Atonement, and the Distinctive Peculiarity of Moral Law

O long as philosophy and theology shall conserve the distinctive peculiarity of Moral Law, — as the “categorical imperative” and as the objective charter and instrument of a strictly moral government, — the Westminster doctrine, which is the Catholic doctrine, of Atonement is impregnable. And some of the Anglican litterateurs are aware of that. Hence they confound moral with physical law, — parading what is really an unethical view of moral law, apparently without being aware that the notion is self-contradictory.

It is to this issue that Dr. CANDLISH has, with much penetration, run up his whole controversy with Mr. MAURICE in his examination of the once celebrated Essays. And it is unnecessary to say that he has received, and will receive, no answer to his minute and masterly polemic. We have seen that ROBERTSON makes even Vicarious Sacrifice itself a “law of being;” and the same sort of language is not altogether unknown now in Scotland, in some men’s expositions of the doctrine of the death of Christ. When the decease accomplished at Jerusalem can be explained, apart from everything judicial either in its appointyor

aod ment, its occurrence, or its fruits; it is natural enough, and indeed it becomes requisite, that nothing judicial should be recognized in the Moral Law, or in the moral government of the Most High. And hence Moral Law is now no longer to be regarded asastrict and proper commandment — objective authoritative commandment — but as a subjective influence, moulding the nature and doings of men, very much after the same fashion as gravitation governs the movements of a planet, or as chemical affinities affect the more hidden properties of matter. The distinction between Law Moral and Law Physical, which CuaumeErs, with his own unapproachable splendors of expression and of exposition, set forth in a work* written long before it could have been supposed that professed theologians would confound things which differ so radically, is thus to be obliterated. And Kant is no longer to be allowed to stand in awe before his “categorical imperative,” but shut up to his “starry heavens” alone. This is generalization ‘with a vengeance:’ if, indeed, the word ‘vengeance’ do not offend them; but I confess I cannot bring myself, here or elsewhere, to substitute for it ‘love burning on.’

The truly grand modern generalization in physical science is the doctrine of the Correlation of Forces and the Conservation of Energy,y asserting as it does

*See Cuanmers’ Lectures on Romans (Rom, viii. 2.).

tSee Sketch of Thermodynamics, the recent and remarkable work of my distinguished friend Professor Tart, whose labors, jointly with those of Sir Winn1am Tuomson, in their Treatise on

Natural Philosophy, are illustrating at once their country and ’ their century. See, also, Grove’s Correlation of Forces; BAtrouR Svewarr’s Treatise on Heat; Farapay’s Electrical Researches; his Scientific Memoir, by Tynpan; and his Life and Letters, by Dr. Bence Jonzs.

the ultimate identity of all physical forces whatsoever. And as force produces and is measured by motion, individual forces can be all made alternately to replace each other, even to exact numerical equivalence. Thus, “Heat” is ultimately but “a Mode of Motion;” and in a given amount is identical with a calculable intensity of gravitation that would cause a projectile to describe a specified parabola, or a planet a particular ellipse.

Now, on this generalized view of Moral Law, why not find an equivalent force, for instance, for the Fifth Commandment? We remember, on visiting a flat of spinning-jennies in Manchester some years ago, being told by our conductor that these beautiful pieces of machinery performed the duty of so many children. Of course he understood himself as speaking figuratively. But that was before Robertson had published his Sermons, or Maurice written his Essays. Things are altered now. Why should not a disappointed parent, being one of the merchant-princes of the earth, compensate for the distress of domestic rebellion, by giving an order for the equivalent number of the jennies, and putting on the exact additional horse-power in the engine-room? And then the little rebels might equivalate too. For if they lose the reward of “the first commandment with promise,” there are equivalent medicinal as well as mechanical forces to make up for it, and all may be square again by the tabulated indemnifying number of Parr’s life-pills! We are quite prepared to have this called profane. But Pascal has rebuked that charge. So that “you see, fathers, ridicule is, in some cases, a very appropriate means of reclaiming men from their errors; do “not then expect to make people believe that it is unworthy of a Christian to treat error with derision” (Provin. Lett. XT).

But we can treat this error seriously too, and we: intend to do so.

I. The application of the term Law to the uniform sequences of phenomena in the physical world is sufficient to show that law, in its original signification, implies something more than the physical world can either embody or adequately illustrate. For, unquestionably, it is applied in such connections figuratively, or rhetorically. It is an instance of the rhetorical figure called personification. But personification is an attribution of ideal personality, where it is quite understood that real personality does not exist. In the solar system, for instance, the sun is poetically conceived of asa mighty monarch seated on his central throne, and issuing his commands to the planets and satellites that move like obedient subjects round him. But who does not see that in the attribution of personality, in any sense, to the elements of the material world, the objects of contemplation — by an illusion to which the mind pleasurably resigns, without deceiving, itself — are regarded as belonging to a realm not natively and really their own? And the very use which we make satirically of the word satellite, as indicating slavish obedience, has no point or meaning, except as carrying in it the accusation that the individual has abandoned his position and prerogative as the inhabitant of a realm of personal liberty and moral power, and descended, as it were, into that mere physical world, the elements of which fancy must lift up into a kingdom higher than their own, before they can be conceived of as the subjects of liberty and law. The law of elective affinity in chemistry is another case in point. An active power of choice, or preference, is rhetorically attributed to the bodies or substances under consideration, while everybody understands that they are exhibiting neither intelligence nor will, but passively undergoing changes necessitated in the circumstances by the nature of the elements of which they are composed.

Now, if the application of the term Law to the uniformity of natural sequences be thus so obviously figurative, it is plain that its original signification must be something different; else we may repeat here the keen remark of Mareus Dods, — already quoted when refuting the notion that Christ was only figuratively a priest, — that “the very word, upon this supposition, stands in the unprecedented situation of having a figurative application without ever having had a real literal meaning.” And indeed, when we bear in mind that figurative meanings vanish where no primary idea is recognized, — though we did not mean to draw on Pascal’s authority again, — we really see no reason why we should not indicate the parallel which exists between such a case and that of the foreigner, desirous of instruction in the English language, who, on being told that an excellent teacher was accustomed to charge a guinea for the first quarter and fifteen shillings for the second, declared on the spot that he saw his way clearly to take the second quarter immediately!

Possibly, however, those whom we have in our view may attempt to evade the force of this remark by de-

21 Q nying that the term Law is applied in any secondary or figurative or rhetorical sense to the physical world. They may affirm that the physical world is the true, proper, and primary sphere of law; and that law, in its one only real and valid signification, is character- - istic alike of all material substances, all mechanical and chemical forces, all physiological organizations, and all mental faculties; indeed, of all intelligent creatures in the whole compass of their being. Doubtless this gets quit of all rhetorical application of the term; and prosaic sternness becomes the order of the day. Personification, on this understanding, is of course abjured. But what if it be found that PER-SONALITY is sacrificed also ? — the personality alike of man and of God? If the only kind of law to be recognized, in relation to man, is a generalized expression of the facts observable in the actual conduct of his mental powers, — such as the law of the association of ideas, — what argument have we for the personality of God, or what materials from which to realize any strict and proper personality of our own? When the very peculiar and unique idea of accountability is introduced: when Moral Law is recognized as an external objective code of duty, — a law not of man, but for man, — a law not of his faculties, but for his obedience, — postulating, on his part, a power of choice and a sense of responsibility, claiming to rule his will and securing the assent of his conscience: personality, both human and divine, is safe. For personal relation comes out now with a clearness and intensity of which there can be no evasion. Law of this nature recognizes my personality and appeals to it, — probably was the means of first historically educing my personality into conscious realization. It would be an interesting question in mental science whether the infant spirit is ever educated into consciousness by the mere play of intellect; or whether the first flash of conscious personal existence is not the result of realized moral obligation, and of the action of the will in reference thereto. And if there be reason to suppose that historically this is true, there would then be the corresponding metaphysical question, whether it must not necessarily be true. But, be this as it may, it is not essential to the point we have in hand, however it might confirm our views. What we ask attention to is, — that law physical, law as a mere subjective, operative principle, expressive simply of the uniform sequences in which change takes place, whether in the material or mental world, neither postulates nor demonstrates any personal relation between man and God. And, with personal relation, personality must stand or fall. For it is against the personality of another,.: and in relation thereto, that my own personality is tested and adequately revealed and realized. To this condition even the mysterious constitution of the Godhead as Triune would appear to be subject. Solitary personality is what eternity hath never witnessed. From everlasting, personality has existed in fellowship, in personal relation.* But in such law as is

* But for interfering with the continuity of the argument, I would have been strongly inclined to prosecute this line of thought, — Is a uni-personal Deity conceivable? Is not Pantheism somewhat defensible as versus such a Deity? Can we conceive of. necessary — and eternal consciousness of ‘‘I am,” without a necessary and eternal reason for the ‘‘I am” saying ‘‘Tuou art”? For if there cannot be a created consciousness of J am, without a causal necessary and eternal «I am,” can we conceive differently of the Thow art?

identical merely with formula of fact there is not the slightest trace of personal relationship.

Introduce, however, the very different sort of law which is identical with formula of obligation. Let me not merely be dealt with as exhibiting what is, but let me be appealed to as to what ought to be. Let my nature not merely be read as historically exhibiting necessary and inevitable facts, but as capable of choosing, within certain limits, what facts my history shall embody, myself responsible in each case for the choice I make. An appeal like this treats me as a separately subsisting individual person, and from another living person only can it come. The “categorical imperative” covers the personality both of man and of God. But if there is no “Thou shalt,” what becomes of the “Thou”? If there is no “categorical imperative,” where is the vocative? And if no vocative, where is the voice — the vocans? Moral law testifies to “thee” — and testifies from, and therefore of, “Him.” “It” is the all of law physical. Hence if law physical be alone recognized, Pantheism is the abyss into which we are swept inexorably.

IL. If, in the face of such conclusions, this abnega-Will it do to introduce 7¢ first in time? in reference to a created angel, let us say? ‘¢ Unto which of the angels said He at any time, THou ant....?” Let alone the question of eternal Sonship. Take it more abstractly. Take the question of fellowship. «To which of the angels” — created beings — could God say “at any time,” ‘Tou arr”? But must not God ‘at any time,” all throughout the past eternity, be competent to say ‘THov art,” as well as “Tam”? Could there be a beginning of the Thow art, any more than of the lam? Is there not an priori argument for the doctrine of the Trinity, or at least a vindication of the doctrine from a priori considerations? — See Appendiz.

tion of all that is specific and peculiar in Moral Law is to be persisted in, and the possibility of demonstrating the personality of God still asserted, we ask the advocates of this theory to consider its bearing on the Origin of Evil.

Of course, we do not ask them to furnish a philosophy or rationale on that great question. We neither offer, nor demand, a solution of the problem, Why, under the government of an almighty and beneficent Being, should evil have been suffered to exist? But no theology can refuse to face its existence as a fact; or refuse to speak out, if asked to say whether it lodges and leaves the origin of that fact with the creature or the Creator. On the unsophisticated theory of moral law — law assertative of authority in a personal God as Moral Ruler, and of obligation on personal beings as His subjects — this aspect of the question presents no difficulty. In this view, man is recognized as originally created upright; — not a being gifted with intelligence merely, capable of elaborating mathematical and scientific truth, and of observing and generalizing physical facts; but endowed with personal power of choice, with the very special faculty of will. Nor is this a mere vague power of instinctive self-pleasing, a sort of personified elective chemical affinity; but a very definite consciousness of personal liberty and power, in which his distinct and separately subsisting personality comes out into inevitable manifestation, and that most over-awingly of all in the alternative it gives him of determining whether his personal footing with God shall be one of submission or affected independence. Such is his faculty of will and its scope for

choice, — ‘with conscience behind to ratify or to re- 21% prove. Created thus, originally righteous, — with the Moral Law from the first the law o/, as well as to, his will, — how is he now dealt with? What special act of providence does God exercise towards him in this estate wherein he is created? The answer is very remarkable, and bears with amazing precision on the point in hand. As if to prevent the “categorical imperative” from being lost sight of, or swallowed up, — in the original accordance between man’s holy will and the subject-matter of the law; as if expressly to prevent law moral from leaning over towards law physical, as from the circumstance of this accordancy it might seem to do; the “categorical imperative” is brought into play again, in circumstances fitted to restore the balance, or reclaim the dangerous bias, — brought into play with nothing in the subject-matter of its new demand priorly existing in man’s nature to correspond to it, but compelling recognition of it as in its very form, apart from its matter, authoritative, juridical, morally governmental; and sheer and sharp is the Law now as commandment: “THOU SHALT not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof THOU SHALT surely die.”

It is impossible for man, under a commandment of this nature, to mistake his position as the personal subject of a personal Moral Ruler. He has to deal now, not merely with a law which is at once the law of his nature and a law ¢o his will. His will is appealed to by a commandment which does not find itself already existing in his nature, as a spiritual tendency which might therefore be called the law of his being, or, in any sense, his own law. Sharply, directly, exclusively, is his will appealed to now by what he must see can be called nothing but “the law of his God.” And his probation, as under law to his God, becomes manifest, simple, and conclusive. The fall of man, under these circumstances, may leave grave questions unsolved. But it clears up all questions anent physical evil, by resolving into the result of the righteous displeasure of the Moral Ruler against the disobedience of man. It throws a flood of light most instructively on the héstory of the rise of moral evil. And it conclusively fastens the origin of all evil on the creature, and justifies the ways of God. But take that theory of Moral Law, the bare possibility of any tendency toward which this most peculiar style of moral probation, with the categorical imperative so sharply and exclusively propounded and employed as its instrument, would appear to have been introduced expressly to forestall and prevent. Take the theory which makes no account of Moral Law, save as a kind of physical law of man’s higher nature, and not an authoritative commandment ¢o his will. And in what aspect does God in that case appear in this matter of the fall of man, if He appear in it as a personal being at all? Not as a righteous Moral Ruler, conducting the righteous procedure of a very special moral probation, giving commandment to a living personal being under His authority, endowed with liberty and capable of choice. Not thus. But as physically experimenting on His own creature to its ruin. The proper analogue to.which is — Galvani torturing the nerves of a frog! Only that the fall of man was not designed for the promotion of science.

III. Let us bring this non-juridical idea of Moral

Law into the ght in its bearings on that confessed disharmony in human nature of which all men are in a measure conscious.

Of course, the first appeal to consciousness should be an appeal to man’s sense of responsibility, — not to his consciousness of having failed concerning it. Is there that, in the constitution of man’s spiritual nature, which enables him either to originate or to understand, with reference to any exercise of his will, the expression “you ought” or “you ought not”? If it be admitted, without sophistication, that there is, then an original and ineradicable distinction is admitted between law moral and law physical, — law of duty and law of mental states or processes. And the absolute requirements of exact discussion are at an end. Attempts may be made, however, to resolve the consciousness of responsibility into something secondary and composite, — with what success, we tarry not here to say. But take — not the mere abstract sense of accountability, but — man’s conscious experience of inward disharmony in connection with it; and we shall find the testimony thus afforded to Law, as strictly and distinguishingly Moral, more varied and abundant than can possibly, with any show of reason, be evaded. We ask any thoughtful man, on any other view of Law, to explain, or account for, or even show the possibility of, any such subjective disharmony or derangement as all men are conscious of, — from the heathen who, with more or less of nonchalance, gives expression off-hand to his semi-discontented sense of it in his video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor, to the saint, agonizing in his fight of faith, as his groans find utterance in the cry, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?” (Rom. vii. 24.) Explain, if you can, how experiences like these can possibly be realized as facts, or conceived of ideally, under the action of any sort of law but what is objectively assertative of obligation? Refuse to go beyond the recognition of such law as is identical with causal subjective self-operating principle; — or, excluding the idea of causality, let it be such law as is identical, if not with force, yet with formula — formula of process and of result — be the process ever so uniform, or the result ever so certain, in justification of your use of this word Law in the matter at all; — how can you possibly account for the utterance, whether of the classic heathen of Rome, or the inspired writer to the Romans? A disharmony between a subjective state of mind, on the one hand, — call it a law of force or of process, or a formula, if you please, — and an objective law or code of duty, on the other hand; this is intelligible. But its intelligibility depends on the fundamental diversity in kind of the two laws thus seen and felt to be in conflict. Two subjective physical laws or forces can produce no such phenomenon. They may modify each other’s action; but it is in the way of composition or of combination, effecting a tertium quid, distinct from the result that would flow from the action of either separately. But the new result bears no trace of disharmony or derangement in it. Even as under the two laws of impulse and of gravitation — the centrifugal and centripetal forces — the planet rolls on in its ellipse, as easily and swiftly, with as little of jolt or jagged motion, as under the one force it would fly away equably into’ limitless space, or under the other would fall with acceleration to the centre of the sun.

Of course we do not mean to identify the heathen and the Christian consciousness in this matter. It is by a very sharp transition that the one passes into the other. So much the more for our present argument. For the history of that transition and its moral philosophy cast a very strong and very steady light on the distinctive peculiarity of Moral Law. Assuredly, among all his schools and schoolmasters, Paul had no conscious knowledge of any subjective law that could have been his “schoolmaster to bring him to Christ;” and, had no other kind of law dealt with him, he would have known neither Christ nor sin to this hour. “JT had not known sin,” says he, “but by the law” (Rom. vii. 7). And it was not the law of a subjective process; but a law objective, outside and above himself; a law that could speak to him, — and that not merely after the fashion of an ideal divarication of his own consciousness as on two sides of a soliloquy, but as the voice of another than himself, speaking as one having authority. “For I had not known lust,” — I should have been conscious of nothing but legitimate desire, — “except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Not without the “categorical imperative” asserting its transcendency objectively, is conscience reinvigorated to reassert its supremacy, de jure, against a subjective law of depravity or uniform tendency to sin, Another subjective law, a merely diverse principle or tendency, would not meet the case. It is the proclamation of Moral Law that is needed. “TI was alive without the law once; but when” — not another tendency, but — * the COMMANDMENT came, sin revived, and I died” (ver. 9). It was in its character and aspect of commandment that Law had any fitness to bring out to view so unmistakably this disharmony within, quickening and precipitating the crisis to a death-struggle. The introduction of an inward tendency diametrically opposite to that of sin would silently have quickened me, and proportionally sopited sin. But by the introduction of commandment, “sin revived and J died.” Instead of losing, sin gained ground by the commandment. “For, sin taking occasion by the com-MANDMENT, deceived me, and by it slew me,” “working death in me by that which is good, that sin by the COMMANDMENT might become exceeding sinful” (verses 11 and 18). “Wherefore the law is holy;” I speak of it as commandment; for of no holy tendency, alas! as yet, at this stage, had I any consciousness to claim, I am carnal, sold under sin; I speak of a law that is commandment, compelling recognition from without. “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and just, and good” (ver. 12). As an authoritative code of duty, it is so. Take it as subjective principle, and how will you negative the supposed conclusions, — groundless enough on Paul’s theology, — the conclusions which he anticipates in the questions, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Was that which is good made death unto me?” (verses 7 and 13.) They are irresistible on the theory of Law being identical with subjective tendency. It is the interchangeableness of “Law” and “Commandment” which rebuts them.

Surely one may almost say, “The Scripture, foreseeing” this attempt to obliterate a vital distinction, “preached before” that distinction with emphasis and iteration most solicitous. For in a single short paragraph (Rom. vii. 7-18), in twelve references to Moral

Law, six times it is called Law, and six times com-MANDMENT.

No doubt, in the transition from what is practically the heathen to what is distinguishingly the Christian consciousness, the objective moral commandment is, in the matter of it, translated subjectively into the inner man, and reappears now as a holy tendency as well as a righteous code. That this takes place, or rather that this has taken place, is manifested in that first forthgoing and action of the renewed will of which Paul speaks when he says, “I consent unto the law that it is good” (ver. 16). But even now, not as the holy tendency of his will, although it is all that now — “the law of my mind” (ver. 28) — yet not as in any sense a law of his own, even of his inward man, does he delight in it; but after the inward man he delights in it as specifically the law of his God: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (ver. 22), And clinging to it now, identifying all his desire and all his interest with it, — still as the authoritative instrument of his reconciled, righteous Ruler’s government of and over him, — he can divaricate now in his own consciousness, alike with good ground, with precious practical design, and with great effectiveness and great effect: “Now, then, if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me” (ver. 17). And the righteous Lord ratifies this protest, and gives His loyal subject the benefit thereof; for it is in behalf of His own divine commandment and its un. appellable authority that the protest is entered.

It is not to break the thread of this argument, which we intend immediately to resume and complete, if we pause for a moment to inquire, —

IV. What bearing this non-authoritative view of Law may be found to have on the doctrine and fact of the Incarnation. For, in point of argument or of exposition, as also in point of fact, the Incarnation must come in here to account for the possibility of Paul or those like-minded with him, reaching that particular stage of spiritual experience which we have been considering. Paul himself is not negligent to put us in remembrance of this. For these wonderful readings or revelations that he is giving of his own intense consciousness in connection with Sin and Law, are all professedly explanatory of his assertion that he had “become dead to the law by the body of Christ” (Rom. vii. 4). Not without the interveniency of the Incarnation; not apart from some determining influence from “the body of Christ;” has he realized, or can he now explain, his own marvellous consciousness, as he here makes it patent to the intelligence and sympathy of the Church forever.

What this interveniency of the Incarnation may import, and how it operates, it is not, on the W estminster doctrine of the Atonement, difficult to explain. Accepting the fundamental beliefs of all Christian theology, we recognize the Incarnation of the Eternal Word as exhibiting the union of the divine and human natures in the one divine person of the Son of God; and the immediate design of this great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, we believe to have been accomplished by this God-man putting Himself in the room of those whom the Father hath given Him, under an authoritative and unchangeable, but by them violated Moral Law, to fulfil, as their

representative, all its commandments, and endure, as their substitute, all its curse. And hence, when His clients intelligently and cordially appropriate this interposition on their behalf, it is not difficult to see how, — the Law having no longer any such claims against them as those to which it was till now necessarily and remorsely alive, — “that becomes dead wherein they were held” (Rom. vii. 6); and they, alive no more in terror to claims that have been legally and fully met, become “dead to the law,” and that “by the body of Christ,” even “by the body of His flesh through death” (Col. i. 22).

But what instrumentality or efficiency towards anything like this can possibly be ascribed to the Incarnation of God’s Son, if there be no strictly moral and authoritative judicial law? That He most expressly felt Himself to be the subject of such Law, we must most firmly hold, if the testimony of Scripture or the depositions of His own consciousness are to be believed. He felt Himself, no doubt, to be possessed of a created nature, having, impressed upon it, certain laws of operation, — laws of intelligence and holiness alike, if you will — and by reason whereof nothing abnormal, whether in respect of wisdom or of holy rectitude, could ever manifest itself in any department of His person as “the Word made flesh.” In this sense, Love may be said to be the law of His divine nature, and Love the Law of His human nature also. And, in this respect, a spontaneous development of Love as the Law of His human nature, as well as His Divine, would have been exhibited, whatever object His Incarnation might have been designed to achieve, or in whatever circumstances He might have been placed.

But was this the only kind of dealing with Law which His history exhibits? Or was this the only kind of Law dealing with Him, to which the averments of His own consciousness testify? Is He not, on the other hand, most solicitous to own that, in another and a very different sense, He is under Law; not merely that His character presents a phenomenon of law, however high and holy, but that He Himself is the obedient servant and subject of law, — that He is under law to His Father? What else mean those emphatic acknowledgments of obligation and responstbility: “I must work the works of Him that sent me;” “I must be about my Father’s business;” “Other sheep I have, them also must I bring”? And again: not merely, “I do always those things that please my Father,” — fair as a beauteous flower, developing its leaves and loveliness with fragrance acceptable to the God of love, though with no form or comeliness in the eyes of those of whose nature, alas! love is far enough from being the law; not this merely, as if exhibiting the action only of an inward subjective holy law of His nature; it is not this merely that Jesus means when He says, “I do always those things which please my Father,” as if one should gratify a friend by exhibiting tastes and tendencies, predilections or dispositions, similar to his own. His meaning is explained when He says elsewhere: “As my Father gave me commandment, so I do.” And, “My Father gave me a commandment” defining all my ministry or service, reaching to every word and every deed, “a commandment what I should say and what I should do.” And, if “I lay down my life for the sheep and take it again,” it is not merely because prompted by an inward law of love, whether toward Him or toward them, but because “this commandment received I of my Father.”

Regard the Lord Jesus thus, as not only “made of a woman,” but “made under the” objective authoritative “law” of God; and the whole ground is clear, on to the doctrines of representative probation and of true and proper priestly sacrifice, inviolably redemptive of all for whom this last Adam ministers in His redeeming office.

But on the other hand, if we recognize in His character and history nothing but the operation of a subjective law or principle of holiness, what possibility is there for the in-bringing of anything approaching to the idea of redemption, or what excuse for introducing the language that expresses it? With love, the law of His divine nature, operating now, no doubt, in His altered circumstances somewhat differently, because operating now in His human nature as well as His divine; yet He himself not any more now a servant for men, or a subject under God, than He was from all eternity; what purpose can His Incarnation be designed to serve? An Example, is it said? Be it so. But it is an example which we are not under obligation to follow; for the idea of obligation has been banished; and if it be recalled to serve a purpose and to bind us now, what example to us can He be who is Himself under no obligation, and begins to exemplify our position by placing us under obligation, thereby rendering it entirely dissimilar to His own? The example — let it be carefully noted also — of an inward subjective law or principle of love, with no co-existing inward principle or tendency of evil in His case, set forth for the encouragement of fallen beings, all whose subjective tendencies and principles are “only evil, and that continually”! Oh most encouraging example! — brimful of hope, as the cup of Tantalus; beckoning men to heaven, but giving not a drop of water to cool the tongue!

But perhaps Sympathy is the secret that shall solve the problem of the Incarnation. And sympathy, it would appear, is the word in this new theologism, — warmer, confessedly, and more seductive in sentiment, while proportionally less tangible and definite in its statements, than the old Socinianism. What else, in fact, but something in the line of sympathy have they left any room for recognizing in the Person and work of the Incarnate Word, — though Dean STANLEY, in his catalogue of subject-matters of his “Nineteenth Century Theology,” * makes mention, indeed, neither of Christ’s person nor His work, and speaks of His “nature” as if He-had either the divine or the human, but not both, or as if the two had been compounded into a third. But letting that pass. What can that sympathy for man be worth which is dissociated from all service or subjection to God? Or what can it achieve? Or how does it operate? The Holy One in human nature, dwells with men upon the earth. And He comes for purposes of sympathy, — He comes to acquire and manifest sympathy. But as to law objective and authoritative, He is not placed under it, any more than they are under it. There is no ground for sympathy then in that respect; for there is nothing concerning which to sympathize. As to law subjective, — that is, inward operating principle, — in the case of the God-man, the law of both His natures is

* See Fraser’s Mayazine, 1865. 22 * R holy love, even “all that is of the Father;” and it operates in the unlimited fulness of the one nature, and in all the compass of the other. As to law subjective in fallen man, why all that is cn the world is of the world, even “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” There is, therefore, as little ground or material of sympathy here. Antipathy, rather, would seem to be only more sharply defined, with no higher reconciling efficiency or instrumentality provided; for, in fact, reconciliation of any kind, or in any sense, is utterly excluded from this whole scheme of theological opinion. Stull, sympathy is pleaded for tenaciously; as well it may, seeing it is the last refuge, if an explanation of the Incarnation has, in any sort, to be supplied. But what sort of explanation does it afford? The Son of God places Himself amid the sorrows of men, — although not sharing with them any position, as under broken law, such as would afford an explanation of suffering and sorrow being either their lot or His; and, from the parallelism thus far between His case now and theirs, an assimilating virtue goes forth from Him which exerts a beneficial influence on them. And go, having sympathized with them in a law of their nature by which “man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble,” He somehow — as by a fortunate contagion, converse to the law of infection in bodily disease — carries them over into sympathy with the law of His natures, which is the Law of Love; so that the will of man, like the will of the God-man, is brought to vibrate harmoniously with the will of God, but not any further in subjection to it than it was before, or than Christ’s will ever was or will be,

It is hard enough to understand, surely, how this is brought to pass. But if this is the object of the Incarnation, it is still harder to imagine why it should be described as our “becoming dead to the law” — the law of love — “by the body of Christ.” One would rather say that we were made alive to the law by this assimilating, quickening influence. And while our sympathy with the mind that is in Christ might be held to account for it, what can His “body” be supposed to have to do with it?

At all events, if this is the kind of regeneration which, apart from all idea of redemption proper, is to be substituted alike for the redemption that is in Christ and the regeneration that is by the Spirit of Christ, —

V. It may be well to consider what the real Regeneration of God’s kingdom is, and how it stands connected with the contrasted kinds of law which we have been discriminating.

Resuming, then, our analysis of the experience of Paul in his quickened consciousness concerning Law, let us solicit attention to the exact point of transition where he finds himself able to assert a vital change in his consciousness, and able to vindicate for himself a new relation to Law. For that transition, we see, is very sharply defined, when, realizing a new subjective tendency or bias in his will, — and realizing it all the more clearly and keenly from the fact of finding a thwarting influence steadily operating against it, — he finds himself not merely assenting by enforced conviction, but cordially consenting to the law. “For that which I do (03 yéexw), I allow not, — I know not,

I acknowledge not, I repudiate or disown; for (6 6A) what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good” — xaros, beautiful, worthy of, and now securing, my cordial admiration (Rom. vii. 16, 16). And this “consent unto the law” is not an isolated or occasional volition. It is habitual; even as the discrepancy between “what I would,” and “what I do” is habitual — that discrepancy in the light of which I read my “consent unto the law” even more clearly than if it took easy, and unhindered, and uniform complete effect.

This habitual consent of the will, indicating or implying a new subjective tendency in the inward man, Paul is now justified in calling a “law of his mind” (ver. 23). But manifestly he is still dealing with something different from subjective laws, as this very consent itself most clearly verifies. For if this new law of his mind, however holy and good, is identical with the “consent,” it has to be discriminated from that to which the consent is given. The law to which his consent, in every act of volition, is given, cannot be identified with the law which his consent, as a habit of volition, constitutes. He consents unto the objective law of God, as an authoritative law to his will; and when, because of his habctual consent, he feels warranted now in speaking of “the law of his will or of his mind,” whereas hitherto it had been enough to speak of “the law” (though even then he called it also “the commandment”), now he is careful to call it “the law of God” (ver. 22), as if on very purpose to anticipate and prevent misconstruction of the new phrase he was about to employ. N or — having thus paved the way beforehand for the adoption of that phrase — is he less careful thereafter to exemplify the right use of it; for he does not represent himself as henceforth serving “the law of his mind,” but tells us that “with the mind he himself serves the law of God” (ver. 25).

A most accurate moral philosopher and psychologist, as well as theologian, was this old tent-maker of Tarsus! And it would do some of our moral philosophers good to attend a little more to his writings.

The notion of subjective law may, indeed, on a superficial view, seem to fit in very nicely with the doctrine of regeneration; and may be represented as in fact harmonizing admirably with the true idea of subjective grace, or, more properly, as being a philosophical expression for it. But it is very far from giving a full or accurate account of the renewal of the will; and it is a very defective reading of what we find in the will when renewed. Regeneration, the work of God’s Holy Spirit, is the reversal of that depraved state of soul spoken of in Scripture when it is said, “The carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” It is not a mere plastic operation, in virtue of which a new tendency is impressed on the affections. It is a direct and personal dealing with the will, powerfully bringing it into distinctly recognized and conscious subjection to the will of God. In popular expression, it is the transfer of the Moral Law from the tables of stone to the fleshly tables of the heart. Or, allowing the Lord himself to describe His own work: “I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.” That is: I will secure their intelligent acquaintance with my law, and their cordial acquiescence in it, dealing alike with their minds and with their hearts. But this transfer is not of such a nature as that the law is no more to be found outside and above the will of man. It is not as if, in searching for it now, we should find that it had disappeared as an authoritative code of duty, to present itself henceforth only as a formulated expression of the facts of man’s will, no longer assertative of the requirements of God’s will. On the contrary, the specifically new thing which the Holy Ghost has secured, and indeed created, is just a life which, so to speak, lives in the recognition of the authoritative will of God; its own consciousness as uttered in the words, “Thy law, O God, is within my heart,” being explained by the unmistakable periphrasis, “I delight to do thy will, O my God.” The renewed will recognizes its own renewal, precisely in this very element of its subjection to the objective authority of the Most High. A sense of that subjection was ineradicably inlaid in the conscience before; it is now accepted and welcomed by the heart. And it is this transference of the objective law — as expressive, in the matter of it, of the nature of God — into the inward parts subjectively; while the same law still abides outside and above the will, — continuing in the form of it, assertative of the authority of God: this it is which is the grand reconciliation of obedience most stringent, with liberty most sweet and perfect. So far as regeneration has proceeded, — and it is perfected only in death, — the subjective law of the will, in its renewed estate, is in exact accordance with the objective law of God to the will. But this reconciliation is disturbed by intromitting with either of the two factors; and it is annihilated by making one of them do duty for both. Exactly as the constituting idea of a sacrament is destroyed by transubstantiating the sign into the thing signified — the sacramental tie or bond, and therefore the sacramental idea, vanishing at the introduction of identity.

It is in vain to plead that the subjective view of Moral Law presents a higher ideal of spiritual Liberty than what we have now been pleading for. The reverse is the fact. For the withdrawment of objective law is really the denial of responsibility. And liberty is infringed, when responsibility is infringed; for liberty and responsibility are correlatives. When a man is regenerated, he is made “willing” (Ps. ex. 3) to-be under law to God, and this correlation is thereby beautifully preserved. His obedience now is not that of a slave; for the law of his God is within his heart in the character of a holy tendency, as well as standing over him with its commandment. And his obedience is not the operation of a mere mental tendency or spiritual mechanism working out its own bias or its own law — as the soft lulling motion of a vessel languidly drifting with the stream, though that stream were even “the river of the water of life.” It is the obedience of a loving, loyal subject, adoring his Lord and King, and saying, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” And this is the highest ideal of Liberty that can be framed.

It is equally vain to affirm that the subjective view of law presents a higher ideal of Grace. For if man ‘did not fall as under a probation, of which law objective was the instrument and safe-guarding charter; if he fell as the victim of a kind of physical experiment; his restoration can carry in it nothing of the nature of grace. It must appear rather as a reparation which he had some ground to expect, if not indeed to claim. Itisin the light only of righteous authoritative * Law, that Grace can actually appear, or even the very idea of grace be conceived at all; and the antithesis which Paul so constantly presents between Grace and Law becomes utterly unintelligible, if by Law we are to understand the formulized expression merely of a subjective state of soul.

Moreover, on this view, regeneration makes its appearance as a phenomenon utterly dissociated from any intelligible, personal transaction between God and His people, — any transaction of the nature of a reconciliation; not to speak of the still more obnoxious transaction of a legal or forensic justification. God appears more as an influence than as a personal being; and man is represented as at best a kind of animal, high in instincts, intellectual, sentimental, and emotional. For it becomes difficult to conceive of God as personal, if the assertion of his authority be suppressed; and difficult to conceive of man as personal, if distinct submission to objective authority on God’s part is not also insisted on. For our idea of personality is so intertwined with implicit, if not explicit, recognition of ethical capacity and ethical relation, that, if that element be subtracted, it is very questionable whether the idea thereafter carries in it any self-constituting notion at all.

In thus representing regeneration as the unifying of the desires and tendencies of an inward law in the heart with the demands of the outward law of God, it is possible we may be charged with forgetting that, at an earlier stage of this brief discussion, we indicated a certain risk or danger, in man’s original state, that might arise from this very accordance, — a kind of possible tendency towards trusting to the law of the heart, as if it would operate spontaneously and render careful consideration of Moral Law, as expressing God’s authority, unnecessary. It is true, we spoke of this possible tendency as accounting for the necessity of such probation as that of Eden, in which the “categorical imperative” is introduced as clothing the subject-matter of a requirement which could appeal to nothing corresponding to it pre-existing in man’s spiritual constitution, And assuredly if any danger existed of law moral lapsing, in man’s regard, into the aspect of law physical, such probation was adapted with singular precision to meet the case. But it cannot be asserted that this danger can arise in that re-instated harmony of objective and subjective law which it is the very function of regeneration to establish; nor, when that harmony is complete, can subsequent probation be required, on the ground, as in the former case, that danger arises from its very completeness. For there is a mighty difference between a harmony that has undergone no ordeal, like that of Eden, and one that has been established as the very result of an ordeal exactly similar in kind but immeasurably more intense in degree. This difference, of course, cannot appear in a scheme which presents a regeneration that is dissociated from whatever is specific in redemption and reconciliation, in the strict meaning of these terms. But it does appear very strikingly in the regeneration which the Covenant of Grace recognizes and provides.

For the absolute sovereignty of God is brought out in redemption, in the terrible and matchless probation of the second Adam; and absolute subjection to God as Sovereign is secured, in the reconciliation of men. to God individually, by the imperative demand for faith in Christ and submission in Him to “the righteousness of God.” It is in indissoluble connection with ths crucial instance and culminating display of God’s sovereignty on the one hand, and this conclusively testing demand for man’s submission on the other, that regeneration is righteously granted on God’s part, and intelligently reached and realized on the part of him that believeth. The unifying of the inward subjective law of the will, in its renewed state, with the objective authoritative “commandment” under which the regenerated soul delights to live, takes place with no risk to the recognition of the “categorical imperative” in this second creation. Nor is any subsequent institute of probation needed to prevent the possibility of law moral lapsing into the likeness of law physical now. “The darkness is past; and the true light now shineth.” The sovereignty of Law has been recognized and established in the probation and righteousness of that Eternal Son of God, who received from His Father a commandment to lay down His life for the sheep, and who, though He were a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered; the whole import of His Incarnation and its object being given by Himself when He says, “I came not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” Nor is His representative probation, when viewed as the heritage of His people, to be considered as their probation by proxy merely. It becomes their own probation most truly; as truly theirs as the first Adam’s was his own, and it is immeasurably more intense and satisfactory.

For — in bringing these discussions on the Atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ to a close — let it be carefully observed in conclusion, That it is impossible that Christ’s righteousness can be imputed on God’s part, or on man’s part appropriated, on any principle, or scheme or understanding that should dispense with the real probation of men individually, in their entrance into the favor and kingdom of God. The commandment to “kiss the Son, lest His wrath should burn, and we perish from the way:” the commandment to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and submit in Him to the righteousness of God; carrying in it, as that commandment evidently does, the imperative obligation to acknowledge the absolute righteousness of eternal death as the wages due to sin, to look to sovereign grace as the only source of exemption from it, and to own that grace as reigning through righteousness by the substitution of God’s dear Son under the inflicting stroke of God’s awakened and avenging sword: — this is the highest and most conclusive possible probation. It is far keener and deeper than the probation of Eden. When successfully endured, it opens to us the way to the true Tree of Life. And this is that ordeal, under whose all-testing fires, Law Moral from God and law subjective in the heart are, in regeneration, welded into a harmony which the eventualities of even eternity itself will never prevail to disturb. The living faith of the regenerated spirit, appropriating “the righteousness of God,” carries in its heart an oath of allegiance to the sovereignty of

God Most High: an oath which is at once the echo and the offspring of God’s own oath of sovereignty — sovereignty alike in Law and in Grace. And the oath of faith shall never fail unto eternity, any more than the Divine oath original from which it springs and to which it answers: — “I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength” (Isa. xlv. 28, 24).