The Necessity of Mediation

Et us allow that it seems strange that any difference which may have arisen between man and God (as in Eden) could not have been arranged by the parties implicated in the offence quietly and successfully. If any misunderstanding should arise between you and me, we can explain, apologise, and forgive; there is no need for a tragedy or a sensation, and above all things, neither of us needs die to put the other into a right temper. Why should any third party come between us? I am quite prepared to say to God, “Yes, I have done wrong; I often do wrong; I am sorry; I repent; pardon me!” What more can God ask for? If you put this case as your own, I must at once stop you, and get you to tell me where you found the word “repent.” You often use it, and it now comes easily to you; but I must, if we are to argue this question closely and not to slur it over, demand that you say plainly where you got it. It was suggested in the last chapter that some words used by those who are living outside Christian limits might have to be reclaimed by Christian examiners and re-set in their first places. This is a striking example. I ask, therefore, sternly, where you got the word “repent” which you use with such easy familiarity 2 You say that you found it in the Bible. Where? Adam did not repent; nor did Cain. Who, then, did? You will be startled when you hear that it was God who repented! You may be still more startled when you hear that it never occurred to man to repent! The very notion of repentance came from God. Man trembled, feared, and ran away, but he did not break down in tears and penitence before God. So, observe, you are indebted to the Lord for the very term which alone expresses what you think ought to be done by any man who has sinned! And you have used that term so long, and applied it so easily, that you have actually come to think that you have a right to it and that you originated it! Now, if this word be taken from you, as it must be, your speech on the great subject of sin will be left poor indeed — so poor that you will be argumentatively dumb. If you ask whether you may not keep the word now that you do know it, I answer, Certainly not; it is part of a set of words, and you must not break the set: take the whole or leave the whole; that is a rule which you must think right and good; if you break it in one case you may preale it in all and So creave endless perplexity and confusion.

Apart from this use of a word to which you have no just claim, your suggestion may be founded upon a series of errors. In the first place, there may be an error in the supposition that man is so nearly upon an equality with God that he has merely to apologise in order to bring the misunderstanding to a friendly close; in the second place, there may be an error in the supposition that the question of offence lies between two persons, the sinner being one and God the other; in the third place, there may be an error in the supposition that the sinner has only done wrong, whereas the fact may be that he really 7s wrong, — the question not being one of occasional offence, but of lost Innocence and perverted nature.

It is most important that we fully understand the second of these suggestions — namely, that the offence may not lie between two persons, the sinner being one and God the other. We are properly accustomed to think of God as a Person, and yet there is extreme danger attending the use of that common word in thinking of God. You think of God as a Person because you wish to separate Him from what you call the universe; you cannot, you truly say, love the universe, you can only love a living and loving person. The danger is, that in thinking of a person you fix the mind upon something that has limits, and therefore upon something that has rights outside of itself — not upon something unlimited, and that includes all rights, and is itself the very fountain of right. You will not misunderstand me if I say, that there is something greater than any personality conceivable by the human mind, even though that personality bear the name of God. As applied ta God, the term Person is a mere convenience, originated for the help of minds that cannot grasp Infinity. I accept it as a temporary term; as a glass through which I see darkly; a symbol which stands to me for more than itself, as the wine stands for blood. It is indeed a reality, and the more real because it is so different from what it seems to be. As I now see the Personality of God, it is a star far off and dim, but in reality it is the focal point in which all glories converge and burn.

What, then, is greater than personality as we know it, or as it will probably ever be knowable by us? That which is greater than such personality is Right or Righteousness. Of course God being what He is — which is, so to speak, an accident rather than a necessity of personality, certainly not a necessity, or it would inhere in all personality — He is Right, but He is this not because He is a Person, but because He is infinitely more than we can ever think of in that relation. But by enlarging our idea of personality, or looking beyond it towards that which is signified by the term, we change the form of the question and throw it into this shape: — Why cannot Right, or Righteousness, make it up with the bad man and say no more about his sin? You will sec at once not only the absurdity but the wickedness of the suggestion. Why cannot Righteousness impair its own authority? Why cannot Righteousness be less than righteousness? But if it could be so, we ourselves should be the first to condemn it. All sense of security would be gone; the lines of order would be broken down, and progress in all good directions would be impossible. Even the thief owes something to the sternness and incorruptibleness of the very law which punishes him; and it would be an ill day for him, did he but know it, if that law were turned from being a master into being a plaything. That he cannot see it, is a reflection upon himself, not upon the soundness and reality of the principle.

We could bear the loss of what we know as personality in the conduct of our speculations — that is to say, it would be the loss of what is to us little more than a metaphysical point; but we could not, as moral beings or moral corporations, survive the loss of those things which are represented by personality, namely, righteousness, truth, law, honour, and the like. These must be fixed and unchangeable quantities in any system that claims to be moral. Even if they were not nominally so, they would come to be so in effect; for you must have at the head of every society a law that is rational and self-vindicating, or a force that is arbitrary and tyrannous. In other words, society cannot live without a centre, or without authority that is supreme and final, — say without God or the devil. And what is true of society is true of the individual; if he has to be saved from imbecility and practical non-existence, he must have within him a conscience to direct his actions, or a perverted will that carries him along in recklessness to any point that lures his appetite or his fancy. Grant that there must be supremacy somewhere, and you grant all that is asked for at this stage of the argument.

The loss of personality may be illustrated roughly thus — (roughly, because divine things can never be fully exemplified by things human): — You are at the head of a large business in which you take no manual part; you think, suggest, and direct the business upon certain principles; now whilst your personal retirement might be even an irreparable loss, yet the business would succeed exactly in proportion as the principles wpon which you had proceeded were recognised and applied. Or more clearly thus: Even if you lived, and brought all your strength and ingenuity to bear upon the business, yet if you changed certain. principles, not even your energy and fertility of resource could save the business from decay and collapse. You made the business; you know it in and out; at your touch it expands or contracts as you wish: a fine example, therefore, of the force of personality! True; but I want you to see that if you changed certain principles, or tampered with them, that even your genius, and even your predominance of will, would go for nothing, and, therefore, that those principles are so much greater than your personality, and that your personality owes its dignity and influence in this particular matter to those principles. When people speak of you, they say, That man is honest and upright, and his business is conducted upon principles of honesty and uprightness: in that sentence you have personality and principle mixed; now take out of it the principle, or reverse it, and instantly you destroy the whole virtue and charm of the personality. The people did not trade with you because you were a person, but because you were a person of high capability and character. But in the case of God, you have (I might reverently say you happen to have) a Personality as great and as indestructible as the principles; so that the terms are equal to one another, and mean the same thing. Still the mind must seize the vital fact that Righteousness is greater than any personality which human analogies will enable us to conceive, and that, therefore, sin is not an offence between one person and another, or between equals, or between equals and unequals standing upon a common plane.

The same point may be illustrated from the social side. If you are unjust to your neighbour, do you suppose that the injustice is limited as between two persons? I think you may be led to see that whatever has taken place merely between you two is the least part of the whole case. You have not wounded a man only; you have wounded justice, righteousness, and honour. Even if the man himself could not only forgive you instantly, but actually bless you for having injured him, you still have to appear in a higher court, and to answer Justice itself. More than that. Unless you are utterly dead to all right feeling, you have the hardest task of all yet to get through, that is to say, you have to forgive yourself. Is it harder to forgive one’s self than to answer the spirit of justice? You mistake me. It is the hardest task to answer that demand which the spirit of justice itself forces upon your own conscience and your own good feeling. Perhaps at this moment you are not in a mood to realise the truth and claim of such an argument, simply because you have not wounded or in anywise injured your neighbour; but if ever you should bring yourself into so unhappy a condemnation, you will feel that the very magnanimity of the offended man makes it the harder for you to escape the torture of self-reproach. It is, then, of extreme importance that you should get firm hold of the truth that no sin lies wholly between person and person, or between man and man. It is not uncommon to hear such speech as — The act is between this actor and that, A and B; others should let them alone; if they can settle the case themselves, why should others wish to interfere? let those who began the quarrel or misunderstanding settle it. Now, it is within very narrow limits that this reasoning, apparently so sound and fair, is in any sense true. It is founded, even within those very narrow limits, upon a mistaken view of human life and its relationships, and is only excusable in so far as it assumes that the actions which it contemplates are too obscure or too trifling to deserve the application of great moral principles; a species of reasoning which would never see murder in an emotion or wickedness in a look, and which (if honestly applied) would not check pestilence until it had ravaged and decimated the population. This may be made clear by enlarging the object upon which the reasoning is founded. For example: One man has physically wounded another with intent to do him some grievous bodily harm: the wounded man, with a nobility ordinarily inconceivable, says, “I forgive the assassin; the matter is between him and me alone; and I release him from every claim.” Does the matter rest there, or is it taken out of the hands of the injured but forgiving man? Society arises instantly and arrests the assassin; it says in effect, The man has stabbed humanity, not one human life, but all human lives, and whilst he is at large society is endangered. When the constable arrests a prisoner, it is not the case of one man arresting another, or the constable would often have the worst of it; it is society taking up one of its members; it is law grappling with disorder; it is a principle from above attacking an action from beneath. So sensitive is society upon this matter, that it will not only not allow any man to do you grievous bodily harm, or to rob you, but if you venture to compound with the wrong-doer, society will actually lay hands upon you, and turn your so-called forgiveness into an offence and a crime! Society will do even more than this: If you threaten your own life, it will arrest and punish you. It will help you in all directions, if you wish to. preserve your life, but if you attempt to destroy it, society will reveal to you the startling fact that what you call

your own life is in reality not your own for the base purpose you had in view. And if you deceive society by taking away your life in secret, society will not allow your dishonoured flesh to be put away until strict inquiry has been made into the cause of your death. With notebook in hand, English society registers every one who comes into the world, and every one who goes out of it. And yet you thought that a man might do as he pleased with his own, and compound with the assassin or the thief! What, then, is this mighty and all-ruling society? It is yourself magnified; it is man delivered from the narrowness and peril of individualism, and expressed in an authoritative sum total. But cannot society forgive a man, and show by that very act that offences, though not lying exclusively between one person and another, do really le between two limited and measurable points? If this question is itself no larger than it appears to be, there need be no hesitation in answering it in the affirmative; but if it encroaches upon a wider ground, it must be treated rather as a snare than an inquiry. Society cannot go upward beyond a certain point; if all the conditions which it can possibly impose are fulfilled, and if it is protected by all the guarantees which it can demand and enforce, it may do an act which may conveniently (but not absolutely and finally, for society itself is a sum total that is responsible) take the name and grace of forgiveness. But this it will only do, if itself honest and earnest, in proportion as it is satisfied that such an act is in harmony with those eternal principles which are the very breath of its own being and the security of its own continuance. It will be enough, then, for the moment, if you see from these illustrations that the question of offences is not so simple and easy as it appeared at first; that it is solemn, profound, awful; and

The Necessity of Mediation. a7

that the theory of one man being able to forgive another, and so to conclude moral contentions quietly and by compromise, is fallacious and impracticable.

§ II. In applying these illustrations of the doctrine that sin does not lie wholly between any two persons, though the one Person be God Himself, you must clearly and invariably understand the Personality of God according to the definition just laid down. If any other idea of personality get into your mind, it will undoubtedly confuse the argument. ‘The sinner asks why he may not own his sin to God, and receive the forgiveness of God without an atonement, or any other form of priestly intercession on the part of Jesus Christ.. This brings us back to the question whether it would ever occur to the sinner to go to God in penitence and to ask His forgiveness? At the risk of offending your memory, I must ask you to recall what has just been said on this point. Our own spiritual life comes up out of a history so long and so complex that it is difficult to get hold of the exact truth in some controversies; words are melted down and re-minted, or they are set in new places, or they are so long used in false connections, that the original ownership is denied. I repeat that this is signally the case with the word “repentance,” and all its variations. Look again at the case of Adam. When he sinned did he repent? Did the idea of penitence so much as suggest itself to his mind? There is no proof that it did so, but there are some facts which prove the exact contrary. He fled away from the Lord, and hid himself in shame; and in doing so he did the only thing possible! He showed that it is not in the nature of sin to drive men to God, but to drive them to further sin and to deeper darkness. Neither Adam nor Eve said, “We have done wrong; let us at once seek the Lord our God, tell Him with tears how much we feel our sin, and let us ask Him to pity and spare us: He will come in the cool of the day, let us be ready for His appearing.” Nothing of the kind. There we see the case exactly as it stands between man and God. At that time there were but few ideas in the world. Adam could have said very little, if anything, about Godhead, sovereignty, or decrees eternal. Eve had a very short and simple story to tell the tempter, quite a child’s story, told in a child’s way. It never occurred to either of them that pity was possible toGod. The word “pity” wasunknown. Mercy, compassion, forbearance had no place in the speech of man. Because we know them now, we think we always knew them, and therein we render not unto God the things that are God’s. You must fix your mind on the fact that sin did not drive man to God, but drove him away into penal secrecy and shame; and on the further and consequent fact, that the first approach was not made from the human but from the Divine side. The whole Gospel begins there! I must ask you not to hasten from this holy ground until you have mastered the lessons which begin here: by and by those lessons will have hard words imported into them, and many passages not easily read; but just now the reading is wonderfully clear and easy. I ask, then, did sin drive the sinner to God? When the sin was discovered did the sinner ask for pity or mercy? Did the sinner seek God, or did God seek the sinner? You can give a distinct answer to these all-important and far-reaching inquiries. Looking at the terms of the covenant made in Eden, it is clear that man could not have had any idea of the nature of sin made to him except as it showed itself in its painful consequences. This will appear to be both the more remarkable and the more important as you look into it, The covenant is certainly very short, a sentence or two at the most; and I want you to see that its shortness was not an accident, but a necessity. Hear the principal words: “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” What need was there for so stern a tone

at the very beginning? It sounds as if the man had already done wrong, and as if it was meant as a punishment in anticipation. Yet it was really something infinitely different! How otherwise could God have spoken to the man? We have now many words (so many, that our meaning is often purposely lost amongst them), and we can, if we please, give shades and inflections of thought endless and precise: we have now keys that fit metaphysical locks, and symbols that stand for infinity; but in the very first day, when there was only one man, and he, a man in height but a child in mind, words were few and simple, and this sentence, “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” was about all he could understand. If God had said, “Tn the day thou eatest thereof, I will surely pity thee,” the word “pity” would have had no meaning to Adam. It would have been a mystery; it might have been hell itself! Pity was unknown. Some of our words, the sweetest and tenderest, indeed, are in one sense “the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into our world and all our woe,” and this word “pity” is one; so is mercy; so is long-suffering; so is CHRIST.

If God had said, “In the day thou eatest thereof, I will surely accept thy penitence in mitigation of my wrath,” the words would have been to Adam as the thick darkness of nicht. “Penitence,’ “wrath,” those are words which have a history behind them; as mere prophecies they would have been lost on Adam. But the word “die” he could at least understand in part: he saw animals die; perhaps he slew them with his own hand; as he knew darkness from light, so he might have some idea of the difference between life and death. Certainly the word “die” was the word most likely to be understood by the infant-man, the giant mighty but untried. Of course it was a poor reason; the poorest possible, if you will; but certainly the only one intelligible. It was as a seed which would bring forth an hundred-fold. The point to which these reflections bring us is that the sinner was first shocked by the consequences of his sin; that is to say, not so much by the sin itself as by its results — by the change of heart, the darkness of fear, the terror of isolation, the utter absence of every element and condition of defence, which he experienced in one sudden and fatal agony. He did not repent, he did not pray, he did not seek God — he died! So sin comes always first as a pain. What it is in God’s view comes as a revelation. Adam had some notion of what the effect of sin would be upon himself, but none whatever of its effect upon God. That God could feel any effect at all was probably an idea impossible of conception; for what could He feel who could not die? Even we ourselves, with all our experiences and advantages, seldom, it may be, think of the effect of sin upon God; we suppose, practically, that its effects are limited to ourselves. This is natural, but it is not enough. How will this sin affect God? is a question which men should now ask. Until we know the answer, it is worse than useless to propose theories of recovery. We must know how God is affected before we can so much as begin to reason, even supposing that sin has left us capable of any speculation about our own position and destiny. My answer, therefore, to the theory that man should confess and repent as between God and himself is, that it takes the very words from the Gospel itself, plucks fruit from the tree of life, then credits them to human invention and to human willingness to make terms with God (an infinite impertinence), and leaves the great problem of sin in an aggravation of mystery.

What was done in the case of Adam is most instructive. In turning Adam out of Eden as a dead man, God showed indirectly, first, how He Himself was affected by sin, and second, what value He put upon human nature. There was only one man; why not slay him for his sin, and make another and a better man to take his place? Why not begin again by omitting all the arrangements about the tree in the midst of the garden? The plan would seem so simple, so easy, and wholly reasonable. I want you to feel, and to feel deeply, that when a plan, which like the fatal tree is “pleasant to the eyes” by its apparent and fascinating simplicity, is not adopted by the Almighty, that there must be other elements and considerations in the case than those which are so obvious and tempting. You would hardly surprise me if you suggested that a child could have improved, in a second experiment, the original conditions of life in Eden. Having seen the exact point at which the failure occurred, the child would guard against its repetition by taking away the forbidden tree, and especially by destroying the serpent; where nothing was forbidden there could be no trespass, and where there was no tempter there could be no seduction; make such changes and Eden would be an inviolable sanctuary. Undoubtedly the plan strikes one as simple and easy, but as it was not adopted by Him whose wisdom we may not question, the probability is that the ease is in appearance only, and not in reality. It cannot be that so obvious a suggestion could have escaped Omniscience. I beg you, therefore, to take human history as it is, without troubling your mind to invent new destinies out of impossible conditions.

Perhaps you ask me to explain what is meant in speaking of Adam as a dead man. The word “die” is, in my opinion, often misread in the sentence, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” It is often read as if the man could die in one way only. Think of this as suggesting a possible misinterpretation. If Adam had

32 Lhe Priesthood of Chrost.

thrown himself into the river, he would have died; or if he had fallen from a high cliff; or in many ways, for the doors of death are innumerable and wide. Some deeper meaning, then, of the condition indicated by death must be found. You may suggest that Adam died spiritually; so he did; but even that idea does not- fully express the meaning of the limits within which he lived. <A cursory reading of the sentence might justify the notion that a special arrangement had been made to meet a possible emergency, that is, that God had set apart a special punishment for a special sin. This is so narrow as to be untrue. The law of which this sentence is an elementary expression was not made for Adam, was not made for any individual or for any race: it is part of the very being of God; it is a necessary inflection of the Word. All things are in God, — heaven is, and hell! A little scheme of laws was not made to meet a new form of being, but the new form of being, called Adam, called Man, was introduced into an economy venerable and unchangeable as eternity. The law was revealed to Adam; it was not made on purpose for him; and if Adam had been swept out of existence in the very act of his transgression, the lightning that struck him would still have lingered around the throne of the One Eternal. It was the lightning that had struck apostate angels; in the beginning the lightning was with God, and the lightning was God! Adam’s death, then, was no accident. Doing what he did, his death was necessary and unavoidable. No threat had been thrown like a cruel shadow upon his untried life, but a gracious revelation had been made to his inexperience — a revelation which he understood well enough to be able to put into words for the instruction of another, and which that other sufficiently understood to be able to state it with simplicity and emphasis to the tempter. This understood law was challenged, and the result was death. Adam was not merely worsted,

Lhe Necessity of Me ediation. 33

crippled, disabled; he was killed. The slain man can make no apologies, nor can he pray, nor can he repent. He is dead. You cannot make any terms with him, nor he with you. Heisdead! You can only cast him out, and cover him with the sod that shall hide his shame. If by and by you can find life enough in yourself to overcome the death that is im him, you may cause him to live again. If you think it well to give him life once more, the gift will be of grace, and not of works. He is dead, and he cannot work! But this is the glorious Gospel, and our argument is not yet ready to receive the Resurrection and the Life.

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