Mr. Robertson of Brighton's Views of Vicarious Sacrifice
Ae affording a specimen of Broad School theology on the Atonement, and as a warning against the dangers that arise from abandoning the Catholic doctrine of true and proper propitiation, I propose to criticise a sermon by the late Mr. RoBERTson, of Brighton, on “Vicarious Sacrifice.”
I need scarcely say that I disclaim everything like a wish to depreciate the character of an accomplished scholar, an amiable man, an earnest laborer according to the measure of his light. Mr. Robertson was manifestly endowed with great natural gifts; and he wielded them, I doubt not, to the best of his knowledge for the benefit of his fellow-men. His writings, especially when treating of literary and moral topics, are characterized by a good deal of classic culture, singular freshness of thinking, and beautiful powers of expression. It is impossible, consistently with evi-. dence, to compliment his memory in the same terms in regard to his theological views. But I must claim the benefit of the distinction, frankly accorded in all honorable controversy, between the charity that is due to an author’s person and the charity that is due to his writings. It is a stale artifice, and a gross violation of the liberty and mental independence which Broad Churchmen loudly claim for themselves, which would forbid a free criticism, by identifying a just severity toward a man’s writings, when supported by evidence, with malicious depreciation of their author. True charity will accept my necessarily discriminating tribute to Mr. Robertson’s memory, and grant me liberty to criticise his sermon, and show, if I can, that it indicates great ignorance of divine truth, and is utterly subversive of Christianity.
The sermon to which I allude is the ninth in the first series, and is entitled, “Caiaphas’s View of Vicarious Sacrifice.” The text is the high priest’s unintentional prophecy and coarse appeal to Jewish terror: “Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” (John xi. 49, 50).
The author opens his theme by telling us that “the remarkable point in this judgment is, that it contained the very central doctrine of Christianity; unconsciously Caiaphas had uttered the profoundest of all truths, the necessity of the innocent suffering for the guilty.” And so satisfied is he with the statement of this truth in the high priest’s language, that he adds, “He had stated it in the very words which St. John could have himself adopted.” He then re-affirms that “that truth was the vicarious sacrifice of Christ.” “There are,” however, “two ways in which you may contemplate that sacrifice.” It may be viewed from different sides: the side of Caiaphas, and the side of John; the side of the world, and the side of God. “The words of Caiaphas contain a formal falsehood and a material truth;” so that the subject “branches into two topics: I. The human form, in which the words are false. II. The divine principle or spirit, in which they are
true.”
One might well inquire how, in the human form of Caiaphas’s statement, the words can be false, and yet be the very words which St. John could have himself adopted. But let that pass.
Is the reader beguiled into the expectation of a loyal defence of the propitiatory sacrifice of the cross? It would be little wonder though he were. The author has announced as his subject the vicartous Sacrifice of Christ. He has declared his belief that “the profoundest of all truths” is “the suffering of the innocent for the guilty.” And he tells us correctly enough that, “when we speak of vicarious suffering, we mean that suffering which is endured in another’s stead, and not as the sufferer’s own desert.” Good preliminaries these to a Scriptural exposition of the true substitution and atoning sacrifice of Christ. And his branching of his subject into the two proposed topics is not fitted to alarm. To set over against each other, in clear antagonism and antithesis, the idea of vicarious sacrifice entertained by such a one as John, the holy and the loving, and that of the coarse, malignant Caiaphas, is legitimate enough, and might be edifying. We accordingly anticipate with some interest the two views which are to be presented to us of the sacrifice of Christ. But will not the contrite Christian, who believes that the blood of Jesus has satisfied divine justice and reconciled him to God, be entitled to complain that he has been both insulted and deceived when he finds himself identified with Caiaphas? He will not make this discovery until he has made some progress into the sermon. He will find the monstrous injustice and selfishness of Caiaphas set forth very unsparingly before this discovery dawns upon him. And he will have advanced into the second branch of the discourse before he can fully believe that Caiaphas is held up as the type and spokesman of Evangelical Christendom! Such, however, is the fact. For there are only two forms or views of the doctrine indicated: Caiaphas’s human form in which the words are false, and the divine view or principle in which they are true. Listen, then, to what the preacher regards as false:
“Let no man say that Christ bore the wrath of God. Let no man say that God was angry with His Son. We are sometimes told of a mysterious anguish which Christ endured, the consequence of divine wrath, the sufferings of a heart laden with the conscience of the world’s transgressions, which He was bearing as if they were His own sins. Do not add to the Bible what is not in the Bible. The Redeemer’s conscience was not bewildered to feel that His own, which was mot His own. He suffered no wrath of God. ‘Twice came the voice from heaven, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. There was seen an angel strengthening Him. Nay, even to the last, never did the consciousness.of purity and the Father’s love forsake Him. ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’”
Now, to say nothing of the ignorance or incompetency that would represent an evil conscience on our Redeemer’s part as identical, or necessarily connected, with His endurance of the wrath of God; and the similar ignorance or incompetency that would represent the Father’s unchangeable love to the Son as inconsistent with His exacting at His hands, asa Judge. at the hands of a surety, the penalty of the violated law due to those in-whose room He has been appointed and admitted to stand; to say nothing of these very glaring evidences of utter inability to deal with such themes, the paragraph just quoted denies in terms what all Evangelical Churches have ever held to be essential to a true propitiatory sacrifice, namely, that the substitute should bear the wrath of God. It is impossible more expressly to deny the true and proper atonement for sin rendered by Christ, even though one should affirm in terms his disbelief of the assertion, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” The views of this sermon, in fact, are thoroughly Socinian, with this painful difference, that it uses much of the language of Evangelical Churches as honest Socinianism would scorn to do.
With the light thus shed upon our author’s design, let us now go back upon his two topics: the human form in which the words of Caiaphas are false, and the divine principle in which they are true. And “the first falsity in the human statement of that truth of vicarious sacrifice is its injustice.” Jis injustice. One naturally asks, The injustice of what? Of vicarious sacrifice? That cannot be; for it is about to be defended, against Caiaphas and — Christendom! The injustice of the human statement? And yet it is admitted to be the human statement of the truth. But let that pass also. The sermon goes on, under this head, to rail against the evangelical doctrine of the cross in the old fashion. “It has been represented as if the majesty of law demanded a victim.”
We accept the representation. We believe that if the guilty were to be acquitted and accepted as righteous by the Lawgiver, the majesty of the law could not but demand a victim — worthy and willing. And we believe that the sovereignty of Love provided what the sovereignty of Law demanded, — a Substitute every way worthy and altogether willing; a victim, indeed, not in the sense of being dragged to the altar and victimized by death; — it is this sermon itself which actually accepts and teaches this view of Christ’s death, as we shall see; — but a victim, in that He was the Lamb of God, who voluntarily offered Himself, through the Eternal Spirit, without spot, unto God, not victimized by death, but victorious over Him that had the power of death. We accept this representation of law in its majesty demanding a victim. But we both loathe and resent the turn immediately given to this true representation of a holy demand: “And so as it glutted its insatiate thirst, one victim would do as well as another — the purer and the more innocent the better. It has been exhibited as if eternal love resolved in fury to strike, and so as He had His blow, it matters not whether it fell on the whole world, or on the precious head of His own chosen Son.” Comment on this. would be useless. And let not the charitable reader imagine that this is written against
‘some fanatics who have misrepresented the evangel1-
cal doctrine of atonement, and whom all good people
might willingly resign to the tender mercies of any
School, however Broad. He is arguing against any Heh infliction from the Father’s own hand upon His beloved Son. His theory compels Him to do so. He sees Christ suffering in great measure, as all good men in some measure cannot but suffer, in a world constituted as this world is. But tell him of Christ standing at the bar of God in the room of the guilty, and of God as an offended Lawgiver and angry Judge, exacting from Him satisfaction to the law which they had broken, and he tells you, “It represents Him in terms which better describe the ungoverned rage of Saul, missing his stroke at David, who has offended, and in disappointed fury dashing his javelin at his own son Jonathan!” One feels inclined to ask, Have people never read out of the Scriptures, “Awake, O sword, against the man that is my fellow: smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered, and I will turn my hand upon the little ones?”
After railing against the injustice of the Caiaphasview, that is to say, on this scheme, the Christian view, of the atonement, the sermon goes on to speak, secondly, of its selfishness. “The more wrath instead of love is believed to be in the divine name, the more may a man find joy in believing that he is safe. It is the Siberian feeling: the innocent has glutted the wolves; and we may pursue our journey in safety. Christ has suffered, and I am safe. He bore the agony — I take the reward; I may live now with impunity.” We accept the representation; “He bore the agony — I take the reward.” It is not indeed a strictly correct representation, and it carries in it an invidious tone, which would entitle us to repudiate it as in effect a misrepresentation. We are not accustomed to say, “He bore the agony — I take the reward;” but, “He bore the agony — and He receives the reward.” In His love and in His pity, He is pleased to consider our salvation as His reward, — as the joy set before Him, in the view whereof He endured the cross, despising the shame: and the Father’s faithfulness and righteousness conspire to put Him in possession of it. “When His soul shall make an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand: He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied; by His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities.” Still the representation, “He bore the agony — I take the reward,” may be accepted as, in so far, a translation of expressions like these: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us: — He hath made Him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him: — He who was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich.
But, in the first place, we indignantly reject the charge of believing that there is more wrath than love in the divine name. We believe, indeed, that there is wrath; for we cannot imagine a propitiation where no wrath is pre-supposed; and we are expressly warned to flee from the wrath to come. But we believe, not that God is wrath, but that God is love; and we believe and promulgate that, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to’ be the propitiation for our sins.
And, in the second place, we repudiate with abhorrence “the Siberian feeling,” the charge of selfishness, and the calumny that would take exception to this doctrine as if it were calculated to foster selfishness. We see in it, on the contrary, the only true antagonist of selfishness; and we think we can read its effects better in the revelation of God and the experience of Paul than in the reasonings of Mr. Robertson of Brighton: “For we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for all, that they which live should nor henceforth live uNTo THEMSELVES, but unto Him which died for them and which rose again.”
And, thirdly, instead of accepting the inference, “I may live now with impunity,” — which is intended, of course, to mean, I may live as I list with impunity, — we are prepared to prove that it is just the doctrine of this sermon which is fitted to teach men to live as they please, provided only they can keep from too close contact with a certain “wheel” which we are to hear more about immediately.
After settling the injustice and selfishness of Caiaphas and other evangelical Christians, the author proceeds to give his own views of vicarious sacrifice — that is to say, he “passes to the hidden spirit in which these words are true.” And having cleared away the slight incubus of Caiaphas and orthodox Christendom, he has scope for grand action at the outset. “I observe, first, that vicarious sacrifice is the law of being.” A very oracular announcement? It is needless to say that we meet it with a direct denial. Vicarious sacrifice is not only not the law of being, it is not a Jaw at all. It is one solitary, matchless, Divine transaction — never to be repeated, never to be equalled, never to be approached. It was the splendid and unexpected device of Divine wisdom, which in its disclosure flooded the minds of angels with the knowledge of God. It was the free counsel of the good pleasure of God’s will. It was the sovereign appointment of His grace and love. We are robbed of the sovereign love of God by the notion that vicarious sacrifice is “the law of being.” It is the special loving appointment of God, expressly introduced to meet our sin and misery, and to restore us to our Maker’s favor and fellowship. And even the cross of Christ becomes no proof whatever of the love of God if the transaction there be only a case of “the law of being.” It is the usual result, —
Vaunted defences of the love of God, as against evangelical doctrine, issue in obliterating all evidence of any such attribute in the Most High.
This doubtless is not intended. It is not God’s love, but God’s wrath, which it is intended to get rid of. But it obliterates the evidence for both. In particular, it gets rid of the idea of Christ suffering the wrath of God. For if vicarious sacrifice is law of being, our author can quite well affirm that Christ’s sacrifice was vicarious, and yet deny that the Divine hand inflicted any pain upon Him — that the Divine Judge exacted from Him any satisfaction for sin. In all that He suffered the Divine Redeemer was not dealing with an offended moral Lawgiver; He was merely subject to the action of a law of being.
The sermon goes on to say: “It is a mysterious and a fearful thing to observe how all God’s universe is built upon this law (vicarious sacrifice as the law of being): how it peneltnieey and pervades all nature, so that, if it were to cease, nature would cease to exist.” Is this anything else than solemn drivel? All the universe of God built on the law of vicarious sacrifice! It would be a very mysterious thing indeed. Is hell, or heaven, built on the law of vicarious sacrifice? Does this law penetrate and pervade the kingdom of darkness? Does it rule among the unfallen principalities of light? Are they all, time about, offering themselves a sacrifice in one another’s stead? And are they always at it? And is it the law of their being? Reckless assertions of this sort, on a subject so solemn as the death of Christ, do not deserve to be treated respectfully.
Still, for this “law of being,” there is a show of proof. Animals preying on each other — animals slain for human food — the anguish of the mother in giving birth to the child — the first settlers in a country dying by malaria from the swamps and forests which they clear away for their successors — the forlorn hope over whose dead bodies the assailants mount the breach and storm the fortress — in all these he sees the law of vicarious sacrifice. These, however, are instances of the law being obeyed unconsciously and instinctively. “But in the redemption of our humanity, a moment comes when that law is recognized as the will of God adopted consciously, and voluntarily obeyed as the law of man’s existence. Then it is that man’s true nobleness — his redemption begins.” That is to say: till you voluntarily and consciously obey the law by which “the dove is struck down by the hawk,” and “the winged fish falls into the jaws of the dolphin;” by which your table is covered with the flesh of slain animals; by which the ague kills off the first relay of colonists, while they drain its miry lair and clear the ground and cleanse the atmosphere for their successors; by which inexplicable French hilarity madly dances with joy at the prospect, or pleads with tears for the privilege, of being chosen for the forlorn hope, and, alas! “consciously and voluntarily” enough, bounds forward with delight to fill the fosse with dead: — till you voluntarily and consciously obey this law of being you are not redeemed. You are only a Caiaphas! So speaks this vaunted volume. One’s patience is almost gone before there is time to read that, “The highest Man recognized this law, and joyfully embraced it as the law of His existence.” And one thing, among others, becomes very plain; that there was nothing peculiar in the sacrifice of Christ, and that it is absurd to call Him and Him alone the Redeemer. If to offer one’s self a vicarious sacrifice in this sense is to be a redeemer, every one of us must become a redeemer, or submit to be a Caiaphas! In fact, this is a simple assertion of the doctrine, — Every man his own redeemer. What purpose the death of Christ, on such a scheme, can serve, except as an example, it is impossible to see. And on this supposition of His innocence and owr guilt, the circumstances are so diametrically diverse, that, even as an example, it is totally inapplicable and impertinent. No wonder thou gh the Jew “stumble” at it, and the Greek scorn it as “foolishness.”
- But the author “goes beyond this.” Christ’s death was not merely a sacrifice, it was “a sacrifice for sin.” “And in order to understand this, two ideas are necessary to be distinctly apprehended: the first, the notion of punishment; the second, the idea of the world’s sin.” ‘The relative order in which these “two ideas” are put does not promise much clearness. For, surely, some true conception of the meaning and nature of sin should first be gained ere any attempt is made to define the notion of punishment for sin. But we take them as we find them. “Punishment,” he goes on to say, “is of two kinds: the penalty which follows ignorant transgression, and the chastisement which ensues upon wilful disobedience. The first of these is called imputed guilt, the second is actual guilt. By imputed guilt is meant, in theological language, that a person is treated as if he were guilty: if, for example, you approach too near the whirling wheel of steam machinery, the mutilation which follows is the punishment of temerity. You have broken a law of nature, and the guilt of the infraction is imputed to you — there is penalty; but there is none of the chastisement which follows sin. Your conscience is not made miserable.”
This is a very singular paragraph. It is quite obvious, in the first place, that the author is utterly ignorant of the meaning of such a plain theological term as “guilt.” He tells us that the penalty which follows ignorant transgression is called “imputed guilt,” and that the chastisement which ensues upon wilful disobedience is called “actual guilt.” How can the penalty be the guilt? Guilt is righteous liability to punishment. How can it be the punishment to which it makes the transgressor liable? And why should guilt mean one thing when actual, and another thing when imputed? In either case it is liability to the penalty of moral law. But, alas! the moral law and its penalty are utterly unknown in this theory of sacrifice.
Two kinds of punishment are recognized: “the penalty which follows ignorant transgression, and the chastisement which ensues on wilful disobedience.” - And the former is illustrated by the mutilation inflicted when you approach too near the whirling wheel of steam machinery; the latter is remorse of conscience. For the two are thus contrasted: When you suffer from the machinery, “there is penalty; but there is none of the chastisement which follows sin; your conscience is not made miserable.” To be in conflict with the mechanical world without, and to be in conflict with the mental world within, — these are the two kinds of punishment; the one being penalty for ignorant transgression, the other chastisement for wilful disobedience. One thing, again, is very plain: there is no room, on this theory, for the wrath of God against sin. There may be the natural punitive action of physical law, and the inward wretchedness of remorse; but as to any infliction or penalty from the hand of God as a Judge, there is no room for it.
It would seem difficult on this alternative view of punishment to account for the sufferings of Christ. The author admits in terms that Christ was punished. “He bore the penalty of others’ sins. He was punished.” Was he punished with the penalty of ignorant transgression? Or was he punished with the chastisement of wilful disobedience? The dilemma would seem trying enough. But there is room for another move yet before the author’s logic can be riveted in the checkmate into which he is so helplessly falling. It seems there is after all a third kind of punishment. “According to the constitution of this world, it is not only our own transgressions of ignorance, but besides, the faults of others which bring pain and sorrow on us.” This is illustrated by the irritable and nervous temperament which a father’s intemperance may entail upon his child, or the penury which one may inherit from a distant ancestor’s extravagance. Then we are told that “in the language of theology these sufferings are called imputed guilt”! “There is between them, however, and the chastisement of personal iniquity an all-important distinction.” In the latter, such punishments resulting from the man’s own misconduct carry with them the miseries of conscious fault. When they “come as the penalty of the wrong of others, then philosophically, though you may call them punishment in the popular sense of the word, they are no punishments at all, but rather corrective discipline — nay, even richest blessings, if they are received from a father’s hand, and transmuted by humbleness into a means of spiritual growth.” And then, as having reached the goal in triumph, the author exclaims, “Apply all this to the sacrifice of Christ. Let no man say that Christ bore the wrath of God. Let no man say that God was angry with His Son.” And the passage follows which we quoted at the commencement of our comments. Yes; apply all thts to the sacrifice of Christ. Let no man explain the unexampled terrors, the special nature, the peculiar fruits of the sufferings of Christ, by regarding Him as answerable at the bar of divine justice in the room and stead of those who had incurred the wrath and curse of God. But apply this to the sacrifice of Christ. Call His sufferings “corrective discipline.” Say the cup of Gethsemane, the agonizing cross, were not punishments, but “richest blessings,” to be transmuted by Christ’s humbleness into the means of His spiritual growth! And when you have said this — when you have “applied all this to the sacrifice of Christ” — judge whether you have not blasphemed the justice and love of God, impeached the moral purity and perfection of the Redeemer, and insulted the understanding and outraged the moral sense of every Christian man. The author himself cannot rest in this. He must fall back upon his own alternative view of punishment. He is compelled to choose in the dilemma, — Did Christ suffer the chastisement of wilful disobedience, or the penalty of ignorant transgression? And he chooses the latter. For penalty on ignorant transgression, he says, is imputed guilt! Hence it comes at last to this most deplorable dogma: “Christ came into collision with the world’s evil, and He bore the penalty of that daring. He approached the whirling wheel, and was torn in pieces.”
Most shocking! “He approached the whirling wheel, and was torn in pieces.” What infinite degradation to the Redeemer! Himself He cannot save. He istorn in pieces. And whatinfinite triumph to the whirling wheel! For of course the wheel goes on whirling still; and that whirling wheel is “the world’s evil”!
And this is the sacrifice of Christ — the offering of Himself to God! The author declaims against “the work of redemption being defended by parallels drawn from the most atrocious records and principles of heathenism.” I just ask, What parallel can be found to his own view of that work more accurate than a sacrifice to Juggernaut beneath the crushing wheels of his bloody car? “If His chosen Son violates law, and throws Himself from the pinnacle, He dies. If you resist a law in its eternal march, the universe
crushes you, that is all..... If you approach too near the whirling wheel, the mutilation which follows is the punishment of your temerity..... He approached the whirling wheel, and was torn in pieces.” Was not this to become a victim in the coarse sense of being victimized? He gave way in “the collision with the world’s evil.” He bore the penalty of His daring; He was torn in pieces! Ah! how infinitely different is the doctrine of revelation: — “I have overcome the world;” “He was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil” — that is, the world’s evil; “He spoiled the god of this world, and made a show of him openly.” His death was His triumph over the world’s evil. It was not the triumph of — a whirling wheel! In the hour of His extremest weakness He was powerful to defy and vanquish the world’s utmost evil; and powerful to offer Himself unto God a ransom for sin. He was not conflicting with a physical or social law of this evil world’s constitution, and paying the penalty of His daring. He was magnifying the Moral Law and making it honorable, and gaining the eternal rewards of obedience unto death. He was not helpless in the embraces of an infernal machine. But His Cross — to which, from such insults on its work and doctrine, we turn with renewed adoring admiration — was the instrument which, in the lowest ebb of His human strength, He wielded with Almightiness, through the Eternal Spirit, as the weapon of His warfare and the means of His victory. And the shame and agony of the powers of darkness will be eternally renewed in the bitter reflection, that their defeat was achieved by an instrument so full of agony and shame to Him, who nevertheless, by means of it, defeated them.
Such is a specimen of Robertson’s sermons — a lamentable compost of unintentional blasphemy and, theological ignorance. Its fundamental aberration from the truth is a very fatal one, being neither more nor less than the entire denial of Moral Law, strictly and properly so called. It speaks, indeed, of moral laws; but identifies them in kind and in action with those physical laws in accordance with which God rules the dead mechanism of the material world. You bring your body into conflict with the wheel of steam machinery. You suffer mutilation; wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores and broken bones. This is your penalty. But there are surgical remedies, and the vis medicatrix nature. In like manner, you place your mind in conflict with the laws of truth and righteousness; you utter falsehood or commit iniquity. The law reacts upon you in remorse and self-contempt. This is your penalty here. But you bethink you of the law of vicarious sacrifice — the “great law of being”! And you begin “consciously” to obey it. You bethink you also of Christ’s obedience to it — of His vicarious sacrifice; and, either from your own obedience to that law, or His, or from both, a sort of vis medicatrix nature comes into play in this department of pain and penalty too. In this way the whole matter is one of physical process; and somehow, as a broken leg becomes strong and serviceable again, an outraged conscience does the same. Such is the “healing of the hurt of the daughter of my people”!
It is very plain, on such a scheme, that the Moral
Law is not an instrument by which we are brought into any closer and more direct and personal relation to God, than by the physical laws of nature. The whole universe, in this view, is fatalistic. The law of the Ten Commandments is no objective rule or code of duty, binding in any proper sense on the consciences of men, and claiming authoritatively to regulate their wills. It is a ceaseless subjective energy — a kind of law of spiritual gravitation, operating very much like the law which governs the movements of the planets and the fall of heavy bodies. Its violation also operates in very much the same manner, the law reacting injuriously on the breakers of it; though gradually admitting of a remedial process and a curative influence from the sacrifice of Christ, which, it would appear, is a sort of inevitable necessity in the history and development of the race, while at the same time it is very far from clear whether Christ in His redemption-work is to be regarded as having observed or violated the law Himself. “If His own chosen Son violates law, and throws Himself. from the pinnacle, He dies,” says Mr. Robertson. And, it would appear, He did actually die in this way. For Mr. Robertson, in this one same discourse, in professed exposition of vicarious sacrifice, says concerning the Lord Jesus Christ: “He approached the whirling wheel, and was torn in pieces”!
And yet, concerning productions such as this, we are told that no man who regards his reputation as a “thinker” can do other than admire and imitate them: nor are there wanting those who, through mingled vanity and pusillanimity, are trying it. They hear it said, and they seem partly to believe it, that to refuse to smile on variations such as these from the creeds and symbols of a bygone age, is “theological despotism.” To exclude from our Scottish Churches, men of such genius, originality, and learning, is to suppress the spirit of erudite investigation, and to destroy intellectual independence and freedom of modern thought! But can any intelligent man be ignorant of the fact that, instead of the creeds and symbols of the Churches of the Reformation having proved suppressive of true learning and erudition, they have called forth, in the investigations that paved the way for them, in their construction, exposition, and defence, erudition and learning the most magnificent ever exhibited in any department of human thought; and that to this hour they afford scope, in the illustration and enforcement of their doctrines, for the highest exercises of the human mind, and for the noblest gifts with which any man has yet been found endowed? And what is to be the splendid gain to the Church of Christ from throwing loose, and unsettling, and abandoning all her attainments in the knowledge of the thoughts and the will of God? Tell our lawyers to plead in our courts on any theories of law they please, however mutually contradictory. Give medical degrees to hopeful young scholars and “thinkers” who claim the liberty of disbelieving the circulation of the blood, and who make the claim in the name of freedom of thought and independent investigation. Present us in our Universities with “the beautiful phenomenon” of one Professor teaching the Newtonian system of the universe; another the Ptolemaic theory of the immobility of the earth; and a third the free and independent, erudite and learned little pleasantry of the Egyptians, that the heavenly “bodies were carried round the heavens in chariots close on all sides but one, in which there was a round hole, and that eclipses were occasioned by the accidental turning of their dark sides toward us” (ENCYCLOPZDIA ME-TROPOLITANA, Astronomy, p. 485). Do all this. Doit on the plea of resisting scientific despotism, of liberating human thought, of asserting independence of investigation, of promoting learning and erudition. Then come to the Churches of Scotland, and ask us to embrace in our communion a Jowett, a Maurice, a Kingsley, and a Robertson.
Theological despotism! I take with the impeachment. And I retort with the analogue of Astronomical despotism. For, like many more, I have read a little in both sciences; and men who in dealing with theology are ever and anon, without knowing it, running up their representations into paralogism, yea, and blasphemy, I shall acknowledge as theologians, when I shall have learned to acknowledge him as an astronomer who believes that
The Moon which rose last night round as my shield
has the radius of “my shield” for its diameter.