The Point of Rest
He question now arises, How to find the point of rest amongst differences so vast and so angry? Take another glance at them before considering the inquiry. Dr. Isaac Watts says: “Christ died to appease the wrath of God.” Bishop Heber says: “Christ died to meet His Father’s anger.” The poet Cowper says: “God is always formidable to me, except when I see Him disarmed of His sting by having sheathed it in the body of Jesus Christ.” And a living writer,’ in quoting these sentiments, says: “Now such a representation of mediation as this is not only directly contrary to Scripture, but it is essentially: heathenish, and destructive of all real love to God.” President Edwards says: “Christ suffered the positive infliction of Divine wrath.” He also says: “Revenging justice then spent all its force upon Him on account of our euilt,... and this was the way and means by which Christ stood up for the honour of God’s justice, viz., by thus suffering its terrible accusations: for when He had undertaken for sinners, and had substituted Himself in their room, Divine justice could have its due honour no other way than by His suffering its revenges.” Dr. Jenkyn says: “The most amazing circumstance connected with His death was, that He suffered as one disowned, and reprobated, and forsaken of God.” And Dr. Dwight says: “The hiding of God’s
1 Rev. Edward White, in his instructive and fascinating volame, “Life in Christ,” p, 272.
face from Christ implied that Christ suffered God’s hatred and contempt,” whereupon Dr. Payne exclaims: “No sober-minded man can admit this.” But Dr. Timothy Dwight was “a sober-minded man,” and not only did he admit it, he declared and preached and enforced it as a Christian doctrine. What, then, are “unlearned and ignorant men” to do in such a controversy? If to have a right view of the Atonement affects in any way the salvation and destiny of the soul, how can Isaac Watts and Frederick Robertson both be in the same heaven? James Martineau would characterise the poet Cowper’s theology, just quoted, as “a coarse and wretched error,” how then can James Martineau and William Cowper find a common point of rest in their theological thought and hope? Calvin (as already quoted) says: “It was incumbent on Christ to feel the severity of Divine revenge, in order that He might both ward off wrath and satisfy a righteous sentence;” and on the other hand, it has been shown? by abundant and well-certified quotation that the Fathers “looked upon the sacrifice of Calvary, however explained, as part of an eternal purpose, not a device to avert the wrath of the Father, but the utterance of His unfailing love.” The advocates of the moral theory of the Atonement have a right to quote the authority of the Fathers in support of their view, and in doing so they will call to their aid a very powerful and honourable defence. Mr. Oxenham quotes, in the book indicated below, a remarkable passage from St. Augustine, who is styled with appropriate distinction “the greatest doctor of his own or any age of Christian history.” Augustine says: “What means this, ‘reconciled by the death of HisSon’? Is it, that when the Father was angry with us He looked on the death of His
1 In “The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement,” by Rev. H. N. Oxenham, M.A. <A book of remarkable interest, as dealing almost exclusively with the history of this supreme doctrine. — See Notes.
Son for us and was appeased? Had the Son, then, been so completely appeased already, that He even vouchsafed to die for us, but was the Father still so incensed that He would not be appeased unless the Son died for us? ... Would the Father, unless He had been already appeased, deliver up His Son for us, not sparing Him? Do not these statements seem to contradict each other? In the former the Son dies for us, and the Father is reconciled to us by His death; but in the latter the Father, as though He first loved us, Himself does not spare His Son for our sakes, Himself delivers Him up to death for us. But I see that the Father loved us before also, not only before the Son died for us, but before He created the world.... Nor was the Son delivered up for us, as it were, unwillingly when the Father spared Him not, since it is said of Him also, ‘who loved me, and gave Himself for me. The Father, therefore, and the Son, and the Spirit of both, work all things at the same time, equally and harmoniously; yet we are justified in the blood of Christ, and reconciled to God through the death of His Son.”!
In trying to find the point of rest amidst these sharp collisions we must fall back on the principles which our third chapter attempted to illustrate, especially the principle that the whole is greater than the part, and that therefore one man is not all men, and one mood is not the whole mind even of the same man. A cautionary word may not be out of place to the young reader who may be tempted to allow himself to suppose that where there is so much controversy there cannot be any truth. That would indeed be more than unwise, it would be manifestly absurd. Is there no truth in patriotism because one man is a Conservative and another a Liberal? Is there no reality or truth in national government because one
1 Oxenham, pp. 146, 147.
theory is monarchical and another is republican? Or is al’ the truth necessarily on one or the other side of these sharp controversies? May not each have its own degree or aspect of truth? And may there not be circumstances which determine the development and authority of certain forms of dominion? If it be replied that we are now discussing matters of supposed Divine revelation, it is not the less but the more certain that there will be controversy, and perhaps stubborn and uncharitable antagonism, as to the proper meaning, scope, and application of the thing supposed to be revealed. The classification of artificial flowers has never become a science, but there is a botany of the living fields and gardens. No man ever went to prison for affirming the possibility of building a wall, but men have been imprisoned and accounted mad for asserting the rotundity and revolution of the earth. I want you to see through these illustrations how true and certain it is that the greater the subject the greater will be the controversies which it will occasion in living and independent minds,
My argument will be that all these theories and views of the work of Christ may be literally true to the consciousness and the spiritual necessities of the men who uphold them, without being dogmatically binding upon the men who oppose them, and that whether they are literally true, or are merely the most convenient expression of the mind’s supreme necessities at a given time, they do not touch the one great truth that precedes, overrules, and outlasts all human theorising and speculation.
‘Take the poet Cowper’s testimony to begin with: “God is always formidable to me, except when I see Him disarmed of His sting by having sheathed it in the body of Jesus Christ.” Observe this is not laid down merely as a speculative doctrine which the poet is prepared to main-
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The Point of Rest. yes
tain by argument; it is announced as the only view of God which could satisfactorily meet a certain state of mind, The poet is speaking of himself alone, he is revealing his spiritual stand-point, he is melancholy, fearful of heart, and the victim of cruel apprehensions and convictions,
“Damned below Judas, more abhorred than he was,”
and to him in that state God was formidable until he saw the sting of wrath sheathed in the body of Jesus Christ. To a man in a healthier state of mind such a view might be inexpressibly abhorrent and distressing; he might even go so far as to say that he could never love such a God as was worshipped by the poet Cowper. And both the men might be right! If you had said to the poet, “God loves you; He sent His Son Jesus Christ to tell you so, and to lead you home to peace and rest and joy,’ the poet would have exclaimed: “This is impossible! this is mockery! You do not know how many and terrible are my sins! you do not see what I see; the avenging spectres, the spirits of wrath and torment that throng the sultry air, are hidden from you, — O God, I dread Thee!” You must meet his case by a tragedy that shall overpower the disease within him; he must be appalled, confounded, affrighted by a spectacle that shall overmatch the horror spread over his mind by the realisation of his own sin, and out of that greater tragedy he may come to derive the benefit appro- priate to his peculiar distress. But, you will say, God either did sheathe the sting of His wrath in the body of Jesus Christ or He did not, therefore the poet Cowper was either distinctly right or wrong. Pardon me for saying that a case of this kind cannot be put thus sharply and decisively; it is not a case as between the right hand and the left: all conclusions are not reached by technical apparatus; consciousness, sense of need, peculiarity of temperament, mental compass, moral training, all have to do with the broad question of spiritual interpretations, The poet Cowper knew Greek perhaps better than many scholars; his conscience was even morbidly sensitive; his reverence was lofty and constant; his aspirations seemed to his timidity and fearfulness of spirit to lose themselves in clouds black with gathering storms; with this learning and this temperament he approached the New Testament, and there found that Jesus Christ in bearing our sins and carrying our iniquities received into His body the sting of an outraged and avenging justice! No other view could have made itself felt in the then state of his heart. This was the theology that saved him from the hell of despair. The question is not whether it is your view, or whether Cowper himself would have held it had his temperament been other than it was, it is a simple matter of fact that a learned and honest man could approach God in no other way than by this conception of his relation to Jesus Christ.
Set in opposition to this the case of a man whose constitution and temperament are of an exactly opposite type, and it will be a psychological ampossibility for that man to accept the view which alone saved the poet from despair. Even if he found Cowper’s very words in the New Testament itself, they would be a stumbling-block and an offence unto him; he would seek an escape through some real or imaginary difficulty in the grammar; he would flee into the context for alleviation; if he could not have relief from the torture of the literal doctrine, he would either chasten and ennoble it through the medium of his imagination, or bow to it with a reluctance which is fatal to rest and joy. These psychological difficulties, when found in connection with a good and honest life, are not to be treated lightly. To ascribe them to speculative fancifulness, or love of word-play, is flippant and ungenerous, — in many cases rude and unjust. The man, whom we are supposing for the purposes of this illustration, is thoroughly
The Point of Lest. 175
in earnest, supremely anxious to know and love and serve Christ. His notions of abstract or metaphysical justice are not amongst the principal characteristics of his mind; he is emotional, patient, hopeful, and his fatherliness is very pitiful and long-suffering: rectoral discipline there is next. to none in his family; probably he may even felicitate himself upon the fact that he never lifted up the rod - upon one of his children, without being able to add the felicitation that none of his children ever deserved it. Such a man coming to the life of Christ will, by no fantastic choice but by the operation of a Divine law, appropriate the elements which are most congenial to his own nature, and in doing so will find a theology which never could have been discovered or accepted by such a mind as Cowper’s. Observe the terms carefully, if you please, for I have no wish to teach the obviously absurd doctrine that Divine revelation must accommodate itself to accidental moods and whims, I am speaking of the true and proper constitution of the mind; of the constitution which individualises the man from all other men, and which must mould and colour every conviction and every sentiment. Out of this normal difference will come all the startling distinctiveness of Peter and John and Paul, men so marked that they are known by their accent and tone quite as much as by their doctrine and logic.
A third example will be very different. Imagine a man of unusual compass of mind, distinctively critical and by so much tending towards a scepticism that insists upon etymological proof of everything that is submitted for acceptance; a mind that will hold long and severe controversy over the niceties of grammar, and will suspend a faith until it has determined the force of a preposition or the proper arrangement of a disputed punctuation; not a prosaic mind either, but one that will have poetry by itself as poetry, and prose by itself as prose, and will separate as clearly and broadly between fancy and logic as between flymg and walking. Such a mind coming to the New Testament will probably be deeply impressed by the simple and pure humanity of Jesus Christ. It will lay hold upon that as something absolutely indisputable, and will wonder that anything beyond humanity in its noblest and sweetest aspect has ever been found in His illustrious and holy character. Such a mind as I am supposing is solemnised and ruled by a most rigid reverence: it could almost worship the sunrise, and is only saved from doing so because reverence is due to One alone, and that is God. To such a mind Jesus Christ is as a sunrise, a beauteous and pathetic revelation, a light that will warm into noonday and broaden into summer, but stall only the largest of the orbs itself enkindled by a higher flame. Such a mind will love Christ, and follow Him, and call Him Lord and Master, and see nothing but infinite excellence in His gracious and tender life. There it will stop. There it will draw upon itself the designation of being wnitarian. To myself it is an inexplicable mystery that any man can read the New Testament and doubt the true and proper Deity of Jesus Christ; to my eyes it is written upon every page; it is the very crown and glory of revelation! But as a matter of fact the New Testament zs read with other results, and is so read by men illustrious alike for gifts and graces. I dare not question the Christianity of William Ellery Channing or of James Martineau; in every respect they are immeasurably my superiors; in character and in genius, in spirit and in service, they are as high as the highest amongst religious thinkers; yet my soul could no more live upon their theology than my body could live upon ice. To me it is utterly mistaken as to the true Personality of Christ; it is insufficient, one-sided, and mortally cold. It would be easy for me to say that such men are blind, but I should have to prove it; or to say
Lhe Pownt of fest. 177
that they are dishonest, but I should be unable to forgive my own injustice and uncharitableness. ‘To such men the theology of Cowper is little better than blasphemy, yet they read the same New Testament and pray to the same God!
I want to know where the point of rest is in such conflicts; but before venturing to suggest it, let me show you that not only are there such controversies as between one expositor and another, but that in the same soul there may be such variations of mood and temperature as to require, in the course of a lifetime, every possible aspect in which the infinitely various ministry of Jesus Christ can be set. So real is this, that what may be true to one mood may he so far away from the truth distinctively perceived and seized by another mood, as almost to contradict and annul it. Sometimes, for example, nothing can satisfy me but the severest demonstrations of Paul; sometimes, by reason of weariness and fainting of spirit, that reasoning is a burden to me, and must be replaced by the tender and soothing ministry of John; in some moods God is a sun, in others He is as a cool shadow; yesterday He was a strong tower, to-day He is a gentle shepherd. Of His fulness L receive just the grace most needed in the ever-changing moods of the soul. Perhaps we may see this more clearly if we come out of the theological circle for a moment. Let us imaginatively create two sets of circumstances. The day is memorable amongst days for the blueness of its translucent sky, and the tender healthfulness of its balmy wind coming up from the south-west without a chill or a sting; summer lies broadly and - warmly on the sunny landscape which is rich in all the tints of various green, foiled and sharpened by many a darker hue; the spirit of peace is brooding over the quiet scene, making it still with a silence that is not the less holy for the trill and twitter of many a glad bird; and
you are there, with every appetite at rest, released from M
178 The Prtesthood of Christ.
anxiety and care for the time being, a slumbrous joy lulling the soul and bringing it into harmony with the solemn quietness of the day; with half-closed eyes you see visions in the air and sky; behind the cloud yonder, white enough to be snow, warm enough to be wool, you see a face bright as immortal hope, tender as forgiving love; the great stretch of faintly-tinted cloud farther on might be the holy highway into heaven itself, so broad, so full of luring and welcoming light; surely, say you, with a joy not far from tears, this is the Sabbath of the world. Could you in that moment put a knife to the throat of a lamb?
But let the day remain just as it is, westering a little but glorious still; and let your own circumstances be changed. Returning from chase or exploit that has exhausted your strength and awakened your appetite, weary and faint, with necessity at its keenest point, will you feast upon the glowing beauty and spare the lamb? The idea that would have revolted you under one set of circumstances, is the only idea that can satisfy you under another!
Going to the New Testament with a contented and restful heart, you seek out the passages which are most consonant with your own feeling; with the poet you “rove amongst the promises with ever fresh delight.” Every passage that speaks of love, hope, rest, is sweet to you, is, indeed, as a friend welcome to your heart. In the coming of Christ you see peace on earth and good will toward men, and with gladness of soul you add your voice to the “multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” Your soul doth magnify the Lord, for your eyes have seen His ‘salvation, and for the spirit of heaviness you have received the garment of ‘praise. So the mood of your mind will determine your appropriation of scriptural instruction and comfort. But go when deeply and even mortally convinced of sin; when the arrows of the Lord are rankling in your heart; when you know that you have no right to the milk and honey of the Word because of your sin, and when God’s love is a reproach and a torment because of the piercing and relentless accusations of a conscience that will not be appeased, — a conscience that drives you to despair and will not release you until you have paid the uttermost farthing! A pursuing conscience, that refuses sleep to your eyelids because of wickedness unconfessed; that mocks your feeble though monstrous attempts at atonement: a conscience that scorches you like “fire of hell,” and brings up perdition to meet you from far. If you then venture to touch a promise it will sting you. If you put your lips to the well of consolation the water will start back from your felonious approach. If you say the darkness will shield you, lo the lightnings of God turn it into intolerable day. In that hour you must see the work of Christ in its most tragical and appalling aspect, for nothing less can teach a guilt so wicked, an insanity somad. You must see the literal blood, the literal agony, the literal despair, the literal substitution for your own lost soul, and if you get any hope at all it can only be from such passages as, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed,”’ — “He bore my sins in His own body on the tree.”
Gather together all the souls represented by the poet Cowper, and Christ will bless them, and say, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold,’ — the souls represented by Robertson, and Christ wili bless them, and say, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold,’ — the souls represented by Channing, and Christ will bless them, and say, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.” Remember, one man is not all men; one truth is not all truth; one mood is not the whole mind. I cannot read the life of
Christ without seeing that as He began with us where He could, so we are to begin with Him where we can. He began by healing the body; we may begin by touching the hem of His garment. We are not expected to begin with a fully-elaborated theology. Whatever point you see most clearly in the character and work of Jesus is the point at which you should begin; you are sure of that point; it shines like a star; keep to it, by and by other points will appear, aS you have seen the stars troop forth in the deepening twilight. But there must be a common point of rest, what is that? The common point of rest is a Fact, not a Theory; it is a History, not a Speculation. You will find it in these scriptures : —
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” y
“In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”?
“Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”?
“We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.”
“By faith that is in ME.” °
“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” 6
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” 7
This is the point of rest! But the moment we begin to inquire How? as to the work of Christ, we enter upon
11 Tim.i, 15. 3 John iy. 2. 6 Acts xvi. 31.
2 John iv. 9 4 John iv. 14. 7 John iii. 36.
5 Acts xxvi. 18.
endless controversy. To theorise is to separate. It is evident, therefore, that we are to be saved by a Fact and not by a Speculation; by Christ, and not by any theological construction of His work. “It is not the doctrine of the death of Christ that atones for human sin, but the death itself; ... it has such a wonderful power, that it inspires faith in God, and purifies the heart, though the doctrine of the Atonement may be unknown or denied.”? “The power of the great sacrifice for the sins of the world lies in itself, and not in our explanations of it. Even when the doctrine of the Church has been most corrupt the death of Christ has continued to appeal to the hearts of men with unique and all but irresistible force.”2 In a sense never to be fully explained Christ was an “UN-SPEAKABLE gift;” a gift for which there are no words, no theories, no creeds, good enough, — His work is a power to be felt in the heart, not to be measured out in words; subtle as a dream, mighty as a law, anonymous, INFINITE, UNSPEAKABLE.
1 Congregational Union Lecture, p. 4. 2 Ibid., p. 435.
Division LE,
JHEP PRIESTHOOD: DOCTRINAL.
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