Difficulties of Both Theories

ip I can have only one of those theories to the total

exclusion of the other, my embarrassment will be very great. In fact it will be impossible for me to determine a choice, for reasons about to be stated. Once more let me say clearly that both those theories are strenuously maintained by men of ardent piety, and that therefore neither of them is to be treated as unworthy of respectful attention. If all the godly men had been ranged on one side, and all the ungodly men on the other, our task would have been less delicate; but where the division is equal in the matter of moral excellence, both sides must be heard without impatience or contempt.

1. Suppose the believer in what is called the expiation theory should ask: Why can you hesitate when you have to decide upon such plain words as blood, sacrifice, altar, offering; do not these words explain and enforce their own meaning? JI should answer (recalling what we have already proved to be matter of fact) that if such words stood alone they would certainly not only explain and enforce their own meaning, but positively determine and close the question for ever; but if a high figurativeness of expression was as clearly a characteristic of the speech of Christ as a high symbolism was a characteristic of the Levitical ritual, we must interpret Christ’s words according to the genius of Christ’s own way of speaking. We have seen (at the close of our fourth chapter) that Christ did not intend the first and most obvious meaning of some of His most important words to be taken; as for example, when He said, Ye must be born again; when He cautioned His disciples to beware of the leaven of Herod; when He said that Elias had already come; and when He challenged the Jews to destroy the temple and He would build it again in three days. If then, in these instances He certainly did attach extraordinary meanings to ordinary words — did in fact use the material to typify and express the spiritual — how can I be sure beyond all fear or doubt, that when He said “My dlood is drink indeed” He did not figuratively set forth the sufficiency, the indispensableness, and the vitality of His Jove? If I did so understand it I should certainly not violate the usage of Christ’s own speech; but if I insisted upon the absolutely literal meaning of the word, I might incur Christ’s reproach, How is it that ye do not understand?

2. Suppose, then, that the moral theorist should commend my reasoning, and confirm it by reminding me that such words as blood, sacrifice, altar, offering, and the like, are Jewish; that they were used by Jews in addressing Jews, and must therefore be taken as local or figurative, I should answer: Possibly so; I have certainly become familiar with those tragical words in reading the Old Testament, and I have met them, or some variety of them, in heathen writers. I know, too, that the blood of an animal or a man is finite and measurable, and that in the old biblical sense there was no altar on Calvary, only a Roman cross, a tree accursed of the Hebrew. So far your suggestion amounts to a decision; but when you have taken out of Christ’s history all such Jewish words as blood, offering, sacrifice, and altar, you leave behind one word that is more than Jewish, a word that is in very deed human and universal, namely, Christ died for us, — died for us according to the scriptures! you are bound to explain this. It was not death by natural causes; it was not a mere murder; it was predicted in Genesis, typified in the wilderness, foreshadowed in the ritual, sung in the psalms with mingled mournfulness and hope, and declared by Christ Himself to be the laying down of His own life. I must therefore ask that this dying, dying for men, dying for men according to the scriptures, be fully and decisively explained.

3. Suppose the expiation theorist should come to my aid at this point, and explain the death of Christ by saying that Christ received upon Himself the vengeance due to sinners; He took their place; He suffered in their stead; and He satisfied the claims of divine justice, and thus created an objective ground upon which sinners can secure and enjoy the remission of sins. I should answer: How can one man suffer for countless generations of mankind? If one man had taken the place of one man, there might have been a kind of arithmetical justice in the case, or an arrangement that might have admitted of partial defence; but that one man should be taken as a substitute for millions of men, is an apparent injustice not to the one man, but to the innumerable millions for whom He stood: to the one man, indeed, there might be nothing (momentary humiliation and pain excepted) but glory in such substitution, a gratification of vanity in deed, and an easy passport to immortal renown. But that one man should be taken as a sacrifice sufficient to meet the accumulated and ageravated sins of all generations of mankind, from the creation of Adam to the day of judgment, is to set the smallest possible value upon human nature itself. It is, too, to cast a painful reflection upon the character of God by apparently opening the way for such a suggestion, as that He simply wanted one man (any man) to die, that He might satisfy a fiction of law, and magnify the sentimentality of justice. But this argument will be encountered by the suggestion that the quality of the man who died more than balances the numbers whom He represented and substituted. We must be careful how we admit this, lest we effect such a separation between Christ and ourselves as will destroy the point of sympathy at which we are both supposed to meet. He must not be clothed with attributes which shall have all the effect of destroying His humanity, though, as we have allowed in the opening argument, He may be more than any one man, and may indeed be all men in one; but if He is all men in one this must be either proved or so far elucidated as to surround any other view of His nature with supreme and immovable difficulties. Simply taking Him as one man, leaves the apparent injustice exactly where we found it.

4, Suppose, then, the moral theorist should say: Christ came down from heaven to show to men the love of God; to win men to God by the infinite charm of His pure and loving life; and to be their example in all things evermore. I should instantly answer, perhaps with somewhat of indignation in the tone, 7hat cannot be all He meant to do, or He mocked and dishonoured us in the way of doing it, If there is one thing needful almost beyond all others to make an example effective, it is time; and time is the one thing most conspicuously absent from the ministry of Jesus Christ. We know how true it is that a man may be able to set a good example for one day, who could not hold out for one week. Or he might for three years be able to live at the highest point of his strength, and not be able to continue his good behaviour for double that period, much less for the ordinary term of human life.

There are men who “did run well” but who allowed themselves to be “hindered.” Now a just contention would be that if Jesus Christ came merely to set an example to mankind, He should have lived as long as Methuselah; at least He should have lived longer than any man has ever done since the supposed shortening of the days of our years upon the earth. Suppose He had lived for fifty years, His example could not be supposed to apply to a man who has lived fifty-one, because, for anything he could, as a merely exemplary person, tell, the real burden and difficulty of life may not begin until immediately after the completion of the fiftieth year. Not only so: ‘There is another consideration that enters very forcibly into this argument. Not only should an Example have been continued long enough to cover all the possibilities of human longevity, it ought to have been displayed in all lands, and under all conditions of human experience, or it can be no example to those whose conditions it neither contemplated nor realised. Life may be one thing in Palestine and another in Africa. It may be easy to be pious and honourable in a land of venerable civilisation, but almost impossible to be even decent in a land hardly removed one step from the grossest barbarism; and herein the struggling semi-barbarian who was yielding to the importunity of unconquered appetites would have a powerful appeal against the alleged sufficiency of an Example, namely, what would have been the fate of such an Example under the terrible conditions which make my life a torment and a despair? But say that Jesus Christ came to die for men, and instantly light is shed upon every word He uttered; and beyond this, the suggestion is supported by the very fact which made the other theory incredible. To have taken a long time to prepare for death would have been out of keeping with the necessities of the case. It might have excited suspicion. It certainly would have aggravated the suspense of those to whom the end had been foretold. But to be here just long enough to make His historical reality indisputable, to give an outline of doctrine, to encounter the severest assaults of poverty and loneliness, and to promise a Spirit that should complete in Thought what He had begun in Fact, was all that was needful if His death and resurrection were to be the principal facts in His earthly history. This is precisely what Christ was and what Christ did. From the beginning there was a tone which meant haste. The night was coming wherein no man could work; as long as He was in the world He was the light of the world; it was expedient for His disciples that He went away; He was to be lifted up; in a little while He was not to be seen; He was going to be killed, yet no man took His life away; silence on many a topic was to be kept until He had risen from the dead; He was straitened until His baptism was accomplished; He sweat as it were great drops of blood.

This is not the way in which a mere Example would have been set.

5. Suppose the expiation theorist should now say: Is it not clear, then, from your own reasoning, that Christ came only and solely to satisfy divine justice, and to receive upon Himself the wrath due to sinners? I should instantly answer, No. My reasons would be, first of all, that Jesus Christ, to the best of my inquiry and recollection, never used the words “divine justice,” or any words fairly equivalent to them in meaning; and secondly, that there are passages in the New Testament into which I could not insert the principal terms of the expiation theory without at least apparently destroying their beauty and their force. It is upon this reason that I should lay the oreatest stress. Take a few passages by way of illustration: (1.) God so loved the world that He poured out

Difficulties of Both Theortes. P5i5

upon His only-begotten Son the judicial wrath which sinners had wickedly provoked. Or reversing the passage — God was so angry with sinners, and so hotly did His indignation burn against them, that He gave His only-begotten Son. (2.) God who is rich in mercy, for His ereat love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, poured out the vials of His wrath upon His Son as upon a wicked criminal (Calvin’s word), that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace toward us through Christ Jesus (Eph. xi. 4-7). Or (3.) After that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, we saw that God had taken vengeance upon His Son, with His Son’s consent, for the sins of mankind (Titus i, 4). Or (4.) In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world that He might satisfy divine justice (John iv. 9). With such passages as these before me I feel that something is wanted which the severe theory of expiation does not supply, or if it does supply some modification of it, it is by inferences so remote and so difficult of logical management as to fail of an immediate and happy effect. That theory speaks of divine justice, rectorial honour, judicial or sovereign righteousness, and these passages, so glowing and so tender, infinite in pathos and persuasivéness, speak expressly and exclusively of grace and kindness and mercy and love,

6. Then the moral theorist may claim my adhesion, inquiring whether it is not clear on my own showing, that Jesus Christ came to reveal the love of God, to prove that, there was no obstacle in the way of my being reconciled, and to exemplify in actual life the patience and mercy and long-suffering of the Eternal Father? I answer: It is perfectly clear that on no conceivable theory of the Atonement can the love of the Eternal Father be dissociated from the coming and the priesthood of His Son, but to admit this much does not cover the whole case. Why should Christ have died to show that God loved me? Would not His word, illumined as it was by such wonderful works, have been amply sufficient? ‘Would it not have been better, in fact, for that purpose, than to have died under circumstances which have at least the appearance, on first sight, of having overmastered not His protestations only but His actual strength? A man of undoubted sagacity, He foresaw that He must go down before the hostility He had unexpectedly or of set purpose excited; and having foreseen His own destruction He adroitly made the best of His hapless fate by suggesting that it all came within the circle of His purpose, and that this was the very thing He came to work out! Whereas there was really no occasion for Him to have excited the tremendous hostility which He provoked, if He merely came to tell men that God loved them, and that consequently there was no obstacle in the way of their return to sonship and loyalty. He could have declared this gospel with all His own infinite charm of speech, and have illustrated it in many a parable and in many a miracle of healing, and never have touched the prejudices of Jew or Roman. To confirm His declaration, He could have ascended precisely as He is reported to have done from Olivet, and whilst He yet lingered in the encircling and radiant cloud He could have said, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature! Instead of this, He died; He was delivered for our offences; He who knew no sin was made sin for us; He gave His life a ransom for many! I cannot, therefore, accept the theory of the revelation of the love of God by Jesus Christ as wholly explaining the great mystery of godliness.

7. Then the expiation theorist will demand my un-Difficulties of Both Theorves. Lids

qualified adhesion to the doctrine that the Death of Christ sustains a unique relation to the remission of sins. I answer, What is the precise meaning you attach to the word “unique”? Do you mean that Christ’s Death, in distinction from all other, really sustains this peculiar relation to human sin? Then my own argument compels me to agree with you, which I do with deep and thankful joy. But do you mean the Death of Christ in distinction from His Life? If so, I must ask for explanations before agreeing with you. Does not the word “unique” apply as forcibly, because as correctly, to one part of Christ’s ministry as another? The people said, “Never man spake like this man;” and Christ Himself said that He did miracles which none other man did. ~- Here, then, we certainly have uniqueness. But we can come still closer to the argument. Before Jesus Christ died, He forgave the sins of many, so that His Death (literally understood) was not needful for this act of remission and pardon. To the sick of the palsy, He said, “Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.’1 He made this reply in answer to faith, and that faith had not relation to the Death of Christ, but to His manifest power and graciousness. If this act, therefore, could be completed in one case, why not in all? To the woman who was a sinner He said, “Thy sins are forgiven;”2 and they that sat at meat with Him began to say, “Who is this that forgiveth sins also?” And then Christ made the same answer as before, “Thy faith hath saved thee; goin peace.” ‘This faith had no relation to the specific act of Christ’s Death, yet it secured the blessing of forgiveness and peace, so much so that the woman couid have said in anticipation of Paul himself, “Being justified by faith, I have peace with God through Jesus Christ.” 3 In other instances Christ uttered the word of pardon in answer to human faith, so there can be little doubt that 1 Luke v, 20. 2 Luke vii, 48, $; Rome vel, forgiveness was pronounced, as it was certainly promised,! before the cross was mentioned. Quite as notable are the terms in which He gave His last instructions to the apostles: “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” * There is nothing said, even in those posthumous words, about the Death as in contradistinction from the whole ministry of Christ; and if it be said that the Death was specifically and exclusively wnderstood, there are other passages which would seem decidedly to cover a larger meaning than the mere act of death. For example, remission of sins. is to be preached in His name ;? through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; 4 and, your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sakes It is clear, therefore, that before conceding this final claim of the expiation theorist, I must know what he means by putting the Death of Christ in unique relation to the forgiveness of sins. If he uses the term Death inclusively, he must elevate the whole ministry of Christ into a unique relation to human pardon; if he elevates the whole ministry of Christ into a unique relation to human pardon, the moral theorist may claim equality of merit for the life and love as against the mere death of Christ; and as the life and the love of Christ cover a much longer historical space than the crucifixion, he may urge his claim with evidence ample enough, in his judgment, so far as to put the one act of death in subordination to the many disclosures of divine tenderness and readiness to take back the worst of prodigals.

8. Suppose the expiation theorist should put his argument in this way: “I will not say that it was necessary that Christ should submit to the penalty of sin in order

1 Matt. i. 21. 3 Luke xxiv. 47. § 1 John xi. 12. 2 John xx, 23. 4 Acts xiii. 38, that our original and ideal relation to God through Him should be preserved or recovered, for I shrink from confident priori speculations on this great mystery; and if I sometimes speak of the impossibility of redemption apart from the Death of Christ, I only mean that by His Death He has accomplished what we are unable to imagine could have been accomplished in any other way.”! First of all, the question is not what any man would say or would not say, but what is actually said by Christ and His apostles; Second, no man knows the full meaning of the word “necessary” in such a relation, but the presumption is that if God appointed this as the way of salvation that it was necessary, and therefore that it is proper so to represent it; Thirdly, who is to assign the limits of imagination [“we are unable to imagine”] in an inquiry into the necessity and method of the Atonement? The statement that we are unable to imagine how Christ could have accomplished what He did accomplish had He not submitted to the actual penalty of sin, is contradicted by a most voluminous literature in opposition to the expiation argument. There is really nothing easier than to have set up such an imagination, and in fact it is one of the most practical difficulties in the way of moral theorists that good men could ever have brought themselves to imagine that Christ endured the penalty of sin. Hence we find Mr. Martineau? saying that “if this vicariousness be not a mere pretence, it describes an outrage upon the first principles of rectitude, a reckless disregard of all moral considerations, from the thought of which we are astonished that all good men do not recoil.” So much for imagination! Mr. Dale would seem to open the way for the conclusion that if we could imagine any way by which the remission of sins could have been accomplished without Christ submitting to the actual

1 Dale on the Atonement, p. 424.
2 Studies of Christianity, p. 188.

— — ee

penalty of sin we should at least impair the force of the reasoning by which the theory of expiation is sustained. Why should there be any exercise of imagination in the case, when there is a solid rock-work of actual history to rest upon? The world was not allowed to remain three or four thousand years in ignorance of the gracious fact that sin could be forgiven and iniquity be blotted out. In the Book of Exodus! we have a revelation upon this very point, not excelled in richness in the Gospels themselves: “The Lord God is merciful and gracious!” Yet Christ had not died. “Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin!” Yet Christ had not died. Nor did this long-suffermg and abundance of goodness arise from an excess of sentiment as prevailing against justice, for He revealed Himself as a God that “will by no means clear the guilty.” The forgiveness of sins is not a transaction which dates only from the Death of Christ upon Calvary; its history is ancient and glorious, going back to the church of the first-born. “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”? “Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of Thy people, Thou hast covered all their sin.’ “The Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away His face from you, if ye return unto Him.”4 Here, then, we have the remission of sins ages before the death of Christ historically so-called. If it be said that Christ’s Death was set forth in type and symbol, that statement would require first to be proved, and even then it would not substantiate the doctrine on whose behalf it is submitted but go rather towards its disproof, for if a symbol could do all that was needful (which it evidently did or the ancient church could not have been saved), then the cruel and wicked tragedy of the crucifixion of Christ could have been spared.

2 Exod. xxxiv.*6, 7, B APs) Iexxy, 2)
2 Ps REx 4 2 Chron. xxx. 9.

Difficulties of Both Theortes. 161

9. Now the moral theorist will distinctly claim my adhesion, and will probably contend that the preceding argument requires my rejection of the theory of expiation under every form; I say under every form, for it is unquestionably stated variously, and is notably smoothed down by some of its expositors, But I cannot yield to this -demand! To whatever conclusion the argument may hereafter bring me, it is quite certain that at the present moment the moral theory has not completely established its absolute authority. I cannot but think that the phrase “The Death of Christ,’ is too narrow; it is certainly so used as to point out a single historical circumstance, and is thus, in my opinion, deprived of its proper force in the argument. Were the Death of Christ a fact complete in itself, even as including the extreme points of the Advent and the Ascension, it would be difficult (I think impossible) to show in the face of four thousand years’ history that it sustained a wnique relation to the forgiveness of sins. But by enlarging the term, according to the distinct authority of Scripture, we create an enormous (I think insurmountable) difficulty in the way of the moral theory. The Death of Christ was not a point in a history, it was the open revelation of the fundamental fact in the moral government of mankind. Christ is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”! “Christ was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world.”2 Jesus Christ was beloved of the Father “before the foundation of the world.”3 He came to “utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.”4 The works of God were finished from the foundation of the world.5 Here we have the key of history. The end was planned from the beginning. Everything was created in Christ, for Christ, by Christ, He is before all things, and 1 Rev. xiii. 8, 3 John xvii. 24. Heb. iv. 3. 2°) Pete 2. 20; 4 Matt. xiii. 35.; L by Him all things consist. I cannot therefore confine this solemn controversy to a few facts that took place within a small area of space and time; I must throw back the mind before “foundations” and “manifestations,” and see all things coming up out of the eternal purpose. In this fair and wondrous light, streaming from the morning stars, I see how a cruel and barbarous murder may be changed into a Sacrifice and a savour well-pleasing to God.

There is a second difficulty in the way of my acceptance of the moral theory. I am quite prepared to say again, with all the emphasis which the moral theorist can require as due from my own argument, that the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins was perfectly familiar to the Jews before Jesus Christ was born; if sins were forgiven before the Incarnation it is impossible that the Incarnation (historically so limited) could have been necessary to the forgiveness of sins; and if it was not necessary, it may be but a play upon words, or a use of words for the sake of controversy, to say that the Death of Christ (as an act measurable by time) bore a unigue relation to the holy and divine act of pardon. But this is only one side of the case, and the side of least importance. The Atonement is not a Jewish but a Human question. The Jews were an elect people. To them “pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenant, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.”1 “They received the lively oracles to give unto us.”* God “had not dealt so with any nation.” There was no nation so creat that had statutes and judgments so righteous.4 To bring the knowledge of the remission of sins to such a ‘people was really to bring no new intelligence; though that intelligence could be given in a new and transcendent form of excellence, and could be invested with infinite tenderness and pathos, still the central fact would remain

1 Row. ax: 3 Ps, exlvii. 190. 2 Acts vil. 38. * OD etit. 1S ose the same, namely, that God had forgiven the sins of His people for full four thousand years. This new rendering of a fact so venerable was not likely to strike the Jewish mind as an evidence of the Messiahship of the man who presumed to reveal it in a new but unattractive embodiment. Glorious as it is in itself, yet it was singularly the fact least likely to make a deep impression upon minds familiar with it, through the recollection of long and many ages of waiting for the Deliverer and King of the Jews. But if we widen the horizon, we shall come upon this question: How was an intricate and costly system of sacrifice, constructed for the use of one particular nation, so to be replaced as to retain the primary idea of atonement, and yet to be adapted to all nations and to all possible circumstances throughout all time? The answer of Christianity, taken in a merely literary point of view, is undoubtedly marked by great magnificence of conception. As introductory, and intended by its laboriousness and expense to meet the then condition of an elect society, the Levitical system was perfect: constantly recurring; almost microscopically minute; appealing incessantly to the personal life and conscience; exacting the most rigorous and difficult service, what could be more calculated to show the grievousness of sin, and the sacredness of law? ‘Throughout the whole system there is nothing that palliates sin, but everything to remind the sinner that sin involves a debt which the most painstaking service can only acknowledge but never diminish: the sin-offering, the trespass-offering, the burnt-offering, the peace-offering, were constantly taxing the resources of the Jew, and leaving him without any escape from the vindictive and tormenting presence of his sin. Truly the Jew, had he but known it, was the priest of the whole world, and for his Altar’s sake “the desolate heritages” of the earth were not consumed! The question now enlarges: How to universalise the idea of Atonement without universalising the Jewish ritual of sacrifice? If this question can be answered satisfactorily we shall see the link of connection (nay more, the very process of transition) between the elaborately sensuous mediation instituted amongst the Jews and the final spiritual ministry by which all hearts are to be subdued and sanctified. Even if we admit (instead of firmly denying, which we do) that men could without aid from heaven have conceived such a sacrificial ritual as is laid down in the Old Testament — a ritual so exacting and so costly that men would not have instituted even if they could have invented it — it does not follow that they could have conceived a method of universalising the atonement without universalising their detailed ceremony of sacrifice. Such a ceremony does not provide itself with a final line; it is a constantly-recurring beginning; it will be as much required to-morrow as to-day; its last act is as initiatory as its first. The fact that it cannot end itself by development, that if it does end itself it must be by abrupt cessation, is a presumptive argument that the ceremony of Jewish sacrifice, viewed as a human invention, can never meet the wants of the whole world. Assuming, on the other hand, that the Jewish sacrifice, though local in itself, was universal in its typifications, our eagerness to know how it will be fulfilled, and thus adapted to the whole world through all time, becomes intense. This, then, is the answer: “Every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, but this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God.”1 The last of the priests was the last of the sacrifices, the Son of man, the Son of God!

Fix the mind upon the point that Christ was not sent 1° Heb. x. 11, 12:

unto the Jews only, though it was necessary that the Gospel should jirst be preached unto them, — on the earthly side, indeed, they may be said to have created the Gospel, for only amongst a people so trained and so disposed could Jesus Christ have unfolded and consummated His ministry. But to have come to save the Jews only would have been (1) impossible, and (2) unworthy. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” He proposed, in reply to a certain petition, to confine His labours to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but the Gentile woman, unconsciously representing the broadest and grandest of the ancient prophecies, called Him by the eternal necessities of the human heart to widen His mission and come and save mankind. To this end came He into the world, not to save Jews but to save sinners, not to rebuild a nation but to found a spiritual and everlasting kingdom. Of Christ it was said in prophecy, “It is a light thing that Thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be My salvation unto the ends of the earth.”! This prophecy involved the annihilation of any ritual that was merely Jewish. “And the Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to the brightness of Thy rising.”? “I will preserve Thee, and give Thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages.” 3 “JT give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.”* “TI saw im the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was given unto Him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and laneuages, should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion,

1 Tsa, xlix. 6. 27 19a. Tx; 3; 7 eas xlix: 8. Psi Si which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”!

Read in the light of these passages how poor is any relation which Jesus Christ could have sustained to the disennobled and servile Jews of His own day! It 1s clear that neither His person nor His ministry must be estimated or determined by circumstances local and temporary. It was needful, made so by the whole scheme of providence and the peculiar training of the nation, that Christ should enter the world by the Jewish gate, yet it was only a gate, a door that was to be lifted up that the King of glory might come in. Through Him repentance and forgiveness of sins were to be preached to all nations. No altar was to be built. No ritual was to be established. No instruction in blood-shedding or incense-burning was to be given; the nations were to receive forgiveness of sins “BY FAITH THATIS IN ME”! In the light of these glowing promises and splendid realisations, I put it to you whether we have not a right to re-claim the word “unique,” and to say with deeper and tenderer emphasis than ever, that the priesthood of Christ sustains a unique relation to the forgiveness of sins?

1 Dan. vii, 13, 14,
“FHE POINT ORLREST.

ore