
AND
R. D. WEBB & SON, DUBLIN.
Price Sixpence.
�“Et ex Evangelistis solus Joannes appellai eum aperte'
Deum............ Jam si Petrus initio promiscua multitudini
prsedicavit Jesum absque mentione divina; naturae ; si Paulus
similiter apud Athenienses nihil aliud quam Virum appellai ;
si p^iusquam leguntur Apostoli apud populum verba facientes
expressisse divinam in Christo naturam.............. quid ego
pecco si idem admoneo ?”—Erasmus, Apoi. Ad. Mon. Hisk.
“ The assertion of Christ’s ignorance is utterly at variance
with any pretension honestly to believe in His Divinity.”
Liddon, B/ampton Lectures, 1866, p. 683.
“ What was once rejected as a heresy has since crept in
among us and beenail bnt recognised as a dogma.”—Plumptrer
Boyle Lectures, 1866, p. 87.
“ The Scriptures are not to be considered true because it
would be dangerous to reject them. Let everything be
sacrificed to truth.”—Moorhouse, Hulsean Lectures, 1865 ,
p. 3.
�PREFACE.
------ +-----PRINT these extracts as a supplement to the ser
mons which I lately published concerning some
*
modern interpretations of our Lord’s Deity. I cannot
doubt that these phases of Christian thought now
■struggling for existence will startle many, as they, or
■some of them, have for some years been startling
myself; for the simplest understanding will readily
and intuitively perceive that the aspects here presented
of Christ’s divine nature, certainly do not coincide
with our current belief in that mystery, and moreover
that they are wholly irreconcilable with the positive
dogmatic statements of our articles and creeds.
Looking at the widely distant centres of protestant
life whence these writings are gathered, and comparing
their one-minded virtual surrender of Christ’s equal
Godhood; it is not too much to say that they indicate
a giving way along the whole line of the evangelical
ranks, and that they send up from all the signal posts
of thought and intelligence in Europe, one common
wail of despair and distress.
If any of the Theophanies here presented be true—
if Christ’s Godhood were either suspended, or depo
tentiated, or reserved, or conditioned, or postponed—
it is simply childish to maintain that He was equal
to God the Father. And if none of these Theophanies
be true, then what becomes of the Scriptures, and of
the honest and learned searchings of Scriptures on
which they rest ?
I
* Sermons in St. Bride’s Church, Dublin, 1871. Webb &
■Son, Abbey Street, Dublin.
�V
*
Preface.
In sad and solemn truth, this dilemma seems to say
that either our Formularies or the New Testament
must be wrong; and indeed that most remarkable
Examination of Canon Liddon’s Bampton Lectures has
*
made it well-nigh proven that the doctrine of an
“irreducible duality” (p. ) assuredly rests on some
basis other than that of Jesus and His apostles.
The same sort of remark applies to the two extracts
in the Appendix on the Atonement—if they be just,
what are we to say about our prayer book, and the
substitution which in effect it teaches ?
Our Irish Church Synod which sat so long this
year and troubled itself about so many things, seemed
to care for neither of these two essential verities;
but it is vain for them to think that they can hush
up the matter by a conspiracy of silence, for there
is abroad among us a calm and earnest questioning
which must be answered, and at our door there is one
knocking, who will knock on until it be opened unto
him.
I desire to guard myself against being understood
to mean or to insinuate that any of the writers I have
quoted designs to write against the Deity of Christ;
I intend nothing of the sort. If the writers had any
such design, that would have prevented my quoting
them—I select them because they are prominent and
earnest in the other direction, and because, however
they may differ from each other on other points of
doctrine, on this one they are “Wahabees of the
Wahabees. ”
W.G.C.
St. Bride’s, Dublin,
August, 1871.
* Triibner & Co., London, 1871.
�CONTENTS.
PREFACE, BY THE EDITOR, ......
Hi
BISHOP O‘BRIEN, (OF OSSORY,)—CHARGE 1864, .
.
9
PROFESSOR PLUMPTRE—BOYLE LECTURES, 1866, .
.
24
REV. MR. MOORHOUSE—HULSEAN LECTURES, 1865,
.
26
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE—ECCE HOMO,
.
27
.
REV. STOPFORD BROOKE, LONDON, CHAPLAIN TO THE
QUEEN,—SERMONS,.......................................................................29
DORNER, PROFESSOR, THEOLOGY, GOTTINGEN—“ PERSON
OF CHRIST,”.................................................................................. 31
E. DR. PRESSENSE, “JESUS CHRIST ”—ANSWER TO DORNER,
31
F. GODET, PROFESSOR THEOL., BALE—EVANG. DE. S. LUC,
35
APPENDIX.
•ON THE ATONEMENT.
REV.
DR.
JELLETT,
FELLOW
TRINITY
COLLEGE
DUBLIN,—UNIVERSITY SERMONS, 1864,
.
40
REV. STOPPFORD BROOKE, LONDON, CHAPLAIN TO
THE QUEEN,
......
41
��THE COLLAPSE OF THE FAITH.
RIGHT REV. DR. O'BRIEN,•
LORD BISHOP OP OSSORY, PERNS, AND LOUCHLIN, IRELAND.
P. 38-42.—He (Bishop <Colenso) asks, when did He
(Jesus) obtain this larger measure of knowledge ? ‘at
what period, then, of His life upon earth, is it to be
supposed that He had granted to Him, supernatural!/;/,
full and accurate information on these points, so that
He should be expected to speak about the Pentateuch
in other terms than any other devout Jew of that day
would have employed ? Why should it be thought
that He would speak with certain Divine, knowledge
on this matter more than upon other matters of
ordinary science and history 1 ’
In answer to this question, I have no difficulty in
acknowledging, that I cannot pretend to fix accurately
the time of the Lord’s life at which He acquired such
information as would enable Him to speak with fuller
and more perfect knowledge upon all the subjects
on which He taught, than any of His countrymen
however pious or learned; and with a perfect freedom
from the errors into which all other Jews might have
fallen, had they spoken of them. But though I
cannot fix the point at which He became possessed of
this knowledge, I can with great confidence fix the
point beyond which He could not have been without
it. Whenever and however He obtained it, I can be
* Charge 1863-64.
�IO
The Collapse of the Faith.
very sure that when He entered upon the office of a .
teacher, He actually possessed it. To suppose that
He entered upon His office as a teacher sent from God,
deficient in any knowledge which was necessary to
secure Him from error upon any of the subjects upon
which He was to teach, would he opposed to all that
Scripture sets forth with respect to His absolute
authority as a Divine Teacher, and irreconcilable
with the assumption of absolute and independent
authority as a teacher, which was the characteristic
of His public teaching from the first, and which we
are told attracted the special attention of His country
men, and filled them with wonder, as altogether
different from the manner of teaching to which they
had been accustomed in the public teachers of their
nation.
And this applies also to all that is urged, in
addition, in another part of the (Colenso’s) work,
concerning the limits of His knowledge, with a view
to confirm or defend the positions which I haye been
examining. This consists chiefly, of the remarks of
ancient and modern commentators upon Mark xiii. 32.
(See note A at the end). The text is a very remark
able and a very important one, and I hope that I
have no disposition to detract from its full force. It
contains a very explicit statement made by the Blessed
Lord concerning Himself, of its natural and proper
meaning there can be no doubt. And I should feel,
that there was just as much presumption and presump
tion of the same kind too, in doing violence to the
Lord’s words for the purpose of softening or narrowing
their proper meaning, as if the violence were com
mitted for the purpose of extending it. I therefore
say without doubt or hesitation—what I certainly
should not venture to say or think, if I did not find
it in Holy Scripture—that there was one thing of
which, in the full maturity of His powers, and the full
exercise of them, as a Divine Teacher, the Blessed
�The Collapse of the Faith.
II
Lord in the flesh was ignorant. ... I am sure that
what He says is true. And while it makes it certain
that there was one thing which He did not know, it
makes it possible that there were other things also
which He did not know. But it gives no direct
warrant to assert that this was actually the case; and
without such a warrant I will not venture to assert
that it was. I feel that it is a case—if there be
any—which calls for the modest resolution of the
wise and good Bishop Ridley with reference to
another great mystery—not to dare, to speak further,
yea, almost none other, than the text itself doth as it were
lead us by the hand—This is my decision as regards
myself. But there are many to whom this may seem
unreasonable timidity.”
P. 103.—Note A. page 41—on Mark xiii. 32.—
**From an early period great reluctance has been
shown to receive the obvious and natural sense of the
Blessed Lord’s words; and various devices have been
resorted to from time to time to soften it or to explain
it away. But however natural this timidity is, I
cannot think it justifiable. What it would be unpar
donable presumption to assert upon any lower author
ity, it seems to be no less presumptuous to shrink from
asserting, when it comes to us upon. Divine authority.
And the fact that the Blessed Lord, in the flesh knew
got the day and hour in which He is to come to judge
the world, seems to come to us as clearly upon His
own authority, as anything else that we believe
because He has declared it. It cannot be doubted
not only that this is the plain meaning of His words,
but that it is very hard to draw any other meaning
from them.
“■ The interpretation which has obtained most favour
among those who are unwilling to receive the decla
ration in this sense is, that while the day and the
hour of the coming of the Son of Man were, of course,
known to Him in His Divine nature, they were
�12
The Collapse of the Faith.
unknown to Him in His human nature. This does
not mean, that though He knew this as He knew all
things when He was in the form of God, He was
ignorant of it when He came in the likeness of man.
This is the very sense which it is intended to get rid of.
What is meant, is, that when He was in the likeness
of man—at the very moment that He 'was speaking—
He knew the time in question in His divine nature,
hut was ignorant of it in His human nature. But
this seems to be open to insurmountable objections.
Were we at liberty to suppose that there were two
Persons—a Divine and a Human Person—united in
the Lord, it would be easy to conceive—or indeed
rather, one could not but hold—that they differed
infinitely in knowledge—that while the latter was
ignorant of many things, the former knew all things.
No one, however, ventures to solve the difficulty in
this way, at least in words, because every one knows
that the unity of person in the Lord is as much an
article of faith as the duality of natures. But when
it is said that at one and the same time, He knew the
day of judgment as the Word, but was ignorant of it
as Man; or that while He knew it, as regarded His
Divine Nature, He was ignorant of it, as regarded
His Human Nature; or that His Divine Nature knew
it, but His Human Nature was ignorant; we are in
reality though not in words, supposing Him to be
made up of two Persons.”
N.B.—The Bishop here accuses the prevalent orthodox
interpretation of the heresy of Nestorianism—just as we
shall presently see Professor Plumptre and Mr. Moorhouse
accuse the same orthodox interpretation of the heresy of
Apollinarianism. There seems to be a confusion in the
Bishop's mind as to Natures and Persons 2 for surely two
Natures do not require two Persons. His Lordship may
have been misled by the pleadings and finding in the
Colenso trial 2
“ But some think that, whatever the objection may
�The Collapse of the Faith,
• 13
be against, these interpretations, it cannot be so insur
mountable as that to which the more natural inter
pretation is exposed—that we cannot adopt any
interpretation of the Lord’s words which would
represent Him as having undergone anything beyond
an outward or relative change in taking our nature.
From the impossibility of conceiving any change in
the Infinite, they seem to have inferred, if they did
not confound the two things, that any such change is
impossible. But however safely we may hold that it
is impossible that any such change can take place
through any other agency, it would seem very rash
and presumptuous to deny the possibility of its being
effected by the will of the Infinite Being Himself. I
should say this, supposing that we had no way of ar
riving at any conclusion on the question by the high
priori road. But we have a much safer though
humbler way. To believers in Revelation the Incar
nation of the Second Person of the Trinity, or rather
the history of His life in the flesh, furnishes ample
means of coming to a certain conclusion upon this
point—a conclusion that is not affected by the uncer
tainties which confessedly attach to all our reasonings
when Infinity is an element in the subject-matter of
them. In this wonderful history we are allowed to
see the infinite and the finite, the divine and the
human, in personal union in ‘the man Christ Jesus.’
To our apprehensions this union would appear abso
lutely impossible, if the infinite remained unchanged.
But, as I have already said, when the infinite is
concerned, we can rely but little upon any collection
of our own reason unless it be confirmed by revela
tion. Here, however, there is no want of such con
firmation, nor can we, I think, read the Holy Scrip
tures fairly without finding it.
“ The Divine Word seems to be clearly exhibited
to us there, as greatly changed in His union with
frail humanity. Not only was all His heavenly glory
�laid by when He tabernacled in the flesh, but all
His infinite attributes and powers seem, for the same
time, to have been in abeyance, so to apeak. And
by this, something, more is meant than that the
manifestation and exercise of them were suspendedThat is undoubtedly true, but it seems to fall far
short of the whole truth. It appears that there was
not merely a voluntary suspension of the exercise of
them, but a voluntary renunciation of the capacity of
exercising them, for the time. This involves no
change of His essence or nature ; and no destruction
of His Divine powers, as if they had ceased to exist,
or loss of them, so that they could not be resumed.
Finite beings often undergo such a suspension in
voluntarily, without its leading to any such conse
quences. (Here the Bishop gives in a note a quota
tion from Butler’s Analogy, part i. chap, i., about the
suspension of ‘ our living powers.’) And it can make
no difference in this respect, that in the Infinite
Being it is undergone by an act of His own will.
Nor are the wonderful works which were then
wrought by Him at all at variance with this view of
the state of the Incarnate Word. Infinitely as they
transcended the natural powers of man, they did not
go beyond the powers which may be supernaturally
bestowed upon man. For He Himself declares that
the apostles should not only do such works as He
had done, but greater works. There is nothing, there
fore, in their nature or their degree, to determine
whether they were wrought by the proper power of
the Divine Word, or by power bestowed upon the
Incarnate Word. But we are not without ample
means of deciding this question.
“ It is not surprising that it should be generally
¿bought that the miraculous power which was dis
played by the Redeemer was possessed and exercised
by Him as an essential property of the Divine ele
ment in His constitution. This, indeed, would be
�^The Collapse of the Faith,
15
the conclusion to which probably every one would
come who ventured to speculate on this great mystery
apart from Scripture. But Scripture gives a very
different view of the nature and effects of the Incar
nation. It seems distinctly to teach us that when the
Everlasting Son condescended to take our nature
upon Him, He came, not outwardly only, but in
truth, into a new relation to the Father, in which He
was really His Messenger and His Servant—dependent
upon the Father for everything, and deriving from
Him directly everything that He needed for His
work. All this indeed seems to be most distinctly
declared by Himself. He says, ‘ The Son can do
nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father
do,’ (John v. 19). And again, ‘I can of mine own
self do nothing/ (Ibid. 30). Again, ‘ My doctrine is
not mine but His that sent me/ (vii. 16). Again,
‘ He that sent me is true ; and I speak to the world
those things which I have heard of Him, (viii. 26).
‘ When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall
ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of My
self ; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these
things,’ (lb. 28.) And again, ‘The words that I
speak unto you I speak not of Myself, but the Father
that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works,” (xiv. 10);
‘And the Word which ye hear is not Mine, but the
Father’s which sent Me,’ (lb. 24).
“ These texts must be familiar to every reader of
the Bible, though their true meaning seems to be
very strange to many. But they are very plain and
very express, and they entirely agree together. They
testify directly to the fact that the state of the Son
in the flesh was one of absolute and entire depend
ence upon the Father, both for Divine knowledge
and Divine power. And upon this fact, they are so
full and so express, that it is unnecessary to look for
any other evidence of it of the same kind. But I
am tempted to add one or two striking passages
C
�‘16
The Collapse of the Faith.
which seem to bear the same testimony, less directly
indeed, but not less impressively or less conclusively.
Nothing, for example, can bespeak more absolute
authority over death and the grave than His call to
the dead Lazarus to arise : “ He cried,” we are told,
11 with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth,”—(John xi.
23). And the confidence of absolute authority in
which the command is uttered is most fully justified
by the promptitude with which it is obeyed ; “ and
he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot
with grave clothes; and his face was bound about with
a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him and let
him.go.”—II). 44.
Neither in the tone nor in the substance of His
command to the dead, is there any reference dis
coverable to any power but His own.
There is no cure performed by Him, nor indeed
any miracle of any other kind recorded of Him in
His whole history, which wears less the appearance
of being wrought by derived or dependent power.
And yet there is something which goes before, that
seems to suggest irresistibly that the power exercised
by Him on this memorable occasion was bestowed
upon Him by the Father, in answer to prayer offered
at the time. For just before He called to Lazarus,
we read, “ and Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said,
Father, I thank thee that Thou hast heard me. And
I knew that Thou hearest me always : but because of
the people which stand by I said it, that they may
' believe that Thou hast sent me.”—Tb. 41-42.
No one ever doubts, I suppose, that this thanks
giving to the Father for having heard Him, has
reference to a prayer offered to the Father and
accepted by Him. The prayer was offered in silence,
and the intimation that it was heard was silently
given, (Compare Presensé p. .) But I should
think that there is no more doubt that both really
' took place than there is when both were audible, and
�The Collapse of the Faith.
17
we are actually told the words in which they were
expressed, as in the next chapter, where, at' the end
<of the mental conflict, which we are allowed to see,
we read His prayer and the answer to it; Father,
glorify Thy name. Then came there a voice from
heaven, saying, I both have glorified it and will
glorify it again.” And though a prayer were really
■secretly offered and answered at the grave of Lazarus,
it seems hardly possible to doubt that it had refer
ence to the wonderful work which He was about to
perform; and that it was in fact a prayer for power
to preform it, and that it was in the power bestowed
in answer to His prayer that this great miracle was
wrought. The whole story supplies abundant matter
for reflection, but I cannot dwell upon it further
here.’
I must'however give one more passage which I
think discloses to us at least as much as any that
have gone before of the extent of the change which
the Blessed Lord had undergone, when He was in
the likeness of sinful flesh. When St Feter rashly
attempts to deliver Him by force from the hands of
His enemies, He rebukes him and tells him that if He
desired to be delivered, He had no need of human
aid. ‘ Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My
* Every one is likely to be reminded here of the remark
able passage in the life of Elijah, which is related in the
1st Book of Kings xvii. 1. ‘ And Elijah the Tishbite who
was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, as the Lord
God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be
dew nor rain these years but according to my word. ’ There
is so little here to suggest any dependence of this act of the
prophet upon prayer, that most readers I should suppose are
surprised when they find the miraculous visitation upon the
land of Israel which followed, referred to by St James as an
example of the power of the effectual fervent, prayer of a
righteous man. ‘ Elias was a man subject to like passions .as
we are, and he prayed that it might not rain ; and it rained
not upon the earth by the space of three years, and six
months,’ James v, 17,”
�18
The Collapse of the Faith.
Father, and He shall presently give me more than
twelve legions of angels.” This passage suggests a
great deal which is eminently interesting, but with
which we are not immediately concerned. But it
has also a most important bearing on the point which
we are at present upon. We know that by Him
were all things created; that all worlds, visible and
invisible, and all the forms of existence material and
immaterial, by which they are inhabited, were made
by Him ; that when He was in the form of God all
angels worshipped Him ; and that in the presence of
His glory the Seraphim veiled their faces while they
adored Him. And when we see Him in the hands
of men, mocked and reviled, buffeted and scourged
and spit upon, we see a marvellous manifestation
indeed of His great humility. But we feel, all the
while, that all this was done only because it was His
good pleasure, for the accomplishment of His work, to
submit Himself to shame and to pain; and that, at
any moment that He pleased, it would come to an
end. And so it was. The text that I have just
quoted proves that so it was; but it at the same
time seems to disclose to us more of the depth to
which He had humbled Himself than any extremity
of indignity and suffering to which He was subjected
could reveal. Because it shows that, if He would be
delivered from this pain and shame by the angels
whom He had created, He was to procure their aid,
not by commanding them to come to His deliverance,
but by praying to His heavenly Father to send them
to set Him free. The object would be effected with
certainty. But the mode in which it was to be
effected discloses, to my mind more strikingly than
any other passage in Scripture, the great and wonder
ful change which for the time had taken place in His
relation to the unseen world.
All these passages bear witness, directly and
indirectly, to the reality and depth of the humilia-
�The Collapse of the Faith.
i9
tiott of the Blessed Lord when actually in the fonn
of man. But there is another, (Phil, ii. 6, 7), which
.¡seems to unveil to us what was done in the unseen
world to prepare Him for the state to which He
•was about to descend. In it He seems to be shown
t© us when in the form of God, divesting Himself
of all that was incompatible with the state of
humiliation to which He was about to descend,
not holding tenaciously the equality with God which
He enjoyed, but letting it go, and Emptying Himself.
It is the results of this wonderful process which
the text that I have been reviewing present to us.
And wonderful as the process is, and not forgetting
even the intense energy of the expression sauro?
¿xsvaffi, do not the results accord with it ? Do not
the passages to which I have before referred exhibit
Him as actually emptied—emptied of His Divine
glory, of His Divine power, and of His Divine
omniscience, and receiving back from His heavenly
Father what he had laid down, in sueh measure
as was needful for His work while it was going
on—only doing what Ire was commanded and enabled
to do, and only teaching what He was taught and
commanded to teach. And when it came to an end,
when He had finished the work which had been
given Him to do, and His humiliation was over,
He could pray to the Father, “ And now, 0 Father,
glorify Thou Me with Thine own Self, with the
glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”
And His prayer was answered. All power He Him
self declares, was given to Him in heaven and in earth.
The Apostle testifies that God hath highly exalted
Him and given Him a name which is above every name;
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven and things in earth, and things under
the earth; and that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
[Query.—Is there not a very monotheistic look
�The Collapse of the- Faith.
in the closing words of this text, Christ is Lard
The Father is God.]
11 Some say that they can in some measure under
stand and believe every part of the preparatory
process referred to, except that in which the Lord’s
omniscience is concerned; but that that, is so essential,
to His nature, that they cannot conceive or admit
that it could have been laid aside, even, temporarily.
I must myself, on the contrary, confess that though
I believe every part of the process that. I find in
the Bible, I do not, properly speaking, understand any
part of it. I am disposed, however, to believe that if
the whole were perfectly understood by us, we should
see that there is just the same difficulty in every
part of the change which the Lord is represented as
having undergone—neither more nor less in any one
than in any other.
“ But however that may be, it is to me not a.
question of reason.but of fact; and of the actual facts
of the case the true and only evidence is to be found
in God’s word. One who looks at the subject in this
way, and who examines the Holy Scriptures as the
only source of His knowledge upon it, ready to
believe all that he finds there, will not, I think, be
startled by the statement in St Mark, wonderful as
it is—if he comes to it after having read and con
sidered the passages which we have been reviewing ;
at least I am sure that he will not be startled by it,
as he would be if he came upon that text without
such preparation.
“ I do not mean that what we learn from these
passages, concerning the state of the Incarnate Word
and His relation to the Father, would warrant us in
inferring that He was actually ignorant of anything
knowable. But when they teach us that all His
superhuman knowledge was supplied by the Father,
we are led to look upon that as possible which,
without such information, we should regard as im-
�.Follapse of the Faith.
2
possible. All things that the omniscient Father
knows—that is, all things—doubtless were known to
the Son when he. was in the form of God. But it
appears that when He became man and dwelt among
us, of this infinite knowledge He only possessed as
much as was imparted to Him. And this being the
case we must see that if anything which could not be
known naturally was not made known to Him by
the Father, it would not be known by Him. Though
We see this however, we have no right, as I said,
to conclude that there really was anything unknown
to Him, because we have right to conclude that
there is any knowledge which the Father would
withhold from Him. And accordingly, even when
we see it elsewhere declared expressly and emphati
cally by Him concerning the time of the coming of the
Son of Man, 1 of that day and hour knoweth no man,
no not the angels in heaven, but my Father only,
“ we do not regard the well-beloved Son as intended
to be included, when angels and men are said to be
ignorant of that time; or excluded, when it is
declared that it is known to the Father only. It
is not until He Himself declares expressly, as we
learn from St Mark that He did, that this is so ; that
is, it is not until we learn that He Himself said, ‘ of
that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the
angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the
Father,’ that we believe that He too was ignorant
of the time when He is to come again to judge the
world.
“ The declaration is so plain and express, that
even if it stood alone, I do not think it would be
reasonable to entertain any doubt about its real
meaning. But I can hardly think such a doubt
possible, when the natural interpretation of the text
is sustained by the concurrent testimony of such a
number and such a variety of texts as we have been
looking at. And when once we are satisfied that
�22
The Collapse of the Faith,
the Lord has really declared this fact concerning
Himself, we seem to be no more warranted in dis
believing or doubting it, than we should be in
disbelieving or doubting anything else that we are
sure He has said.”
OBSERVATIONS.
1. When the Bishop says, that there “ can be no
doubt ” about the meaning of certain passages, what
does he intend towards Athenasius, Bull, Waterland,
Elliott and all the orthodox, who differ from him
in these passages ?
2. When he says that the “Scriptures are the
only source of knowledge” on this dogma, what
place does he assign to his own articles and creeds ?
3. What conceivable right has he to say that
the capacity for Divine Attributes was “incompatible
with the state of humiliation ?”
4. When he “ cannot fix the time ” at which Jesus
attained this knowledge, such as it was, does not
this plainly imply the man acquiring the supplies of
Godhead, whereas we are taught, that it was “ the
word that became flesh ” and took our nature ?
5. One would be curious to know in what the
Bishop considers our Lord’s personality to have
consisted.
6. When Divinity lecturer in Trinity College,
the Bishop published two sermons in connection
with Mr Irving, and in the appendix, p. 73, he says,
“ Mr Irving holds himself to be very grievously
caluminated when charged with socinianism; and if
the charge were meant to imply that he holds
socinian views, &c. &c., no doubt he would be
greatly misrepresented; but if, by the charge, were
meant that like them he stumbles, &c. &c., it
is undoubtedly well grounded,”—no doubt the Bishop
would “ hold himself to be grievously caluminated,”
if the same charge were brought against him, but
�The Collapse of the Faith.
23
surely it would be as “ well grounded ” as it was in
the case of Irving. The Bishop seems (for the passage
is not as distinct as his Lordship’s later compositions
are), at the time when these two sermons were
published, (1833,) to have held the view concerning
our Lord’s two natures and two kinds of knowledge
which he now calls Nestorianism; he says, (page 70,)
that in the Temptation Christ’s “ zeal and love,
acted in combination with this limitation of views
which belonged to the Lord’s human nature, and
not with that fulness of knowledge of Divine Counsels
which belonged to His Divine nature,”—(what mean
ing would there be in this antithesis, if Jesus did
not then possess the “ Divine Nature and the fulness of
knowledge of Divine Counsels which belonged %o it?)
7. Spinoza defines “Attribute” to be “what we
apprehend as constituting the essence ” of anything
—therefore to say, e.g., that an Infinite being is
without infinite attributes, is to speak of a thing’s
being without its own essence, or in other words it is
speaking in a way that has no meaning. Waterland
devotes one of his greatest sermons (vol. 2. sermon
vii. p. 141), to prove Christ’s Deity from his attri
butes, viz., eternity, immutability, omniscience, and
omnipotence.
N.JB.—Bishop O’Brien denies to our Lord all
divine attributes; does he mean to include the denial of
eternity ?
8. Waterland takes most of the texts selected by
Bishop O’Brien, and strives to defend them from
the Arian interpretation adopted by the Bishop,
and he also (p. 163) explains the passage of St
Mark in the way the Bishop calls the heresy of
Nestorianism.
9. Bishop Bull, (works vi. 351), terms the inter
pretation of Phil. ii. 6. adopted by the Bishop,
Socinian, and that ££ Socinistas frustra omnino, aleogue
in causes suce ruinam hunc locum Apostoli appelasse.”
�24
The Collapse of the Faith.
10. Can any conceivable ingenuity, in any honest
way, reconcile this “ Depotentiation ” (or) “ xsvu<r/$”
teaching of Bishop. O’Brien, with the 1st Article,
{Three Persons of one power substance and eternity), or
with the so-called' Athanasian creed {equal to the
Father as touching His Godhead) ?
REV. E, H. PLUMPTRE,
Professor of Divinity, King’s College, London.
CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OP BRISTOL.
P. 87—“What was once rejected as a heresy has
since crept in among us and been all but recognised
as a dogma. We think of the Divine eternal word
as simply tenanting a human body; or if of human
“reasonable soul,” then of that as possessing .all
Divine attributes, conscious from the very first of that
mysterious union, possessing and manifesting from
the very first all treasures of wisdom and knowledge
We are slow to apprehend the truth that that soul
passed in its growth of intellect and feeling through the
same stages as. our own; that knowledge came to it
as it comes to us, through sacred books or human
teaching or the influences of surrounding circum
stances—widening more and more with advancing
years—led on in the fulness of time into all truth by
the Spirit which was given to him, ‘not with measure,’
and ‘ abode upon him.” . . . Assuming the energy
in Him of all Divine attributes we pass over the con
flict'of human emotions, without which there could
be no experience, no discipline, no temptation,
no sympathy. We cannot bring ourselves, in spite
of the plainest statements of the Gospel record, to
think of him as gaining knowledge of any kipd from
those around him, (Mark ix. 21); wondering with
the surprise of those whose hopes are bitterly
* Boyle Lectures, I860,
�The
¡lapse of the Faith.
i5
disappointed (Mark vi. 6.); looking into the future
with a partial insight as knowing not the day or hour
of the full completion of his work (Mark xiii. 32) ;
praying, ‘ if it be possible, &c. &c.’
And yet the whole beauty' and significance of his
life as sinless, perfect, archetypal, melts away, in
proportion as we substitute this- the error of
Apollinarius for the Church’s faith.
Instead of a true son of man perfected by suffering,
(Heb. ii. 10.) passing i.e. through experience, to his
full maturity, learning by that suffering the full
meaning of obedience—we fashion for ourselves the
thought of a simulated Humanity, a childhood
almighty and all knowing, with the appearance but
not the reality of growth in power and wisdom. ’
P. 89—“ It may seem to some that these thoughts
lead us on to a mere humantarianism, and destroy
the truth of the Incarnation on its Divine side more
fatally even than the conception of which I have
spoken destroys the reality of the human. ... In
that word ‘ emptied Himself,’ we may find what at
least serves to interpret with the language and the
facts of the gospel history. . . That form of God,
*
that glory of the Father can be conceived of only as
the possession, energy, activity, of the Divine
attributes. To empty Himself ‘ of these was to sub
mit to the conditions not of an infinite but a finite
life ; to become ‘ lower than the angels,’ even as the
sons of men are lower that He might rise through
successive stages to a height far above all princi
palities and powers, to the name which is above-,
every name, the glory which He had with the Father
before the world was.’—Such at least is the teaching
N.B.—When Mr Plumptre quotes Bishop Ellicott and
Waterland on Philip, ii. 6. it is right to remark that they
Tolerate only the other interpretation of ‘ ‘ thought it not
robbery,”-—they both are against Mr Plumptre’s idea, that
Christ was ‘ emptied of His divine attribute. ’
�i6
The Collapse of the Faith.
of the epistle to the Hebrews. The eternal Son
learnt obedience. . Because He has been tempted He
is able to sympathise. We trust in the Incarnate Son
more than in the Divine omniscience as an attribute,
because the Incarnation has made us surer than we
could have been without it, that 1 He knows and
pities our infirmities.’
MOORHOUSE.
P. 56.— “Apollinaris (a man equally distinguished
for wisdom and piety, devoted to the church, and a
personal friend of Athanasius), in his zeal against the
Arians, and his desire to give distinctness and com
prehensibility to the orthodox faith, was led to assert
that the Eternal Word at His incarnation took nothing
but the flesh of humanity—its body and animal soul
—while His Divine Nature supplied the place of a
rational spirit. . . . . Bodily weakness, indeed, was
left and bodily suffering, but every one of our Lord’s
spiritual and intellectual acts was attributed not to
His human spirit, (for human spirit He had none,)
but directly to the Immanent Deity.” . . . And is
it useless to call attention to this mistake of a good
man, when so many are shrinking back from the
thought of our Saviour’s real limitation in knowledge,
and His real growth in wisdom, because they find it
difficult to entertain these thoughts by the side of
His omniscience?
P. 60.— “We must believe in our Lord’s real
humanity, that as concerning the flesh He came of the
tribe of Judah, for if the omniscience and omnipotence
of His Divine Nature exclude the ignorance and
weakness of His human nature, then this latter was
never really limited, was never a reality at all, but
only, as the Docete held, a mere shadow or apparition;
then too the Scriptural representations of His growth
* Hulsean Lectures, 1865.
�The Collapse of the Faith.
27
in wisdom, and of His being made perfect through
suffering are merely delusive suggestions, fraudulently
invented to bring the Redeemer nearer to our heart,
and to persuade us, contrary to the fact, that we have
an High Priest who can be really touched with the
feeling of our infirmities.”
GLADSTONE’S “ECCE HOMO.”
P. 51.—“It is enough for us to perceive that
the communication of our Lord’s life, discourses,
and actions to believers, by means of the four
Gospels, was so arranged in the order of God’s
providence, that they should be first supplied with
biographies of Him which have for their staple, His
miracles and His ethical teaching, while the mere
doctrinal and abstract portion of His instructions was
a later addition to the patrimony of the Christian
Church. So far as it goes, such a fact may serve to
raise presumptions in favour of the author of “ Ecce
Homo,” inasmuch as he is principally charged with
this, that he has not put into his foreground the full
splendour and majesty of the Redeemer about whom
he writes. If this be true of him, it is true also thus
far of the Gospels.”
P. 58.—“ Those portions of the narrative in the
Synoptical Gospels which principally bear upon the
Divinity of our Lord, refer to matter which formed,
it will be found, no part of His public ministry.”
P. 62.—“ If we pass on from the great events of
our Lord’s personal history, to His teachings as
recorded in His discourses and sayings by the Synop
tic writers, we shall find that they too are remark
able for the general absence of direct reference to
His Divinity, and indeed to the dignity of his person
altogether.”
P. 63.—“He asserted His title to be heard, but
He asserted nothing more”—“In a word, for the
�28
The Collapse of the Faith.
time, He Himself, as apart from His sayings, is no
where.”
P. 66.—“This (Luke iv. 18-21.) is a clear and
undeniable claim to be a teacher sent from God, and
of certain strongly marked moral results, &c., &c.
Yet here we find not alone that He keeps silence on
the subject of His Deity, but that even for His claim
to Divine sanction and inspiration He appeals to
results.”
P. 86, 87.—“During the brief course of His own
ministry, our Saviour gave a commission to His twelve
apostles and likewise one to His seventy' disciples.
Each went forth with a separate set of full and clear
instructions. ... In conformity with what we have
already seen, both are silent in respect to the Person
of our Lord.”
P. 103.—It appears then on the whole as respects
the person of our Lord, that its ordinary exhibition
to ordinary hearers and spectators was that of a
man engaged in the best and holiest, and tenderest
ministries; . . . Claiming a paramount authority
for what He said and did; but beyond /this, asserting
respecting Himself nothing and leaving Himself to be
judged by the character of His words and deeds'.”
P. 112.-—“But if He did not despise the Virgin’s
womb, if He lay in the cradle a wailing or a'feeble
infant, if He exhausted the years of childhood and of
youth in submission to His Mother and to Joseph, if
all that time He grew in wisdom as well as in stature,
and was even travelling the long stages of the road' to
a perfection by us inconceivable; if even when the
burden of His great ministry was upon Him, He has
Himself told us, that as His divine power was placed
in abeyance, so likewise a bound was mysteriously set
upon His knowledge—what follows from this? That
there was accession to His mind and soul from time
to time of what had not been there before : and that
He was content to hold in measure and to hold
�The Collapse of the Faith.
29
/as a thing received, what, but for His humiliation in
the flesh, was His without limit and His as springing
from within.”
REV. S. A. BROOKE,
*
HON. CHAPLAIN TO THE QUEEN.
P. 32-4, “It was then a man who spoke these
words (on the Cross) ? but we are told that He was
also Divine, that the Word is incarnate in Jesus.
This is the doctrine of the Church of England, and I
have often stated my belief in it. But the question
at present is, how far, at the time these words were
spoken, had the Divine nature become at one with
the human nature of Christ. I would suggest that if
God had in all His fulness, at this time, united Him
self to Christ, so that the Divine and human natures
"were entirely blended then into one human-divine
Person, Christ could neither have suffered nor
struggled with evil, nor died, and the whole story
becomes fictitious; and it is in avoiding this dreadful
conclusion which seems to rob us of all comfort, that
men have been driven into believing in Christ as
being nothing more than a sinless man. I suggest
another view—I can conceive that though His union
with God was from the moment of His birth poten
tially His, as the whole growth of the oak is in the
acorn, yet that the communication of the Divine
Word to the Man Christ Jesus was a gradual com' munication, that it went on step by step with the
'gradual perfecting of His humanity, that, for example,
in the temptation in the wilderness the human1 will
of Christ met all the temptations to sin which could
be offered to Him on the side of the spirit of the
world, struggled with them in a real struggle, and
* Sermon on the Voysey judgment.
�20
The Collapse of the Faith.
conquered them, and that then His human nature,
having made itself so far forth victorious and perfect,
received such a communication of the Divine nature
as raised Him above all possibility from that time of
being tempted by the evil spirit of the world.............
This (next) crisis came in the garden of Gethsemane.
According to the view suggested, He would conquer
that temptation with the weapons of humanity, not
of divinity, and when that was over, then His human
nature having made another step towards its perfec
tion, would be adequate to receive a farther com
munication of the Divine Word, which would raise
Him beyond the power of ever being tempted by any
spiritual evil—the spiritual union between God and
man ever, as I have said, potentially His, would have
now reached, through a growth unbroken by any
reception of evil, its perfect development. . . . The
view we suggest would allow us to say—and the
history tends to confirm it—that Christ was not at
this time a partaker of the absolute attributes of God.
He was not omniscient, omnipotent, unlimited by
time or space, or impassible—with regard to know
ledge, to suffering, to the desires of the body, He
would then be as we are, except so far as absolutely
holy humanity modifies these things. According
then, to this idea, we need not be troubled with the
thought that theology imposes on us a fiction in ask
ing us to believe in the reality of the sufferings upon
the Cross. They were borne by a man, but by a man
who was, through the spiritual union of His human
nature with the spiritual nature of the Divine Word,
essential and perfect humanity, a man and yet the
Man.”
�The Collapse &f the Faith.
31
*
DÖRNER
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GOTTINGEN.
Division 2, vol. 3, p. -249-50. “In relation also tothe earthly God-manhood of Christ, as we have ob
served, not merely is the principle that He must have
undergone a true growth universally recognised ; but
theologians also are pretty generally agreed in the
opinion, that if the unity of the Divine-huihan life
during the period of Christ’s earthly existence is to be
maintained, the Ksy&xng must be much more com
pletely carried out............ We have no alternative
but to assume, that in some way or other the Logos
limited Himself for His being and activity in this
Mm, so dong as the same was still undergoing growth.
. . , .' Important differences, however, are still ob
servable here. The one maintain that this limitation
of the Logos in Jesus is to be conceived as a rooted
self-depotentiation in love, as consisting in a reduction
of His Being to the point of adequacy to the embry
onic life of a child of man, &c. . . . On the only other
possible view we can merely speak of a limitation of
the self-communication of the Logos to humanity, not
of a lessening or reduction of the Logos Himself.”
E. DE PRESSENSE, Parish
P. 254.—“ According to John’s prologue, the un
created light of the Word emitted some rays in the
night of a world separated from God—‘The light
shineth in darkness.’ But when the issue is to
redeem the world and save it, and to raise man up to
God, then ‘the Word becomes flesh;’ an expression
* “ Doctrine of the Person of Christ.”—(Clark's Edinburgh
Edition.')
f Jesus, Christ, son temps, sa vie, son seuvre.
�22
The Collapse of the Faith.
which does not mean merely that He clothed Himself
with a human body, but that He became really man,
and subjected Himself to all the conditions of our
existence. Jesus Christ is not at all the Son of God
hidden in the son of man and retaining in a latent
condition all the attributes of Divinity ; that would
require an irreducible duality which would destroy
the Unity of His Person, and remove it from the
normal conditions of a human life; His obedience
would become a mockery, and His example would be
inapplicable to our race. No, when the "Word be
came flesh, He annihilated Himself—He stripped
Himself of His glory—‘ being rich He became poor ’
—He became as one of us, sin excepted, in order
to encounter the moral conflict, with all the perils
arising out of His being free. We have a Son of
God voluntarily lowered, and that very lowering is
the beginning as well as the condition of His Sacri
fice. He retained of Deity that which constitutes in
some sort its moral essence; He is not the less man
because the man only fulfils Himself in God. If we
wish to avoid falling into a Docetism which would
make Christ a phantom and the Gospel an illusion,
we must acknowledge this lowering of the Word in the
full sense of its meaning and with all its mysterious
ness—all the more, because it has been too much lost
sight of by the Church theology of the fourth century.
Up to that time, even whilst the Formula was halting
and unsettled, the belief in a Christ who was very
man never failed; they never fell back on a dogma
of the two natures, and they continued steadfast in
the Apostles’ beliefs, which were too vital and too
deep to be lost in these metaphysial subtleties.—
Homo factus est, says Irenaeus, ut nos assuefaceret fieri
det. Accordingly, Christ is not that outlandish
Messiah who, as God, possessed omniscience and
and omnipotence, at the same time when, as man,
His knowledge and powers were limited. We be-
�The Collapse of the Faith
33
lieve in a Christ who became really like ourselves,
who was subjected to the conditions of progress and
gradual life-development, and who was obedient even
unto the death on the cross. On no other terms
shall we have a living and human Gospel, and prevent
its being, like a Byzantine painting, stiff and motionless
in a gilded frame, with all its individuality of ex
pression merged in a hue of conventionalism.”
Having noticed (p. 262) “ the inextricable contra
diction” of the two genealogies, he says, p. 314, &c.,
of The Temptation, “If impeccability be demanded
for Christ, then He is removed from the real condi
tions of earthly life; His humanity is only an
illusion, a thin veil, behind which appears His
impassible Divinity. Being no longer like us, He
no longer belongs to us.
A nondescript meta
physical phantasmagoria replaces the thrilling drama
of a moral struggle. We must no longer speak of
temptation, nor of the trial of Him who was the sub
ject of it. Let us fetch Christ down from that chilly
empyræum of Theology where He is nothing but a
dogma, and let us say with Irenæus, / Erat homo
certans pro patribus.’ .... It is as Messiah that He
is tempted ; and it is as concerning the miraculous
power which He possessed, or at least, which He is
invested with by God from day to day.”
The Infallibility
of Jesus.
P. 352 (see extract from page 254.)—“ According
to our idea of the Incarnation and the voluntary
self-lowering implied in it, we do not at all claim
omniscience for Jesus. He made Himself subject to
the law of development, and consequently He could
not have possessed spiritual omniscience all at once.
He attained it by degrees. But whilst we admit His
improvement and advance, we must be'on our guard
�34
The Collapse of the Faith.
against/ confounding His relatively imperfect spiritual
knowledge with error. In this domain, infallibility is
a result of perfect holiness, for religious error belongs
to some moral imperfection. Truth, says Schleiermacher, is man’s natural condition.................. If, then,
this is the case with man in his normal state, with
much more reason must we attribute this infallibility
to Jesus, who presents to-us -the most lofty ideal of
humanity............ This infallibility, however, reaches
no; farther than to spiritual truth. It is taking away
from Jesus the reality of His humanity to suppose
that He possessed an innate knowledge of all terres
trial phenomena, and that He entirely escaped the
common notions of this age on physical matters. It
would be childish to believe that when; He spoke of
the setting sun, He reserved in His own mind the
theory of Galileo or of Newton. No, as regards every
thing which was not a part of His mission, He was
truly the man of His age and of His country. Yea,
more than that, even in the spiritual sphere, He did
not possess omniscience. He declared Himself, that
the knowledge of the times and seasons belonged
exclusively to His Father.”
.
■ ■
The Raising of Lazarus.
532.—“ Lazarus was lying on a bed of suffering—
his sickness was getting worse, and Jesus was in
Pereea—it was a journey of several hours to reach
Him—a messenger was sent off in all haste by the
two sisters. Instead of coming He only replied in
these prophetic words, ‘this sickness is not unto
death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God
may be glorified thereby/ Evidently, Jesus spoke
under the influence of a special revelation, and the
issue which was about to be effected could not but.
have an influence on His own personal destiny, which
was so important that He was aware of it beforehand.
�The Collapse of the Faith.
35
536.—“With eyes raised up to heaven. He gives
thanks to the Father even before the miracle was
wrought, so assured is He that what He asks is
agreeable to His will. Had He not then received an
express revelation as to what was going to take place,
even before the death of Lazarus ? ”
Such is this drama, as affecting and as simple
as human life is in its noblest passages, for which
some have dared to substitute, a low stage farce.
F. GODET,
*
DOCTEUR PROF. THEOL. BALE.
[Dr Godet’s commentary takes very high rank
amongst the most orthodox and conservative pro
ductions of continental evangelicalism, and is. de
signed to be an answer to and preservative against
the rationalising and destructive exegesis of Ger
many. Dr Godet (g.y.) asserts the mnaculous birth
of our Lord, the objective reality of the supernatural
phenomena at His baptism, the reality of the facts of
the Temptation, the personality of Satan, demoniacal
possession, the certainty of the miracles, the vicarious
punishment of Christ, &c., &c. He claims and
vindicates the Messianic Psalms and Prophecies,
reconciles the genealogies, calls the. free thought
school “ the Saturnalia of Criticism,” and is
thoroughly evangelical on the Eucharist.]
He says, vol. i. p. 54. (St Luke ch. i. 35.) “ The
power of the highest shall overshadow thee.
I
think rather that these expressions recall the cloud
which in the desert covered the camp of the Israelites
and sheltered it with its shade. Here, as in ch.
ix. 34, the Evangelist indicates the approach of
* Com. Evang. de. S. Luc. 1871.
�36
The Collapse of the *ith.
a
that mysterious cloud by the word emgxid^eiv. Here
the Holy Spirit indicates the divine power, the
vitalising breath which called the germ of a human
individuality slumbering in Mary’s womb, to the
development of its existence. This germ is the band
which connects Jesus with human nature and makes
Him a member of the race which He came to save.
In this second creation the miracle of the first crea
tion is thus re-enacted with a higher power. There
the two elements were present, a body taken from
the earth, and the breath of God. Here the germ
borrowed from Mary’s womb and the Holy Spirit
fertilising it, correspond to those two elements.”
Therefore also that Holy thing which shall be born
of thee shall be called the Son of God. “ Here then
we have, from the mouth of the angel himself, the
authentic explanation of the expression Son of God in
the earlier part of his message. According to this ex
planation Mary could not understand the title in any
sense but this, a human being who had God Himself
as the immediate author of his existence. This is
not at all the idea of pre-existence, but it is more
than the notion of Messiah which relates only to
the office, of His mission; (vol ii. p. 301. On the trial
scene Dr Godet says, ‘ They were condemning Him
as a blasphemer, and that for calling Himself the
Son of God.’)”
“. . . . What is the connection between this
miraculous birth of Jesus and His perfect holiness 1
The latter is not a necessary result of the former, for
holiness is a matter of choice, not of nature. How
can we give any serious meaning to the moral
struggles in the history of Jesus, e.g. to the temp
tation, if absolute holiness were the natural conse
quence of His miraculous birth 1 But it is not so.
The miraculous birth was only the negative condition
of His immaculate holiness. By the method of
His entrance into human life, He was re-established
�The^ollafse of the ^aith.
^7
in what was man’s formal condition before the fall,
and put in a position of fulfilling the course originally
set before mankind which would have led it on
from innocence to holiness. He was simply released
from the impediment which, by virtue of our mode
of birth, fatally prevents us from performing this
task. But in order to turn this potentiality into
an actuality Jesus was bound every instant to make
an active use of His liberty, and to occupy Himself
unreservedly with carrying out the law. of ‘ the
good ’ and of the task which he had received, ‘ to
keep the commandment of His Father.’
The reality of the struggle then was. not in any
sense excluded by this miraculous birth, which
involved nothing else in Him except the freedom of
not sinning, but did not exclude at all the freedom of
sinning.
P. 127. ch. ii. 49. “My Father’s business, this
expression formulates the ideal of an entirely filial
life, of an existence absolutely consecrated, to God
and to Divine things., which perhaps had just that
moment burst forth in Jesus’ mind, and which we
could no more comprehend than did Mary and
Joseph, ‘ if the life of Jesus had not passed before
our viewv. 52. ‘ Increased in wisdom, &c.’ The
word ‘ stature ’ embraces the complete physical and
psychical development, all the external graces j
‘ wisdom ’ belongs to the internal development;
the third term, ‘favour wi#h God and man’ com
pletes the other two. There was shed around the
person of this young man a charm at once moral and
external, which won to him the favour of God and
men............ There is no other conception for the
omission or denial of which theology has to pay a
heavier penalty, than this one of a development in the
very pure. This is the conception which the Chris
tianity of the Bible owes for ever to this verse. By
means of it the humanity of Jesus can be accepted,
as it is here by St Luke, in all its reality.”
�38
The ^ollapse of the _j2itb.
P. 172. The Baptism, ch. iii. 21. “ Jesus also
being baptised and praying,—Luke adds here a
detail which is peculiar to him, and which serves
to put in their true light the miraculous phenomena
which are to follow. At the instant when Jesus
afthr His baptism was about to go up out of the
water, He was in prayer. This detail shows that
the divine manifestations were the reply from above
to the prayer of Jesus.”
11 The divine manifestation consisted of three
sensible phenomena, to which three internal facts
corresponded. The first phenomenon is the opening
of heaven, and the (corresponding) spiritual fact, of
which the phenomenon is as it were the percept
ible covering, is the complete understanding granted
to Jesus of the divine plan and of the work of salva
tion. This first phenomenon then represents the,
perfect revelation....... (Second phenomenon),
Jesus sees descending a luminous apparition; to
this manifestation the interval fact of the effusion of
the Holy Spirit into His soul corresponds. The
Holy Spirit is about to make burst forth all the
germs of a new world which up to this were shut up
in the soul of Jesus. . . . This luminous apparition
then is thè emblem of an inspiration which is neither
intermittent like that of the prophets, nor partial
like that of believers—of perfect Inspiration. The
third phenomenon, that of the divine voice accom
panies a communication yet more intimate and
personal. There is no more direct emanation of
personal life than speech and voice. The voice of
God Himself sounds at once in the ear and in the
heart of Jesus and initiates Him as to His relation
to God—the most tenderly beloved being, beloved as
an only Son is of a father ; and as to his relation, as
such to the world—the medium of the divine love
towards men, his brothers, to raise whom also to the
dignity of sons is his mission.’—. . . ‘My Son.’
�The ^ollapse of the ™aith.
39
What is the force of the possessive pronoun here ? . .
The unutterable blessedness of being the perfect
object of the love of the infinite God, diffused itself,
at this word, in the heart of Jesus.
“ By the perfect revelation, Jesus is now initiated
as to the plan and work of salvation ; by the perfect
inspiration He possesses the power of accomplishing
it; by the consciousness of His dignity of sonship,
He feels himself to be the supreme messenger of God
here below, the Messiah, the chosen one of God,
summoned alone to finish that work.” (Note, p. 179.)
—“ Jesus actually received, not indeed (as Cerinthus,
going beyond the truth, used to teach) the visit of a
Christ from heaven who was to be joined to Him for
a time (note this) but the Holy Spirit, in the full
meaning of the word, whereby Jesus became the
anointed of the Lord, the Christ, the perfect man, the
second Adam, capable of begetting a new spiritual
humanity.”
P. 221.—“ But could Jesus have been really tempted,
if He were holy; Sin if He were the Son of God ;
fail in His work, if He were the Redeemer chosen of
God ? The Holy one might be tempted. . . . the Son
could sin, because He had renounced the mode of
divine existence—the form of God (Philip, ii. 6.)—to
enter into a human estate precisely like our own.
The Redeemer might fail, if we regard the question
from the stand point of His personal liberty, &c., &c.
“ These supreme laws of his Messianic activ ty
He • had learned in the bitter school of the
instructor to whom God had committed Him in the ■
wilderness.”
P. 421.—(ch. viii. 45.) ‘who touched me 1 ’
“ The receptivity of the woman rises to such a
degree of energy that she as it were draws the cure
out of Jesus. The action of Jesus here is limited to
that constant willingness which impels Him, in all
�40
The ^ollapse of the ^aith.
His relation with men, to bless and save them. He
.however is not unconscious of that virtue which He
has just discharged ; but He knows that there is an
¡alloy of superstition in the faith of the person who is
^showing it .towards Him ; and, as Riggenbrch clearly
¿expounds, His object in what follows as to purify
.that incipient faith. But to do so, He must discover
the doer of the deed—we have no reason not to
impute to Jesus the ignorance expressed by his
'question, ‘ who touched me 1 ’ the candour of his
/character does not admit of any pretence.”
APPENDIX.
ON THE ATONEMENT.
Rev. Dr. Jellett, Fellow Trin. Coll., Dublin.
*
(Sufferings of the righteous,, p. 8, 9.)—“That the guilt
of one man should be transferred to another is not
only false, but absolutely inconceivable.” “When
under the name of imputed sin, or any other misty
term which we choose to employ, we speak of God as
punishing one man for the sin of another, we really
attribute to Him an action which I should find it
difficult to describe with reverence.”
Pp. 21, 22.—“Vicarious punishment implies vic
arious suffering certainly; but it implies something
more; and it is that ‘ something more ’ which is
involved in the theory now under consideration, and
.which seems to me at variance with the fundamental
laws of morality.” ...
“The theory under consideration, (viz., that our
* Sermons preached in the College Chapel, 1864
�The ^ollapse of tbe^aitfr.
4K
blessed Lord was the object of the Divine wrath), is
incredible, simply because it makes the Judge of all
the earth do wrong.”
Brookes’ Sermons, p. 492.
Nevertheless it is astonishing how strongly this
superstitious view of God s anger clings to the minds
of men. It has vitiated the whole view taken of the
Atonement by large numbers of the Church of Christ.
They are unconsciously influenced by the thought that
where there is suffering, there must be sin. The cross
is suffering; therefore, somewhere about the sufferer
there must be sin, and God must be angry. But
Christ had no sin j then what does the suffering
mean ? . . .
.
At last light comes to them . . . and the thing is
clear. Man sins, and sin against an Infinite Being
is infinite and deserving of infinite punishment. A
debate takes place in the nature of God. Justice says,
‘I must punish,’ Mercy replies, ‘have pity,’ Love
steps in, . . . the Son of God is infinite, let Him bear
as man the infinite punishment—and this was done,
&c., &c. The intuitions are all against it. It outrages
the moral sense 5 if I murdered a man to-morrow,
would justice be satisfied if my brother came forward
and offered to be put to death in my stead ? It
outrages the heart ... it outrages our idea of God,
it makes Him satisfied with a fiction.
If none of these opinions of reputed pillars of the
truth here quoted, be true, surely the Christian
evidence company ought to disprove them all, without
respect of persons ; and they ought to do it in a very
different fashion from that of our Father-in-God the
Bishop of Peterborough, who in his recent Issean
orations in Norwich repeated in LARGE CAPITALS, that
�42
The ^ollapse of the ^aith.
■Christianity has no demonstration to give ; and that
if it had, it would do us no more good than the
demonstration that two and two are four !!
[Qu. Why then does the Bishop complain of people
who won’t believe him; or of those who would believe
if they could
But if any one of these opinions be true, then the
natural meaning of our creeds and articles is not true,
and orthodoxy with us must set about providing
itself with what the Americans call, “ a New Depar
ture doctrine.”
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The collapse of the faith: or, the deity of Christ as now taught by the orthodox
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Carrol, William George [1821-1885] (ed)
Description
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Place of publication: Ramsgate; Dublin
Collation: v, [1], 10-42 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extracts from sermons by Right Rev. Dr. O'Brien, Rev. E.H. Plumptree, Rev. Moorhouse, Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, Rev. Stopford Brooke. Professor Dorner, E. Dr. Pressense, Professor F. Godet. Name of author incorrectly spelt on title page as W.G. Carrol. Appendix: Rev. Dr. Jellett and Rev. Stopford Bridge on the atonement. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Pencilled inscription on title page: 'Rough proof. Very good indeed but the change noted (?) will not tell on popular opinion for a long time.'
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Thomas Scott; R.D. Webb
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[1871]
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G5462
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Jesus Christ
Faith
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Atonement
Belief and Doubt
Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ
Sermons